From three netfriends:

[1] Is sickness from the devil? If so, what about these:

2 Chronicles 21:18 “After all this, the Lord afflicted Jehoram with an incurable disease ..”

Exodus 4:21 “Who gave man his mouth? Who makes him deaf or mute? Who gives him sight or makes him blind? Is it not I, the LORD?”

Isaiah 3:16-17 “Moreover the LORD says: “Because the daughters of Zion are haughty, and walk with outstretched necks and wanton eyes, walking and mincing as they go, making a jingling with their feet. Therefore the Lord will strike with a scab the crown of the head of the daughters of Zion, and the LORD will uncover their secret parts.”

[2]

First, let me point out that all healing is divine healing. We take it for granted, but it is God who heals.

One possible explanation for the conundrum is that at least one of your basic assumptions is incorrect – either *not* all sickness is of the devil; or Jesus is *not* stronger than the devil.

I don’t believe that Jesus is not stronger than the devil, so let’s rule that one out. So – is all sickness of the devil?

No. God has clearly caused sickness on many occasions, from the time of Moses (when He sent plagues upon Egypt) to when Paul went blind “And now, behold, the hand of the Lord is upon thee, and thou shalt be blind, not seeing the sun for a season. And immediately there fell on him a mist and a darkness; and he went about seeking some to lead him by the hand.” (Acts 13:11). If you recall, Paul even caused someone to go blind – the sorcerer Elymas. Remember, too that Paul himself – whose healing prayers helped so many people – had his own thorn in the flesh that God did not remove.

I am not a great believer in “redemptive suffering”. Most of the time, suffering seems to demean and harm a person, more than redeem him. I believe that, having been subjected to some illness, injury, or other torment, we can sometimes turn it around into something more positive – but I don’t think this is a particularly good way to get to know God.

I am particularly impatient with the smug hypocrites who blame the suffering person for his torment, claiming that if only they had enough faith, they would be healed. This reminds me of Robert A. Heinlein’s cynical claim that if you pray hard enough, you can make water run uphill. How hard must you pray, to do that? Why, hard enough to make water run uphill!

It’s a self-confirming claim – if you accomplish it, then the claim is true. If not, then it was your faith that was at fault, not something else. Similarly, in healing prayer. They pray for you. If you are healed, they can claim (often taking credit for it) that healing prayer is effective. If you aren’t healed, it must have been your fault – you didn’t have enough faith. You didn’t try hard enough. You had some hidden sin that prevented the healing.

All this just adds to the suffering of those who are already burdened, without in any way helping them. It is unfair and wrong.

I agree that hedging a prayer with “if it be thy will…” is not helpful. Why the “if”? Is God capricious? Is suffering what God wants for us, if it can be avoided? No.

I don’t claim to understand why some people are not healed, even when they pray fervently for healing, even when they have many others also praying; but it does happen. Even less do I understand why I was healed of my fatal affliction, when my prayer was said in great anger at God for allowing me to suffer, when I didn’t believe in God and wasn’t interested in any deity who would allow such suffering to continue; when my prayer was disrespectful, angry, and utterly without faith. Nevertheless, I was immediatly and lastingly healed, and have never experienced any further trouble. It certainly had nothing to do with faith, good works, good attitude, or any other virtue.

Finally, do not confuse healing with remission of symptoms, although that is usually how we can recognize a healing. Although I have seen many people recover from illnesses and live long past their predicted deaths, I have also seen many people die of the illness that led them to seek healing prayer. Even among those, however, some experienced healing. This healing wasn’t of the body – they died. However, their last days were sometimes far more peaceful and joy-filled than their previous lives had been before the illness.

Sometimes it is this peace that is the true healing. The illness may have been necessary to bring about this more important healing.

[3] If God wants everyone healed and it’s up to us, then who gets the credit and the glory? If you exempt God from the blame, you exempt him from the praise, as the Calvinists long ago decided with respect to salvation and damnation.

I have the following objections to the unbiblical idea that God wants everyone to be healed now:

1.. How do we define healing? There are innumerable imperfections in every human body and thus it will be till the resurrection

2.. If God does one miracle, we want three; if God does 3 we want 10, if there are 10 we may well ask why does God leave the world this way (from Brian McLaren)

3.. The spate of signs accompanying the ministry of Jesus definitely tapers off in the apostolic period. While Jesus fed 5000 hungry people, the apostles took up a collection for the famine in Jerusalem. When Epaphroditus’ illness is discussed in Philippians 2, Paul says God had mercy on him and he recovered – that’s how I see all recovery/healings – an act of mercy; healing in the epistles is consigned to a spiritual gift in 1 Cor 12 or to a church based ministry in James 5

4.. Sickness is just one symptom of many of a fallen world. The removal of the other symptoms will not happen until the Eschaton, the Resurrection, and neither will the renewal of our bodies. The idea that we have a right to full healing now could well be the claim of Hymenaeus and Philetus in 2 Tim 2:17f who ‘upset the faith of many claiming the resurrection has already been granted’

5.. Too much is built on too little – ‘the prayer of faith’ in James 5 is linked to Mark 11:24 – the faith that ‘believes it has received’ – but earlier in Mark an effective prayer of faith says ‘I believe – help me with my unbelief’. In my thinking, the James ref to prayer of faith may be about those times when God gives a strong impression of a desire to heal a particular case – faith is a gift of God, and if the gift is not given we are not to feel guilty for being unable to work it up by techniques.

6.. The list of reasons why God does not heal from Noel is unnecessary if we reject the premise that ‘healing is [always] God’s will’. Dietrich Bonhoeffer was mortified when someone suggested that his sufferings may shake his faith in God; as he saw it, suffering was the number one experience of Christians and he was offended at the suggestion he might expect comfort and ease. In our comfortable world, we want to abuse our bodies and ask God to fix them.

7.. The argument that ‘surely a God of love would want to heal everybody’ is terribly fraught. We have to deal with the biblical material, not a ‘surely God’ argument. What does the destruction of the Egyptians at the Red Sea say about God’s love for all mankind? what does the stoning of Stephen say about God’s protection of the faithful ones who trust Jesus? God is big, life is a mystery, faith is not sight.

8.. It is so easy to list countless abuses of the doctrine – a lady in my church was told her miscarriage resulted probably from unconfessed sin – as if God heard her confess 19 out of 20 sins but because she missed one, there goes the baby! As Jesus said, Sick people need a doctor (Luke 5:31) – not a confessor.

I heard a couple once who had a baby with slight foot deformity call for people in the church to stand alongside them as they thanked God that this deformed foot had been healed already even though there was no evidence. I thought this represented a vigorous form of denial – they were new parents and their dream of a perfect child hadn’t been realised and they couldn’t imagine that God would want it that way, so they claimed healing and were gonna exercise extra-super faith to obtain it at any cost….

I didn’t join them, I prayed in my seat that they would love this child who carried a different kind of beauty and perfection and become the richer for it. Their God was too small. The true God has adapted to this fallen world and moves thru it with grace and strength, never quite making it as good as we would like but having begun the process of renewal of all things as a downpayment on the Eschaton.