Words from WW Blog

“When he had gone indoors, the blind men came to him, and he asked them, ‘Do you believe that I am able to do this?’

‘Yes, Lord,’ they replied.

 Then he touched their eyes and said, ‘According to your faith let it be done to you’;  and their sight was restored. Jesus warned them sternly, ‘See that no one knows about this.’ “(Matthew 9:28-30)

Recently, my wife told me about a sermon she had heard that touched a nerve. Without giving you the long version, I’ll summarize. It revolved around a person who was a part of a church, had cancer, and died. It may have only been one person, or it may have been several, whose cold-hearted analysis was, “Guess he didn’t have enough faith!”

It was a spiritual copout, a way of rationalizing why cancer, or any other disease, isn’t always defeated. Quite honestly, it’s a way for some followers of the Great Physician to protect part of their theology. Here’s the rub. There is nothing wrong with believing that Jesus heals. He does. But when healing doesn’t happen, maybe in the way we perceive it should, it’s bad theology to put the blame on the wounded.

It’s also bad theology to blame the community of faith for not having enough faith, to judge it as being lacking in prayer. After all, when a church loses one of its people, it is just as much a time of grieving for them, a wound to the fellowship, as it is for the family of the departed.

I was looking at “faith situations” in the Gospel of Matthew. Whenever Jesus mentions a lack of faith, he’s talking to His disciples, the very ones to are with Him 24-7. Whenever he mentions faith as what has healed someone, it is in connection with one of the least of these. For instance, Matthew 9 is ripe with stories of healing faith. They include a group of men who bring a paralyzed man to Jesus, a woman with an ongoing female malady, the blind, and the mute. In each situation, Jesus affirms them for their faith.

On the other hand, His disciples are questioned for their lack of faith when it comes to their fears during the storm that descends on the lake that they are sailing across, Simon Peter’s fear in the midst of walking on the water, and when the disciples ask Him why they couldn’t drive out a demon. Jesus seems to shake His head in the moments the disciples trust more in the power of nature than in His power.

Still, trying to wrap our arms around the framework of faith is like trying to catch the wind. It’s mysterious, not able to be packaged, and not restricted by our whims or the moments we spiritually high.

To use the “lack of faith” card to evaluate why someone isn’t healed, in my mind, falls into the same category as the disciples’ debate about who of them would be greatest in the Kingdom of God. It misses the point.

Jesus offers hope, peace, and an eternal relationship. The Holy Spirit comforts us in times of need. What an encouragement it is for someone who is struggling to know that his community of faith offers hope, peace, and comfort. What an encouragement for a discouraged soul to know that he is not alone and that his brothers and sisters are with him.

For someone to blame a loss on a person’s lack of faith is the spiritualized Christian way of really saying, “It sucks to be you!” It’s standing above the hurting instead of standing with them.

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This entry was posted on February 16, 2024 at 2:48 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments.

Tags: Bible, Christianity, Faith, Jesus, Prayer

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