Does God Really Heal?
By Al Staggs
[Dr. Al Staggs, a Vietnam era Army veteran, is a minister known nationally and internationally for the performance of his original one-person stage play on the life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. He lives in San Antonio.]
My wife died in April of this year following a twelve year battle with cancer, a particularly malignant melanoma.
A few weeks prior to her death some of our long-time friends paid us a visit at our home. After a brief trip for a quick lunch, the four of us sat in the living area of our home to catch up on what all was going on in each of our families and in the lives of our children. Toward the conclusion of this visit, one of our visitors asked my wife and me if we had ever heard of a certain woman who had been healed of her cancer by following a special nutritional regimen. She had brought a tape for my wife to listen to. My first mental reaction was, "I really don`t believe what I`m hearing! This sweet Christian woman really does not comprehend the heavy ramifications of what she is doing by suggesting that my wife, who is just two weeks from her death and barely able to get around, could be miraculously healed if she would just start chewing apricot roots and avoiding caffeine." That`s not exactly what our friend said, of course. I imagined that the diet that the "miracle worker" friend would suggest would consist of that kind of regimen. This experience pushed me back to my Clinical Pastoral Education days at Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas in 1976 and 1977. I had graduated a couple of years before from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and had managed to learn the Bible well enough to offer some pastoral care and comfort in almost any given situation. The challenge that my CPE supervisors were faced with was to help me not to feel compelled immediately to put a spiritual band-aid on everyone I met. These supervisors encouraged me to close my mouth and listen carefully to the patient`s feelings as well as their words. What our well-meaning Christian friend had done was well intentioned. In my dying wife`s situation, however, it was a profoundly cruel gesture.
That particular incident occurred about the same time our daughter, Rebekah, was confronted by a member of a prayer group at Baylor University. This classmate of Rebekah`s discovered that her mother was gravely ill with cancer. What she told Rebekah was that if she just had enough faith her mother would be healed.
These experiences have compelled me once again to rethink my theology of healing. I confess that I have extremely low tolerance for the so-called faith healers or for the peddlers of healing. I`m aghast that anyone would dare to claim to understand the mind of God about any particular person or any particular illness. What these folks do to people is hold out hope for a complete reversal of a person`s physical condition. When the miracle does not occur, the lack of miraculous action can be attributed to a person`s lack of faith which only compounds the person`s problems. Not only are these people terminally ill, but they are also being taught that they are not good Christians. In my weaker moments I am reminded of the passage from Matthew 7:22-23, where Jesus says, "Many will say to me on that day, `Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform miracles?`" Then I will tell them plainly, `I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!`"
Our visiting friends on that memorable afternoon recounted story after story of "miraculous" answers to their prayers. After hearing a steady diet of incidents in which people were healed of their infirmities or found better paying jobs, my wife looked over at both of them and said simply, "It hasn`t worked that way for us."
Sometimes I just want to ask these people who become so excited about miraculous healing, "Has your vaunted prayer program yet kept anyone alive?" Eventually we all die, including those who were healed of their particular disease. No one has yet managed to avoid the grim reaper. So why save our success stories for just those precious few who have been allowed a few months or years longer than they would otherwise have had?
My wife`s death was preceded by seventeen months by the death of her mother from Alzheimer`s Disease. Mrs. Cason languished, as did her family, for some fourteen years before her merciful death. As I pondered her illness and he way that this disease steals every measure of dignity that a person once possessed, I remembered that there was not an incident to my knowledge where a faith healer had claimed to arrest or reverse the condition of an Alzheimer`s patient. Cancer is sometimes characterized by what has been called spontaneous remission; but as far as I know, Alzheimer`s never is.
The death of a loved one can be experienced in a multitude of ways. For our family, my wife`s death gave not only her, but also our children and me some measure of relief and peace. Once again, that obviously is not the case for every death. We discovered the peace of God during those final weeks and days and minutes of Vicki`s life and sensed that God was very present with us in all that we experienced.
I vividly recall that during my Clinical Pastoral Education days a certain African-American woman made an earnest request for me to pray for her healing from leukemia since she was a single parent with an eight-year-old son. It seemed very logical to me that here was a situation where healing would be both merciful and necessary. I remember praying that if it could be God`s will, this good woman would be healed of her infirmity. I felt, however, as I prayed that I was putting God on the spot to come through for this woman and for me. Her healing did not occur. She died of that leukemia a few months later.
One of my favorite scripture passages is this section from 11 Corinthians, the twelfth chapter where Paul says:
…There was given to me a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.
There needs to be a major emphases on God`s grace and sufficiency for every illness and every situation. The Christian community should talk just as loud and long about God`s presence in the most hopeless situations as we do about the "miraculous healings." For not to do that is to leave out the vast majority of sufferers and eventually all sufferers. Our pre-occupation with medical reversals implies that these situations are far more important and far more demonstrative of the workings of God in people`s lifes than are the far more numerous evidences of his grace and power in the experiences of always having always underneath us his "everlasting arms." This sort of spectacularism is nothing short of a half-truth and it is in the end a vicious blow to other sufferers and to the families of those sufferers. Ministers and churches alike need to hear clearly that it often takes more faith to live with an infirmity than it does to be healed from an illness. As a minister for nearly thirty years it has been my responsibility and privilege to be with patients and families in some of the most difficult times of their lives and in some of the difficult situations imaginable. What I have observed is that in so many, many situations, God`s peace and presence is manifested in their lives despite their hardships. This is not to say that there were not questions, suffering, and real grief present in all of these conditions. What I have observed is that in spite of the natural anguish that is there for the patient and the family, there is also evident in many, many cases, the presence of God`s Spirit, giving comfort and hope.
Theologian, priest, and author, Henri Nouwen, was both a friend and mentor to me. Nouwen had this to say about death: "Death does not have to be our final failure, our final defeat in the struggle of life, our unavoidable fate. If our deepest human desire is indeed to give ourselves to others, then we can make our death into a final gift. It is so wonderful to see how fruitful death is when it is a free gift." Nouwen`s words and his own approach to his life and to his recent death in 1995 are a counterbalance against those whose "healing" hit-and-run ministries suggest that death is a defeat and that only miraculous cure is a victory.
Stories of miraculous healings have their place. The miracle of a believer`s faith, however, in the face of terminal illness, and the faith of a loving family, is just as important as any story of a miraculous cure of an illness. Very few people experience a total reversal of illness. Most people diagnosed with terminal illness struggle through it to the very end. So, let us hear the stories of the miraculous presence of God in the lives of these saints who are faithful to the end.
