A Friend with Lymphoma Shares His Understanding on Healing

Mike Crow's STRUGGLE WITH MEANING AND MYSTERY

(from his email prayer letter in November 2004)

Disease seems to hit Christian and non-Christian alike. Healing also occurs for some, but many are not healed. Some see illness as simple randomness and genetics. Others say God heals everyone who comes in faith. People take various positions between the extremes of meaninglessness and oversimplified meaning.

Position #1	Position #2	Position #3
If you’re pleasing to God, He’ll heal you! Medical help is a cop-out, a failure of faith. Everything has a 1:1 significance, a fixed meaning and purpose. Illness is either: (a) a result of personal sin, (b) a generational curse or (c) Satan’s attack. Just repent, refuse & resist!	God is all-powerful, good, sovereign and wise. We live in a fallen world with fallen bodies. Christians are not exempt from the consequences of Adam’s sin. God can & does intervene with healing. But He is hard to pin down to any hard and fast formula. Somehow, amazingly, He seems to bring glory to Himself both through healing and through our facing suffering with His grace and peace. Often it seems that we only come to this place through severe personal trial, being Biblically faithful yet embracing cold, hard realities. Get the best medical help you can trusting God through it all.	Illness occurs randomly & genetically. It’s all chaos & chance. Get the best medical help you can, then grin and bear it. The naïve attribute random junk & medical help to God. But there is no higher purpose or meaning. Faith is an obstacle to scientific advance
Tends to deny painful facts contrary to faith. Tends to simplify life and faith. Sees medicine as nice but unnecessary. Tends toward aggressive prayer.	Tends to struggle with integrating faith and suffering. Acknowledges God’s sovereignty in the mystery of life, even life with pain. Embraces medical advance as a gift from God to suffering humanity, made possible because of His image in man (compassion and intelligence). Tends to be more tentative in prayer (If it be Thy will).	Denies God and looks only at “the facts.” Tends toward skepticism, cynicism and / or hedonism. Medical advance is human ingenuity. Prayer is pointless.
God heals all who have faith, so lack of healing is a lack of faith. My faith releases God’s power. God is not in control; I am.	If God heals some but not others according to His will, then it does not depend so much on my faith as on His mercy. The stress is not on my faith but on God’s sovereignty. I am not in control; God is.	There is no God or miraculous healing. “Healings” are psychosomatic or a fraud. God is not in control; I am and so are my doctors!
Simplistic Meaning and Pat Answers	Meaning & Mystery	Meaninglessness, Cynicism, Despair

I’ve found myself struggling at every point along this continuum, trying to integrate faith with lack of healing. I’m now circulating around the middle area, embracing both the meaning found in faith and the mystery found in lack of healing. I am leaning heavily on the mystery of God’s mercy and rejoice in medical advance.

Indeed, I see my entry into the National Cancer Institute as a wonderful answer to prayer. I’ve jumped to the head of the queue! I’m at the cutting edge of research on lymphoma treatments, which other cancer patients will benefit from years from now.

Thank you, God, that I can be a part of Your work through human beings, to extend Your healing to any suffering person, regardless of their faith. This is truly Your mercy in action towards suffering humanity.