Forgiveness 5: … and Healing

Don: Even today, the concept that illness may be a result of sinful behavior is somewhat prevalent. Patients diagnosed with cancer often tell me they have led relatively blameless lives and have done nothing to deserve it.

Jesus developed the relationship between healing and forgiveness extensively in his ministry. There are more than three dozen Gospel stories about the healing power of Jesus, and forgiveness features in a number of them. In addition, seven of them occur on the Sabbath. Here is a small selection:

Luke 5:17-26

One day He was teaching; and there were some Pharisees and teachers of the law sitting there, who had come from every village of Galilee and Judea and from Jerusalem; and the power of the Lord was present for Him to perform healing. And some men were carrying on a bed a man who was paralyzed; and they were trying to bring him in and to set him down in front of Him. But not finding any way to bring him in because of the crowd, they went up on the roof and let him down through the tiles with his stretcher, into the middle of the crowd, in front of Jesus. Seeing their faith, He said, “Friend, your sins are forgiven you.”

[There may be some significance in the dismantling of a roof to bring the patient/sinner to Jesus, but the most interesting thing is that Jesus doesn’t beat about the bush: His first act is to forgive the man, even though that is not why the man came to him. It’s also noteworthy that Jesus calls him “Friend”—an honor offered only to Judas, to the interloper at the Wedding Feast, and now to this paralyzed man.— DW]

The scribes and the Pharisees began to reason, saying, “Who is this man who speaks blasphemies? Who can forgive sins, but God alone?” But Jesus, aware of their reasonings, answered and said to them, “Why are you reasoning in your hearts? Which is easier, to say, ‘Your sins have been forgiven you,’ or to say, ‘Get up and walk’? But, so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins,”—He said to the paralytic—“I say to you, get up, and pick up your stretcher and go home.” Immediately he got up before them, and picked up what he had been lying on, and went home glorifying God. They were all struck with astonishment and began glorifying God; and they were filled with fear, saying, “We have seen remarkable things today.”

John 5:1-17

After these things there was a feast of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.

Now there is in Jerusalem by the sheep gate a pool, which is called in Hebrew Bethesda, having five porticoes. In these lay a multitude of those who were sick, blind, lame, and withered, waiting for the moving of the waters; for an angel of the Lord went down at certain seasons into the pool and stirred up the water; whoever then first, after the stirring up of the water, stepped in was made well from whatever disease with which he was afflicted. A man was there who had been ill for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there, and knew that he had already been a long time in that condition, He said to him, “Do you wish to get well?” The sick man answered Him, “Sir, I have no man to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, but while I am coming, another steps down before me.” Jesus said to him, “Get up, pick up your pallet and walk.” Immediately the man became well, and picked up his pallet and began to walk.

Now it was the Sabbath on that day. So the Jews were saying to the man who was cured, “It is the Sabbath, and it is not permissible for you to carry your pallet.” But he answered them, “He who made me well was the one who said to me, ‘Pick up your pallet and walk.’” They asked him, “Who is the man who said to you, ‘Pick up your pallet and walk’?” But the man who was healed did not know who it was, for Jesus had slipped away while there was a crowd in that place. Afterward Jesus found him in the temple and said to him, “Behold, you have become well; do not sin anymore, so that nothing worse happens to you.” The man went away, and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had made him well. For this reason the Jews were persecuting Jesus, because He was doing these things on the Sabbath. But He answered them, “My Father is working until now, and I Myself am working.”

Luke 13:10-17

And He was teaching in one of the synagogues on the Sabbath. And there was a woman who for eighteen years had had a sickness caused by a spirit; and she was bent double, and could not straighten up at all. When Jesus saw her, He called her over and said to her, “Woman, you are freed from your sickness.” And He laid His hands on her; and immediately she was made erect again and began glorifying God. But the synagogue official, indignant because Jesus had healed on the Sabbath, began saying to the crowd in response, “There are six days in which work should be done; so come during them and get healed, and not on the Sabbath day.” But the Lord answered him and said, “You hypocrites, does not each of you on the Sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the stall and lead him away to water him? And this woman, a daughter of Abraham as she is, whom Satan has bound for eighteen long years, should she not have been released from this bond on the Sabbath day?” As He said this, all His opponents were being humiliated; and the entire crowd was rejoicing over all the glorious things being done by Him.

This passage shows that Jesus viewed illness as being caused by sin, by Satan, by some kind of evil. What does all this tell us about forgiveness and its relation to physical illness?

Harry: The relationship is clear. I’ve read a book by a physician who has described cases where guilt-laden patients did indeed get better after being forgiven. But in providing a litany of bad things that will result if one does not emulate god’s perfection, Leviticus also unwittingly reveals that the guilt such passages impose on believers may be the cause of their illnesses.

David: It seems to me to be dangerous scripture that suggests that physical healing will follow confession of sinfulness. I would accept a link between confession/forgiveness and spiritual healing, but not physical healing. Perhaps the gospel stories are meant to be read metaphorically, but they are written as factual accounts of actual events.

Veronica: I can’t make this connection between illness and sin, either. We all get sick, and every day people die from illnesses. I have a hard time believing it all happens because the sick are sinners.

Alice: If we constantly ask for forgiveness, we will never get sick?

Jason: In the context of the time, people then firmly believed that sickness was indeed the result of some sin committed by the sick person or the sick person’s parents. Obviously, this view has since changed. I think Jesus was actually trying to change it. In none of the three examples quoted above does the sick person seek forgiveness or confess to being a sinner. In two if the stories, the sick people did not even seek out Jesus to heal them—Jesus picked them out of the crowd!

To me, these stories put more emphasis on the need to forgive others, to be on the lookout for opportunities to forgive, rather than on seeking to be forgiven oneself. This contradicts the common viewpoint in organized religion, which teaches that one is to seek forgiveness rather than to seek to forgive. At least in two of the stories, Jesus is seeking for opportunities to forgive, as well as to heal. Religion needs to do a 180 degree turn on its teaching in this respect: It should be in the business of forgiveness for others, not for itself.

Harry: Yes, this is radical. Jesus lays waste to Old Testament concepts. When we forgive others, god forgives us. We have to forgive others for their ignorance. Somehow, organized religion lost its way with regard to this point in its earliest days, perhaps for reasons of power and control.

Robin: If my elders were to tell me that I had a problem because I or my parents sinned, I would doubt that I was at all forgivable. Some of the sick people in the gospel stories were actively seeking forgiveness and healing.

Jesus was deliberately pushing the Pharisees’ buttons, but in so doing he was also reaching out to the oppressed and the poor in spirit.

Does god define forgiveness as we do? We tend to mean that the forgiver is good and the forgiven was bad. But perhaps to god it means rescue from the curse of sin, which is attributed to the devil, because he knows that we are weak compared to such power and need to be rescued.

Don: In the last passage we quoted, Jesus did talk about being released or rescued from bondage in some sense.

Michael: In other passages, he tries not to link sickness and sin, as for example with the lepers. Why would he then make that link in these quoted passages?

Harry: Where did the Pharisees get the idea of a link? From Deuteronomy, from god. Jesus takes an axe to this notion. so they cannot both be true. Christianity, it seems to me, is stunted by the OT stories. They may yet have some wisdom and truth to offer, but they need to be taken with a grain of salt. The books of the OT were only written down after the second exodus. Before that they were transmitted orally for two thousand years, with plenty of opportunity for transmission error and embellishment. It does not prove that the stories are wrong, but it does call for caution in taking them as god’s word, as Truth.

Jason: To me, it’s important to look on the books as a progression of how people relate to the concepts of a higher power, grace, love, and so on; a refining in light of changing historical contexts—a developing story—rather than as flat-out contradictions. It’s not that one version is superior to the other, it’s that people could understand and accept them, and therefore relate to god in a way that is meaningful and powerful and fulfilling for them, given their stage of development at the time.

Consider the development of the child. Children will do bad things and misunderstand and misinterpret things simply because they are children. Their relationship with their earthly father progresses as they develop and grow, but it is never (in a normal loving family) a bad relationship; it is simply different at different stages in the child’s development.

Remember, too, that Jesus called for us to cultivate or revert to a childlike state because children are more governed by fundamental principles of the kingdom of heaven, which tend to fade with age. A child’s ability to forgive and forget is extraordinary. When punished, their forgiveness of the parent is almost instantaneous. They don’t brood over the hurt. they don’t let it fester.

Kiran: A relative contracted meningitis when she was born. Her parents assumed they must have done something wrong, so they did a kind of fasting in penance. I knew of a corrupt Indian government official whose kidney failure was regarded, by those who knew him, as divine retribution. These occurred in Hindu communities that had never heard of Deuteronomy. It is just human nature to feel this way.

Robin: Even Americans talk of “karma.”

Harry: Yes, it is human nature to be pessimistic. Optimism and forgiveness are harder for us, but when we succeed, we find joy in life. God may well have a hand in all of this but fundamentally it is all down to human nature, not to scriptural “truths.” Scripture tries to usurp human nature by breathing some divinity into it then claiming it as “Truth,” as the word of god. Jesus is trying to reverse this. To me, that is what makes him god-like.

Ada: I find it hard to believe that a loving god would give a disease or a disability to someone based on their sins. Forgiveness is for the benefit of the soul, not for the benefit of the body.

Chris: As a nurse, I sometimes imagine what would happen if some of the sick people in the bible were brought into my clinic.We would run tests to find out what is truly physically wrong with the patient. Jesus undoubtedly knew what was wrong with them, but he had to deal with the perceptions and perspective of his contemporary audience. He did not directly fight the perception that sin causes illness, but he worked subtly to change their worldview and lead them to a new understanding.

There is no doubt that stress is physically damaging, and guilt feelings from sin can cause stress. But this does not validate the perception that, as a matter of course, “sin causes sickness.”

Alice: The Israelites learned early on that breaking god’s law led to exile, so Deuteronomy would agree with their experience. The knowledge of good and evil enabled god to teach us that evil is wrong. It is good to know when one is being or has been or is about to be evil. It is good to recognize our sins as sins when they occur, though not everyone acknowledges their sins and their need for forgiveness, as was the case with some of the people in the passages quoted. Jesus came to lift from our shoulders the burden of sin, whether we acknowledge it or not. This is why he said that people who think they see are in fact blind, while people who acknowledge their blindness can indeed see.

Fosea (visitor from Egypt): We certainly need forgiveness.

Kiran: Would Jesus repeat the sort of events depicted in the passages quoted, if he were to return to Earth today? If he did, would it impress us enough to follow him? In his day, sickness was seen as a curse from god, so the act of healing demonstrated that god was here to heal, not to destroy. That was a radical idea, back then. Today, we would associate the sickness of those he heals with a physical rather than a divine cause. I suspect he would be more likely to focus on the GLBT community since lifestyle rather than sickness are perceived by society as originating in sin. He still wants to demonstrate that god is a loving god who rejects no-one.

Veronika: But Jesus died for our sins. He didn’t just get sick for our sins. What bigger statement could he have made? Today, we view rapists and murderers and paedophiles as sinners but in fact we share their sin. We do not want to admit that we all have the capacity to be such sinners. Perhaps the Pharisees were thinking that they too could be like sick people, so they sought to differentiate them as sinners unlike themselves, as we do with murderers etc.

Don: The powerful message in the Richard Rohr book on the Twelve Step Program for addicts, which Veronika shared with us last week, is that we are all addicts of something, whether it is to alcohol or to our jobs or to ourselves.

Michael: If Jesus and his contemporary audience knew that to be healed must mean to be forgiven, then all he needed to do was to heal—he did not need specifically to forgive. So why?

David: As Kiran indicated, today we know that sickness has a physical cause, not a divine one. Even stress is a physical phenomenon, whose mechanism is well known and can be adjusted with Prozac to reduce or remove the stress. So again, I am skeptical of the veracity of these particular gospel stories.

Alice: It is logical to think that people who do not believe in a link between sickness and sin healthier than those who do. Yet I think it is a blessing to believe in the link.

David: That would imply that if we forgive ourselves, then we heal ourselves. I can accept that at the spiritual or psychological level, but not the physical. Yet the bible insists on it. Even Jesus is reported to have told one sick sinner that his (the sinner’s) sickness came from the devil.

Harry: The magic of the bible is that its stories have meaning that can change the heart. It is a pathway to god, despite its contradictions. It is not meant to be taken literally.

Robin: These are just examples of the trillions of ways in which god has helped people. We have to keep in mind that the point of the lamb of god who takes away the sin of the world is that there will come a point in time when we put on our immortality, where god heals everyone, and where illness and sin and temptaion will not exist.

Michael: Whether or not there is scientific evidence, my gut tells me that there might sometimes, in some cases, be a link between forgiveness and physical healing.

David: When Dr. Weaver heals a patient of cancer, does that mean the patient has been forgiven for some sin?

Alice: No, we get spiritual healing from god, and spiritual healing can have an effect on the body. The physical healing might be temporary, but the spiritual healing is permanent.

David: I am sure that is true in some cases, but I am also sure that there are people who are not healed even after seeking and receiving god’s forgiveness, and knowing that they have received it through the unmistakable feeling of grace. Grace is not medicine for the body, but to me, these passages pretty much say that it is, and that makes them deceptive and dangerous.

Alice: One’s relationship with god is personal, and my heart is transparent to god.

Kiran: There is such a thing as the placebo effect.

Don: As Chris said, these passages were made in the context of a different worldview, and if Jesus were to return he might do or say things differently.

Veronika: I think Jesus is here today and is healing us all the time.

Alice: That is faith.

Fosea: Job was perfect, but Satan visited evil on him. Job still sought god’s forgiveness, and he received an answer from god.

Don: We’ll pursue this further.

* * *