For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love.
2 Peter 1v5-7 ESV
There is so much more I would like to say about the word knowledge in this passage. I’ve spent the last 3 days talking about it! Before we move on to self-control, I’d just like to write one more post on knowledge that follows on from yesterday’s one about knowing God through the study of science.
There is a dangerous belief in some Christian circles that illness, sickness and disabilities are caused by demonic activity or by sinful behaviour in a person’s life. When this is held up as the only reason that illness happens it can be a very destructive force that can ruin a person’s faith in God, and actually brings shame on God’s character. This fuels the fire of belief that Christians are anti-intellectual and anti-science. True Christianity is both intellectual and scientific, as discussed in yesterday’s post.
When church leaders preach that sickness is caused by demons, they are saying much the same thing as witch doctors do in their tribal communities. I read a biography of a missionary working in the amazon jungle who had such a hard time getting the people to use antibiotic cream during an epidemic of conjunctivitis that was spreading through the tribe.
The witch doctor was telling the people that it was caused by demons who were punishing them for believing the white man’s message.
The missionary was telling them that it was caused by a bacterial infection that could be cured by antibiotic cream.
To prove his point, he wiped an infected eye with his finger and rubbed the infection over his own eyes. He then waited until the infection was quite severe and then applied the cream to his own eyes. When the people saw that his eyes became better, they agreed to use the cream. Their eyes were healed and they began to understand that it was not demons that had caused the infection. He later brought a microscope into the tribe and let them see what viruses looked like. The stubborn witch doctor looked through the telescope at the moving viruses and declared “see, I told you it was demons”.
We can excuse someone who has no access to educational material for coming to the conclusion that viruses are demons because they are seen wriggling under a telescopic lens, but there is no excuse for people in the western world where we have free access to scientific education to come to that conclusion. Neither can we come to the conclusion that all illnesses are the result of personal sin.
God created a perfect world, where there was no sickness, disability or death. When Adam disobeyed God, perfection was shattered. A domino effect occurred that we are still seeing at work today. Bodies that were created eternal, started to decay, break down and eventually die. This is still the case. There are more known diseases and disabilities in the world today, because we are still living in a dying world. The curse that came on this world through sin has not been lifted. There are still thorns and thistles that need to be dealt with. We still have to work hard to produce crops to feed ourselves, and our bodies still get sick and die. Jesus paid the penalty to redeem us from eternal dying in hell, but until we get new bodies in Heaven, we will still get sick and die and there will still be babies born with disabilities and deformities. This is not because of specific sin, but because we live in a world that has been cursed because of sin.
Some preachers preach that there is no need for doctors and medical interventions; you just need faith. I think these preachers should read and study the origins of modern medicine and they will soon learn that it was Bible believing men and women who pioneered this area of science, bringing great relief from pain and suffering to millions of people. When missionaries first went to foreign lands, they studied medicine and took medical textbooks with them so that they could bring comfort and healing to people. This was no contradiction to their faith or their witness to the greatness and goodness of God.
Consulting a qualified doctor and taking prescribed medicines is not the act of someone who has weak faith. It is a logical thing to do. If your car breaks down and needs fixed you can sit by the road and pray for days for God to fix it, or you can phone a mechanic and get it towed to a garage for repairs.
When miraculous healings are considered the only way for Christians to gain relief from acute or chronic conditions is preached, tragedies are very likely to happen. I’ve heard of 2 cases where parents of diabetic children were encouraged to simply have faith in God for healing instead of relying on insulin, and the children died. The parents were prosecuted, their remaining children taken into care, and Christianity and the God we claim to honour, discredited and brought to shame.
Some preachers preach the opposite of faith healing and declare that we get sick because God wants us to be sick and this is His will for us. If that is true, then it would logical to conclude that consulting a doctor or taking prescribed medicine is either a sinful way of escaping God’s will, or a weakness of faith by not accepting that this is His will for you. If you believe that God wants you to be sick, just accept that you’re sick, get on with being sick and stop trying to get well!
Pursing the knowledge of God includes applying logic and scientific discoveries to our everyday lives. Faith accepts that we live in a sin cursed world. Faith accepts that our bodies get sick and die because of this. Faith accepts that God has given us great intellectual and scientific abilities to bring relief and delay dying. Faith accepts that sometimes God intervenes in a miraculous way, but most of the time He doesn’t. Faith accepts that one day this sin cursed world will be destroyed and we will be given new bodies that will never get sick, grow old or die. Faith is a very logical thing to have.
