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Reflections on Health and Money Concerning financial well being: 1. The blessings of the Old Testament 2. The teaching of the Old Testament prophets 4. The teaching of the letters
When God spoke the world into existence, the Maker created a world of perfect harmony, where each part functioned properly and beautifully. He was fully present there and “walked in the garden.” But for love to be real, a choice was given. The serpent entered, and Adam and Eve chose to love themselves more than God—the harmony was lost. They were forced out of the garden. Humanity became cursed instead of blessed. They abdicated their rightful place as co-regents. However, God promised Eve that one day her descendant would be struck on the heel but then would crush the serpent’s head. This statement anticipates the cross, the resurrection, and the return of Jesus. For at the cross, the power of sin was broken; at the resurrection, death was broken; and at Jesus’ return, the entire world will be made new and the effects of the Fall will be entirely healed. Echoing the language of Genesis 3, Revelation 22:3 asserts that when believers enter heaven “No longer will there be any curse.” Only in heaven are the curses of Genesis 3 fully removed, are the effects of the Fall fully removed. But the world we live in, the air we breathe, the food we eat, our minds, our bodies our spirits—all that we are—is tainted by their rebellion and how each one of us re-enacts in that primordial rebellion in our own moral failures. Poverty, poor health, disease, sickness, moral failure—all these flow out of the ubiquity of sin. Thus, the fundamental human problem is that sin—our intentional, moral rebellion against our Maker—has created an enormous chasm between human beings and the infinite-personal God. Sin has marred, tainted, damaged, and nearly destroyed human beings and the world we live in. And this horror is the reality each of us faces every day. Only the propitiatory death of Christ on the cross and the value that the Maker places on this sacrifice enables this gulf to be removed and human beings to have the hope that they might become fully human, released from the corrosive power of sin. But in this life only a substantial healing from the effects of the fall can be expected; Jesus’ return—and only his triumphant return—will signal the complete and total healing of the earth and its inhabitants. The flow of Paul’s argument in Romans 1-8 and the entire panoply of biblical history indicates this truth—that complete healing ONLY comes when Jesus returns. To believe anything more—that complete healing, renewal, and full restoration can come in this life—or anything less—that we should expect no healing in this life—is to be beyond the bounds of the New Testament. And since this matter relates to our salvation, it is something that we cannot waver on; we cannot agree to disagree. There is too much at risk to compromise this important biblical teaching. Our separation from God is the basic human problem that all other woes stem from. And in this life—for the believer and the non-believer—there will be struggle with sin, disease, economic inequity. To believe otherwise is to ignore or to severely twist what all of Scripture teaches. By keeping the reality of the Fall and sin in view, let us examine two important areas that sometimes are misunderstood by Christians: physical health and money. God is concerned about our physical health. We are instructed not to do things that damage our bodies, the temple of the Holy Spirit. We are told to care for ourselves and to pray that the sick will be healed. Sickness and disease are a product of the Fall and sometimes God intervenes and heals. Sometimes he does not. His thoughts are not our thoughts and we can’t always understand why God does what he does. But God’s ultimate desire for us is not just that we will be healthy but that we will be free from the power and influence of sin so that we can be in full relationship with him. The removal of all sickness and disease that will come when Jesus returns is a by-product of the removal of the presence of sin. Romans 8 shows how we all look forward to the “redemption of our bodies,” and in the same chapter Paul discusses how many terrible things may happen to believers but that those things can’t separate them from Christ’s love. Sickness will come but it does not have the power to separate us from God. But the unfortunate truth is that until our bodies are resurrected, we will get sick. Only in heaven will all tears and pain and suffering be gone. When Jesus was on earth, the Lord was certainly a healer of the body. He healed many. But he didn’t heal everyone. If it were truly God’s desire to take away all our sickness now, why did Jesus not heal everyone? Though he had the power and ability to heal all diseases, he actually spent only a small part of his ministry in physical healing and performing miracles. He clearly indicated that the miracles were a sign of his divinity and not a panacea for all our ills (John 20:31). He even sometimes grew frustrated that people came to him only to see a miracle instead of to listen to his teachings. His primary message was that of repentance and predicting the coming of the kingdom. His major concern was calling Israel to look to him for a new way of life—where the law found fulfillment. But in that call, he stressed how it required sacrifice, giving up self-centered life, denial of self. He warned that it would not be easy to follow him. Though the Twelve were given the power to perform miracles, it did not mean that their lives would be free from difficulty or pain. According to church tradition—except for John—they all ended up being executed. As for Paul, the Scripture tells us that he had some kind of apparent physical ailment (the thorn in his flesh) of which God never healed him. Paul also asserts that he knows what it is to be in need and to have plenty, to enjoy the good life but also to endure unbelievable hardship (Timothy also had some problem with his stomach and repeated illnesses. Apparently, God did not heal him of this physical problem. Surely these people of great faith would have been healed if total healing were intended for us in this life. But they were not healed. They had to learn to face their pain in the presence of the cross and learn to be faithful in the pain. They knew, though, that one day, the pain would be taken away. The Scripture never guarantees physical health. We may pray for it, and if God in his infinite wisdom chooses to give it, we thank him but it is in no way attached to the level of one’s faith or one’s willingness to believe that God can heal. If it were truth that one’s faith determined whether or not one would be healed, Paul and Timothy apparently had little faith. This notion that healing comes to those of the right faith also turns God into a being who can be controlled and manipulated by human beings, that somehow God would be dependent on the whims of human beings instead of the other way around. But God does not have to obey us—we have to obey him no matter what happens in our lives—whether we have sickness or health. So when we do become sick, we must see this sickness as a product of the Fall, but we cannot know why we are sick. It may just be God’s natural laws working themselves out. It may be we did something sinful (like getting drunk) and now we are sick because of the natural consequences of a sinful decision. It may be a time of testing for us. But we simply can’t make those determinations. We must recognize that we are sick, pray for healing and ask others to pray the same (James 5:14-16), seek appropriate medical attention as Paul directed Timothy (1 Timothy 5:23), and be faithful to God no matter how bad the sickness becomes (like with Job, also see James 1:12). And Jesus’ own words tell us how important it is that we care for the sick, not tell them that they aren’t sick (Matthew 25:36). In every way we are to affirm the reality of the Fall and the reality of the substantial healing we are to have in this life and live in hope of the complete healing in the life to come. In truth, the Bible speaks very little about healing the body. The Scripture’s main concern is dealing with sin and restoring the believer to a full relationship with God in the community of faith. And when this relationship receives substantial healing, blessings come in other areas of life as well. Below find a quote written by a Christian who does not understand the biblical view of health and disease. Their theology does not understand the Fall nor that complete healing only comes when Jesus returns (1 Corinthians 15:50-58 and Revelation 22:1-5)). ______ God's
Prescription for Divine Health http://www.kcm.org/studycenter/articles/health_healing/prescription.html There is a medicine so powerful it can cure every sickness and disease known to man. It has no dangerous side effects. It is safe even in massive doses. And when taken daily according to directions, it can prevent illness altogether and keep you in vibrant health. Does that sound too good to be true? It's not. I can testify to you by the Word of God and by my own experience that such a supernatural medicine exists. Even more importantly, it is available to you every moment of every day. You don't have to call your doctor to get it. You don't even have to drive to the pharmacy. All you must do is reach for your Bible, open to Proverbs 4:20-24 and follow the instructions you find there: "My son, attend to my words; incline thine ear unto my sayings. Let them not depart from thine eyes; keep them in the midst of thine heart. For they are life unto those that find them, and health (Hebrew: medicine) to all their flesh. Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life. Put away from thee a froward mouth, and perverse lips put far from thee." As simple as they might sound, those four verses contain the supernatural prescription to divine health. It's a powerful prescription that will work for anyone who will put it to work. _____ This teaching misappropriates Proverbs 4. Proverbs is not an American-style how-to book. It’s simply to be read as a book of wisdom and not as a book of formulas for the exact, specific way to live life. To try to turn one of the proverbs into a direction manual is to ignore the kind of literature it is and tells us more about the person who is misreading the passage than about the passage itself. According to the teaching above, if I have enough faith, God will have to do what I want him to do. There is no room left for God to be God if some external law requires that God heal human beings. Healing depends on God. That external law would then become God. In this article, a promise is made that if one follows a certain pattern of thinking and reading the Bible, one can be healed of all physical, psychological and other kinds of illnesses. Apparently, Paul and Timothy were not able to do this so I’m not sure why I should believe that I would be able to do it. But what happens when one isn’t healed? The only appropriate deduction is that you didn’t follow the pattern correctly; you did not think the right way or read the Scripture in the right way. A cycle is thus created which can only lead to frustration and guilt if the person isn’t healed. Since the Bible no where promises complete physical healing, we know that for many it will not come. Imagine how destructive this can be to someone spiritually if they are not healed even if they think the “right” way and pray the prescribed way. One can also see how easily this teaching could be interpreted as to mean that one should not seek appropriate medical attention, that somehow seeking medical attention is a sign of not having enough faith. Paul’s instructions to Timothy clearly show that seeking medical attention is wholly spiritual. We are not expected to believe that God will heal us of every sickness and should avoid medical treatment. God’s power can be displayed in many ways—through a miracle or through the wisdom he places in people’s minds to discover medicines and to develop medical treatment to treat disease. We are made in the image of God with an intellect to discover and reign over the physical universe. To deny that truth and to reject appropriate medical treatment is not a sign of lack of faith but instead is to invalidate the reality that we are made in the image of God. In both Isaiah 53:5 and 1 Peter 2:24, the Scripture teaches that we are healed by the wounds of Christ. In this poetic image, the theologically complex truth of the Atonement is captured in a paradox—that through wounds come healing. But the Scripture never indicates that this is physical healing. The context of 1 Peter is not about physical healing—it’s about dying to sin and living for Christ. It is a gross abuse of this text to insist that it relates to physical healing. Since sin is the primary source of human problems, more than anything we need healed from sin and its effect on us. When we come to faith in Christ, we are initially healed of the separation sin has caused between our Maker and us. And in this life, the Holy Spirit helps us to be healed of much of sins effect on our spirit, our mind, and possibly even our body. The Bible describes this process as a tree growing yielding fruit; it is a slow process, not an instant miracle. As we bring our lives under the teachings of Jesus, change will come in every area of our lives. But in this life we cannot expect a complete healing. Te healing of sin’s effect on the body is not promised until Christ returns. It is only in Revelation, in John’s description of heaven, where we see every tear wiped away, where every disease is gone, where we once again may eat freely from the tree of Life. Only at the return of Christ will our perishable bodies be replaced by the imperishable. Only then can we expect complete healing of the body. Concerning financial well being: I borrow here from an article by Paul Prill to offer a Christian view of wealth: 1. The blessings of the Old Testament Does God promise the Israelites wealth? Absolutely. God had promised to Abraham, a promise renewed to Isaac and Jacob, that God would take Abraham to a land flowing with milk and honey and give it to Abraham’s descendants. That God would make of Abraham a great nation and through that nation would bless the world. The first thing to notice here is that God has chosen to act through a nation, a physical entity with geographic boundaries. Obviously this nation will need land if it is to be a nation. On several occasions, God threatens to destroy that nation for their disobedience, and each time Moses intervenes. His argument is simple, what will the other nations say about Jehovah, that he led them out of Egypt but either could not protect them or did not love them? What other nations would submit to Jehovah under those circumstances? Only by giving them a land and making them strong and prosperous could God demonstrate within the constraints of human history to the ancient Near East that He was God above all gods. The question is whether those same promises apply to the church. The writer of Hebrews opens by claiming that Jesus supplants all of the Old Testament prophets. The entire letter/sermon is one comparison after another to demonstrate Jesus’ superiority to every element of the Old Testament system (to the angels, to Moses, to Melchizedek, to the sacrificial system, to the Levitical priesthood, to the temple). Jesus did not come to establish a nation, and clearly says so to Pilate, “My kingdom is not of this world.” When he commissions his disciples, he scatters them into all of Judea during his life and into all the world just prior to his resurrection. His notion is that the church will be a great diaspora of resident aliens, people who live in a particular locality, but whose citizenship is in heaven. (Phil. 3). The use of the Old Testament to describe the life of the church, while appropriate in many places, breaks down at this point. We are not a nation in the secular sense. We do not need a land. If we cannot make an analogy with the old covenant on this point of wealth, then we must look at the rest of the teachings of Scripture for guidance about the biblical view of wealth. 2. The teaching of the Old Testament prophets In Micah 6:1-8, God calls the nation of Israel to trial. The accusation is simple. God accuses Israel of having a short memory. They have forgotten what God had done for them in the past. (As an interesting side note here, God had, through Moses, warned them of this very thing in Deuteronomy. In chapter 8, God has Moses say, one day in the future as you look at the things you have which you had no hand in developing [herds, houses, vineyards, fields], don’t ever say, “Look at what my own hands have done” and forget that it all came from the hand of God.) They protest, “We come to worship at the proscribed times. We make the prescribed sacrifices. We sing songs and pray prayers and do so from the heart. We have not forgotten.” God says, “What does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” Micah prophesies at the same time as Isaiah and Amos. Please see especially Amos 5:21-24 and Isaiah 58:3-7. What is remarkable about all of this is that many of the people of God are wealthy at the time that these prophecies are uttered. Amos will call the rich women of Israel “cows of Bashan” for their excessive lifestyle, indulging themselves while the poor go hungry. This, of course, does not say that we should not be rich. It could say that we should use riches generously to relieve the suffering of others. One televangelist, Jim Bakker, said in a TV interview, “God wouldn’t want me living in a pile of junk.” He and his wife owned three large houses, in North Carolina, in Florida and in California. What did Amos call the wealthy women of Israel? Cows. Self-indulgent, hypocritical, cows, oblivious to the suffering of the people who worked in their houses. The prophets are clear: wealth is to be used to promote justice and to help the poor. Jesus has many interesting things to say about money. First of all, consider Lazarus and the rich man (Luke 16). Lazarus went to heaven because he was faithful. Yet here on earth, he was a pauper, and a pretty sick one at that, the dogs coming to lick his sores. How did that happen? Interestingly enough, this is the second parable about money in this chapter in Luke. Earlier Jesus tells a story about a steward who has been caught embezzling, and concludes with the statement “You cannot serve God and Money.” Even more interesting is what Luke adds, “The Pharisees, who loved money, were sneering at Jesus.” And Jesus responds, “You are the ones who justify yourselves in the eyes of men, but God knows your hearts. What is highly valued among men is detestable in God’s sight.” Presumably here, as determined by the context, is this love of money, this desire to be rich and thus be seen as highly spiritual in the religious community of which they were a part. In Mark 10, Jesus encounters a young man who wants to know the answer to a fundamental question, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” What does Jesus tell him? Just believe and under the anointing of the Holy Ghost say, “Money come to me”? No. Jesus tells him to go and sell everything that he owns, give it to the poor (Micah’s notion of justice) and then he will be ready to be Jesus’ disciple. The remarkable thing is the man is a righteous man. When Jesus tells him to keep the commandments and the man says he has done so all of his life, Jesus doesn’t challenge him like he will challenge the Pharisees and scribes in Matthew 23. He doesn’t call the man a liar. It would seem that this man is the embodiment of Deuteronomy, rich because of his obedience, yet Jesus asks him to become poor. To add to the importance of this passage, Jesus turns to his disciples and says, “How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of heaven.” What an odd thing for the Savior to say if he wants his disciples, or at least those who are men and women of faith, to be rich. Some of Jesus’ words have been misread concerning money. In John 10, if one reads to the end of that passage about the relationship of the sheep and the shepherd and what the shepherd has come to do, Jesus says to the Jews gathered round him, in words echoing verses 1-16, “My sheep listen to my voice; I know them and they follow me. I give them eternal life and they shall never perish; no one can snatch them out of my hand.” This hardly sounds like material wealth beyond measure. Likewise in Luke 6, the context is not money but judging others. Are you harsh in your judgment? Jesus implies. Then you will receive double the harshness when you are judged. Are you merciful? Do you forgive? Then you shall receive your good measure. This passage has nothing to do with money. What about Jesus’ disciples? Where is their wealth? Their large homes and fancy chariots? When he sends them out he tells them to take nothing with them, and depend on the hospitality of the people whose towns they visit. Why doesn’t he breathe the Holy Spirit on them and say, “All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth. Now take all the wealth of the pagans away from them. Why does Paul say “I know what it is to be in need” and “I have learned to be content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want” (Philippians 4:12-13), why does he have to pray “take this thorn in the flesh away from me” (2 Corinthians 12:7-8) only to hear God say, “No.” Either we have to say that Paul lacks faith, an odd claim to make, or that he doesn’t know this secret, another odd claim to make, or he knows that his life as an itinerant tent-making evangelist/apostle is supposed to be this way. He refuses to see God as a bankomat, providing whatever he wants. He learns that God will be present with him regardless of the material conditions, economic or physical health in his life, that when he is weak, he is strong because God is strong in him (2 Corinthians 12:10). Jesus’ teaching is clear: “Do not store up treasure for yourselves on earth, where most and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But sotre up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure, there your heart will be also” (Matthew 6:19-21). 4. The teaching of the letters Since it would take too much time to look at every passage, I will pick two representative passages which are indicative of what is written in all the letters. No passages contradict these statements. In 1 Timothy 6, Paul makes an interesting statement: “If we have food and clothing (hardly wealth) we will be content with that. People who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge men into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil. Some people eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs” (v. 8-10). There is here no condemnation of money exactly, but the clear teaching of Scripture, from Deuteronomy where the people forget that God gave them wealth through Micah, Isaiah and Amos, to Jesus and now to Paul is that the tendency of people of faith is to become corrupted by riches. God may choose to grant them, but we should not be actively seeking them. Again it is odd that Paul, the one who by his own admission receives so many incredible revelations from God, would not have received the teaching that God has provided a way for his followers to be financially successful. James has the same view of wealth. He chides the believing community to which he is writing because they show favoritism to the rich, offering them the best seats in the assembly. “Has not God chosen those who are poor in the eyes of the world to be rich in faith and to inherit the kingdom he promised to those who love him?” (James 2:5) How can this be? Clearly James is talking about economic conditions. Nowhere in his letter does he say that the kingdom of God has any material manifestations of unbelievable wealth coming to the faithful. In fact, at the close of the letter he writes, “Now listen, you rich people, weep and wail because of the misery that is coming on you. Your wealth has rotted and moths have eaten your clothes. Your gold and silver are corroded. Their corrosion will testify against you and eat your flesh like fire. You have hoarded wealth in the last days” (5:1-3), the same images Jesus used in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 6. He had already added, “You have insulted the poor.” The context for James is the worship assembly, men and women singing earnestly and enthusiastically from the heart, lifting holy hands to God, but to no avail. God will not accept the sacrifice of the lips where the life is not committed to seeing his justice done. This notion of Christian thinking has never taken hold before in the entire history of Christianity. In fact, until the 18th century, most of the teaching about possessions was to a kind of Christian asceticism, born perhaps from the fact that life was already hard, that there was not an overabundance of wealth to go around. For T. Jackson Lears (historian) and Christopher Lasch (sociologist), America began as a genuine attempt to practice faith outside of religious persecution and to create a faith-based political community. The views on wealth were that God did bless some people, but that those people had great responsibility to the communities of which they were a part. One can read this in embryo in John Winthrop’s speech “A Modell of Christian Charity.” But by the 18th century, the forces of secularization were already present. Ben Franklin writes of frugality in Poor Richard’s Almanac as a way to accumulate wealth, but the religious trappings and the consequent Christian responsibilities are absent in Franklin’s writings. Wealth is an issue only for the individual. By the end of the 19th century and in the early 20th century, Jesus had been transformed into a great supporter of capitalism of the egregious wealth which some families were accumulating. And about this time, one finds the rise of the positivity thinkers, Dale Carnegie and Norman Vincent Peale. Often eliminating the harsher elements of Christianity, the need for repentance, and the need for justice, they focused on how Christianity could improve an individual’s personal sense of well-being, of personal happiness. Lears especially notes the ways in which Jesus’s statements about wealth in the gospels is often more and more omitted as the personal wealth of church goers increases. The health and wealth gospel (the idea that God wants to financially bless his followers) is a direct descendent of these trends in American culture. As westerners have gotten richer and more self-indulgent, the theology has followed to make all this seem like the blessing of God on western faith and worship. This teaching is now being exported all around the world through mass media and the internet. From the beginning of Christianity, there have been rich and poor believers. The early church Fathers grappled on several occasions with issues of money and its role in the life of the church. The history of Catholicism with its simony, indulgences, taxes, and outright bribery in some cases should serve to confirm the fact that when believers start thinking that God wants them to be rich that there is as Paul says and as Amos confirms a great trap which causes many if not most to go astray. As people struggled to understand how, in the face of growing world wealth and materialism, they should deal with the issue of money, most came to a more balanced position, accepting that God never intended for all of his people to be rich, but that all of us were called upon to be generous with our time and resources, because Christ, who became poor for our sakes, made us spiritually rich so that we could be rich in good deeds. Any teaching that deviates from this long-standing Christian teaching should cause us to take a long look at it before embracing its ideas. Is wealth wrong? Hardly. Jesus had followers who were apparently wealthy enough to house him and his disciples (Mary, Martha and Lazarus). There were women who supported his ministry, since he would have some expenses as an itinerant rabbi. Joseph of Aritmethia donated a tomb. In the days after the ascension, differences in wealth continued. At Corinth some Christians were wealthier than others. Paul appeals to the Corinthians to give generously since they are currently wealthy to assist the saints in Jerusalem. (This presents another interesting problem for those who believe God wants to make Christians wealthy. Why is the Jerusalem church, the home of many of the apostles and of some of the deacons who were described in Acts 6 as men full of the Holy Spirit, in need of a contribution if they would have known how to receive financial blessings from God? Why was there a need to ask the Macedonian church who have out of their poverty to give to the Jerusalem Christians (2 Corinthians 8:1-4)? The Jerusalem church prayed Peter out of jail (Acts 12). Surely they could have done this.) No, wealth is not wrong. But, “Give me neither poverty nor riches, but give me only my daily bread [Sounds like something Jesus might say] Otherwise I may have too much and disown you and say, “Who is the LORD?” Or I may become poor and steal, and so dishonor the name of my God.” Proverbs 30:8-9 (end of Dr. Prill’s comments). Some Christians believe that the Scripture offers a way to material blessing and that God wants to make Christians prosper financially. I want to give one example of how easily we can be deceived by something that sounds very right, very Christian. Read the following excerpt from the conclusion of a web-published article: ________ Prepare
to Prosper http://www.kcm.org/studycenter/articles/money_management/prepare_prosper.html With that foundation laid, you'll be ready to step out in faith and receive the abundance God has in store for you. Many people who have lived godly lives have failed to do that, so they've missed out on God's financial blessings. Although they've continually applied the principles of God's Word and become prime candidates for great prosperity, they've unwittingly passed it by because religious tradition has taught them that God wants them in poverty. Christians like that have great wealth in their spiritual bank account, but because they don't realize it's there, they never tap into it! Don't let that happen to you. Don't just build the foundation for prosperity and stop there. Go on and build the whole house. Dare to believe that if you'll seek first God's kingdom, His way of doing and being right, all other things (the food, the clothes, the cars, the houses, everything!) will be added to you as well. Build your foundation, then dare to believe–and you will surely prosper! __________ You can read the entire article to see this view (that God wants to financially prosper Christians and that if you do the right things in your spiritual life, the financial blessings will come) maintained throughout the entire article. This thinking is completely inconsistent with what the Bible teaches about wealth. The “all things” mentioned in the passage quoted above from the Sermon on the Mountain refers to three things in the context: clothing, food, and drink—three elements essential for life. Shelter is not mentioned nor is transportation. Only the very basic essential elements of life are mentioned. (I believe more needs to be said to truly understand Jesus’ point but certainly he is in no way promising his followers houses, transportation, or “everything” as mentioned above. His followers in the first two centuries of Christianity mostly had none of those things.) This kind of teaching literally turns God into Dyed Moroz. Here’s an example of how the idea that God wants to prosper us, to solve all our problems, at first sounds very good but further notice demonstrates how theologically bankrupt it is. ______________________ The
Might and Ministry of the Holy Spirit What would you do if Jesus appeared to you today? How would you act if He linked His arm in yours and told you that from now on, He would be physically present with you in every situation? If you became sick, He would lay His hand on you and you'd be healed. If you ran short of money, He'd pray and multiply your resources. If you encountered a problem you didn't know how to handle, He'd tell you exactly what to do. __________________________ Doesn’t this paragraph on the surface sound right? Wouldn’t Jesus take care of all our problems if he were here? But this kind of naïve thinking ignores one very important truth—Christ once was with us as a person and he wasn’t like what is described above. He didn’t solve every problem, he didn’t heal every disease for his followers, he didn’t on every occasion multiply resources. In the passage above, Christ is being repainted, refigured, redrawn as a person who desires to give us everything we think we need. He is being turned into a bankomat, a machine. In truth, though, Christ came to change our desires. He works to change us so that we will desire the things he desires—holiness, love, joy. He simply didn’t do what the passage says he would do. And thus the rest of the argument is false because it stands on a completely wrong premise. We must be very careful to “test every spirit” and make sure that what is being said is truly what the entire Bible attests to—not simply one verse, one story, one reference. What does the entire Bible show to be true about these topics? Selective reading of Scripture can lead to almost any conclusion. We must look at the entire biblical witness and read every Scripture in its context.
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