The discussion was lively and centered around the following points: Junior doctors working in Zimbabwe’s major referral hospitals recently went on strike for better pay and improved working conditions. Pastor M Cedric, who is active in a faith ministry, made the claim that God heals all sickness and diseases if we only pray for it – which would make doctors superfluous.
God heals
Praying for and with the sick is something all Christians do. Even traditional religion is largely about driving out evil spirits to restore people’s health. Indigenous religious movements like the white-gowned, bearded Apostles, with a shepherd’s crook in hand, are attracting the sick to pray over them.
Nurses in a city hospital recently put up posters saying, “We treat our patients, God heals”. Christians have always believed that they must take care of the sick and show their love to them just as Jesus did. God uses the hands of doctors and nurses to heal the sick. Christian doctors know they are doing God’s work and nurses pray for their patients while they look after them. They welcome priests whose pastoral care goes together with their nursing care. The intelligence, ingenuity and skills of medical professionals are divine gifts for which we must be immensely grateful. Our government leaders and civil administrators are morally obliged to provide health care facilities, and indirectly they also do healing work.
Limits
Are medical workers trying to rival God? Are they showing lack of trust in the Divine Healer? Is scientific medicine human hubris and arrogance? Not necessarily. Many physicians and surgeons know full well the limits of their craft. There are surgeons who say a silent prayer when the theatre sister puts the surgical knife into their hands.
God enables and empowers. We honour him by using and developing the abilities he gives us. It is just bad theology to say God is working miracles for us so we can sit and do nothing. We don’t believe in a “god of free lunches”.
A reader wrote to a Sunday paper recently complaining bitterly about a “prophetic healer” who had persuaded his HIV-positive mother to stop taking her ARV medication, saying God will heal her through his prayer, if only she has faith. If she falls gravely ill again will she think God has abandoned her?
Just visiting the sick and comforting them is not enough, we are told. We must pray to God, so he will remove all sickness. Really all? The Church acknowledges divine intervention and healing. But we cannot force God to do our bidding.
Investigate
If there is a claim that a sick person was healed by divine intervention, the Church asks medical doctors, including agnostics, to investigate. If they find there is no scientific reason for the surprising, sudden recovery of a patient, the Church, normally inclined to be skeptical, accepts the claim.
Would it not be fair for ‘prophets’ to do the same? That would be the end of all propagandistic claims of sudden mass healings. Some of our evangelical partners in dialogue state there is no heaven (Rev 6: 14). They are concerned only about this our present existence.
But Christians must accompany their brothers and sisters also in their final hours. Death must not be a taboo. It is the door we all must go through. Medical science has developed palliative care for the terminally ill. Not even ‘prophets’ can claim that they and their clients are going to live forever. – Fr Wermter works for IMBISA, Pastoral Department, Harare/Zimbabwe
Post published in: News