Thinking about healing

As I have posted about giving I have been pretty careful to point out that Jesus did not ask us to do more than we can do, especially as individuals. He healed the sick, but he only instructed us to visit them.

I still can't help but think about how much more healing could happen than does.

Things like the lame being able to walk and the blind having their sight restored sound like they require miracles, but modern medicine has given us miraculous things. There are cochlear implants and prosthetics and I have seen devices that allow people with greatly diminished sight to be able to see. If the devices aren't as easily wearable as Geordi's visor on Star Trek: The Next Generation, for someone who has not been able to see it is still pretty cool. Cancer is often still deadly, but great strides have been made.

There is so much that can be healed that isn't.

That sounds like it is about access to health care. It is, but it is not exclusively that either.

Pfizer recently decided to end research into new medications for Alzheimer's and Parkinson's treatments. As a business decision it is probably reasonable, assuming that they can have more success with other types of drugs, especially for chronic conditions that strike younger people.

I can get that, and I can also know that this is just one drug company and there are others out there, but it was still devastating to hear. I want a cure for Alzheimer's for than anything. That is kind of self-interest, except I also realize that even if someone found better treatments, based on the time it would take my mother would probably not benefit. Still, Knowing that other people will be affected, and that it is horrible, and knowing people who have Parkinson's and wishing better for them too, I think it's terrible.

There are ways of getting funded. Sometimes I will see people on television shows, and because someone wrote in and the story sounded good, that person gets free treatment, and maybe a nice resort stay, or something, because now we have seen them and we want good things for them. That has included new mobility devices, or surgeries, or even psychological treatment.

Sometimes you don't end up on television, but there is a crowdfunding page, and enough people with good hearts see it and it works out. That is great too, but most medical crowdfunding efforts don't meet their goal. Often the people who do the best are those who have better resources anyway.

That's not just for individual treatment, but this also comes into play for medical research. The Ice Bucket Challenge raised a lot of money for ALS, because it got a lot of attention. It may have done that in some negative ways, and there was a lot of criticism, but it went viral.

Viral. To get donations for a disease, a fundraising method needed to work like a disease: is that the best way of deciding what we care about?

For so many of those examples, we can meet the needs if we care about them and we can care about them if we see them, but as followers of Christ, shouldn't we be proactively looking? Should we be leaving decisions about who gets to be well to corporate greed and shameless grabs for attention?

Christ healed miraculously, and that is hot always in our grasp. The miracle of us turning our hearts to each other and deciding that we want good things for each other is. We can do it.

If we want to.

Thinking about power

I recently read Pathologies of Power by Paul Farmer. Working to provide health care in places where poverty is rife, he has often found decisions made based on "practical" considerations, that were often unfair. For example, you could deciding against treating certain populations because they are unlikely to be compliant with the regimen, making it a judgment on their character, despite it often being more of a matter of resources.

It is hard for a large family in a small two room dwelling to isolate the sick from the well. If treatment requires clean water and adequate nutrition when there is access to neither, it is unlikely to be successful.

On one level, a compassionate person might feel bad about that and throw up their hands, or they might try and find a way to improve water sanitation and food donations.

On another level, you can look at the causes. In one of the cases, many people had been surviving as farmers, not rich but doing all right. Then a dam was built to generate electricity, and it flooded their land, sending some to worse land and others to the cities looking for menial jobs where they were at a high risk for different diseases, that they would then have trouble treating.

Someone made money off of their displacement. That was probably someone who already had money.

I'd like to think that hydroelectric power doesn't have to be evil, but it has a tendency to displace people a lot, and take away their sources of sustenance and income, except it is only for some people. We are good at deciding that some people have to sacrifice for the greater good.

Sacrificing for good is a reasonable concept, but we should look carefully at the balance of sacrifice and benefit. Are the people who will suffer being compensated? Beyond that, are they being cared for in a way that they are not permanently set behind? Is it all being done to consolidate the riches of someone who already has them?

The book focused on disease a lot, but as much as doctors look at the pathologies of the diseases, actual solutions requires looking at the pathology of society: the pathologies of power.

I mention the compliance issue because if the greed of the powerful is a disease, then the key to weakening our immune systems has been a focus on deciding that rich people have worked hard and poor people are lazy, and they all deserve what they have.

It works well, so apparently it is logical, but it has never and never will be Christian.

No follower of Christ should ever fall for it.

Trying to be a better person

I don't doubt that at least for some it might feel like I am beating a dead horse: "You're still going on about Matthew 25?" Yes.

What I hope to do now is bring it all together, and then there could be lots of posts on how to accomplish different things, but those may not get very far, and the reason for that is important too.

So let's recap: The parable of the sheep and the goats tells us to...

• Feed the hungry
• Give drink to the thirsty
• Take in strangers
• Clothe the naked
• Visit the sick
• Visit those in prison

The proof of being the Messiah that Jesus offered to John's disciples, as foretold by Isaiah, are...

• The gospel is preached to the poor
• The broken-hearted are healed
• Deliverance is preached to the captives
• Those bruised are set at liberty
• The lame walk
• The lepers are cleansed
• The deaf hear
• The dead are raised up.
• The blind receive their sight.

I think it's worth noting that the first and last items in the second list are mentioned in both passages (Matthew 11 and Luke 4). Certainly there can be more metaphorical interpretations of blindness being healed, and both types of healing were an important part of the Savior's ministry.

The the gospel was preached to the poor was a line that stuck out to me and made me go back and look it up, but the thing I can't help noticing now is that if we are truly conscientious about doing the things mentioned in Matthew 25, we are making it easier for the poor to hear the gospel. We are moving them away from being poor, to where we are all just equal. Everyone should be better able to hear the gospel then.

So I want to go back to what the King said to those on his right hand at the time of the separation:

"Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world:" Matthew 25:34

I am becoming increasingly aware of large inequities in the world, and ways to heal them that would be very doable if everyone cooperates. I am also becoming increasingly aware of the chasm within that "if". I am not optimistic about changing the world.

However, if some minds and hearts can be changed so that they are more fit for the kingdom, so that they will fit in better and not be miserable in that type of environment, then that has value. It has value for them spiritually, and it can at least lead to pockets of good around them as they at least try to accomplish what they can. It does open up vulnerability to heartbreak, but it opens up room for a lot of joy and inspiration too. 

Because I do believe that He is coming back, and it is quite clear from the scriptures that even among those who are supposed to be followers and see themselves as followers, that half really aren't.

We talk about charity a lot, and people can think of examples, but it is still far too easy to claim some allegiance to Christianity without seeing all of the ways that we fail as Christians.

I want to get into specifics on these basic things, and they will show a lot of institutional evil that is accepted. 

It would be lovely if lots of people will read it, agree that things don't have to be this way, and we make the world a better place. A more likely reaction for many church-goers will be an initial resistance. No, that will make people lazy, or won't be safe, or there will be something wrong with it.

But then maybe they will stop and think about it more deeply, and get their own insights. If no temporal good comes out of it, at least some spiritual good could.

And I kind of hate that. I hate that we can be so much better and do so much good and that we don't. I hate how powerless I feel. 

Despite that, maybe I will find things to do. I have done some things -- they pale against the need, but still, I have.

Mainly, though, that should be the dilemma of a follower of Christ: not being able to do enough versus losing the sense of what should be done.

I do not claim to have perfect knowledge of it, but that is the thing that weighs on me. That is what I ponder. So I have to live according to my conscience, even if it converts no one but me.

Building the kingdom

When John the Baptist was in prison, he sent disciples to Jesus to ask if Jesus was the one they were waiting for (the Messiah).

There is some speculation on why John did that, because his testimony when he baptized Jesus seemed pretty definitive, but maybe those disciples needed to know. They got to see many healings and miracles in the course of a day, but I want to focus on the answer after that.

Matthew 11:
4 Jesus answered and said unto them, Go and shew John again those things which ye do hear and see:

5 The blind receive their sight, and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have the gospel preached to them.

This was a fulfillment of prophecy. Both Psalms 146:8 and Isaiah 42:7 refer to the healing aspects, like the eyes of the blind being opened and the lame being able to walk.

Neither of those verses mentioned the gospel being preached to the poor, but that gets referenced when Jesus preaches in Nazareth, where he quotes the beginning of Isaiah 61:

Luke 4:18
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised,

As it is, Jesus did all of that and continues to do it. We may not see as much of the physical healing now as in other dispensations, but it happens and will happen again. Certainly, modern medicine is capable of doing a lot more than it does, with a lot of its failure being due to money.

Maybe that is why the gospel being preached to the poor resonated with me so much.

When I was a missionary, it always felt like the gospel was the answer to every problem. Later on as I started trying to help people with eating disorders and depression, who were often suicidal... it's not that I never mentioned anything religious, but that usually wasn't what was needed in the moment. There were whole other levels that they needed to go through before the nature of God or modern day revelation could be helpful.

That didn't take away anything from my faith, but I got more of a concept of the foundations that we are built on. Most of them had at least three Adverse Childhood Experiences, and there were things that needed to be undone before they could be redone.

In a world where everyone tried to be like Jesus, I'd like to think that they wouldn't have had so many horrifying encounters with abuse, but people do misrepresent Jesus a lot, so there may need to be some caveats in place. As it was, some of them had been damaged by things related to Christianity, so approaching through that direction could not be immediately helpful.

I suppose that's why I have been thinking of this in relation to Maslow's hierarchy of needs, though looking at abuse makes it more complex. Like, if esteem is so badly damaged that it leads to self-harm and self-starvation, now things are working backwards.

I still find the model useful, because it is hard to deal with emotional and spiritual needs when the physical necessities of life are in question.

And that's really what I am leading up to: to successfully preach the gospel to the poor, the poor have to be fed. They have to be educated.They have to be in a good enough place that they can meaningfully absorb the gospel.

Jesus could do that. He eased physical suffering and fed multitudes. They apparently had a treasury where things could be given to the poor. The rich were instructed or inspired to give to the poor, and if not everyone was as reluctant as the rich young ruler or as enthusiastic as Zacchaeus, there were probably many people who did better than they would have without him.

I know we can't do everything he can do, but we can feed more people than we do, and provide more medical care, and create a better world.

That is where things started getting harder to explain when I started writing about the parable of the sheep and the goats: we can definitely do this thing, but we could probably do this thing too, and if we can do it, shouldn't we try?

We cannot complete the building of the Kingdom of God on Earth, but we should be working toward it, and that would involve doing the things he would do. Doing them imperfectly, but still doing them.

That's what followers of Christ do.

I will work toward a world of comfort and freedom and health and knowledge. There is so much in even those small verses that we have plenty to do.