When we set ourselves in the place of God, judging the condition of other people’s hearts, we set ourselves up for God to knock us down.
There has always been a somewhat fringe health and wellness movement in the Church. Sometimes, that can be very good. There are excellent resources for people who want to lead healthier lives to do so within a Christian context. I do not want to blame the leaders of those excellent ministries for the shortcomings of the purveyors of snake oil that can be found in pockets of Christianity. As for the rest, their particular brand of “health and wealth” gospel takes many shapes, frequently masquerading as legitimate healing ministries.
One common thread that can be overlooked is the degree to which these so-called healing ministries attempt to blame the very people they claim to serve. Some examples, from (unfortunately) real ministries: Your weight problem stems from lack of organization in your home; your disease process has been caused by your marriage failing to live up to God’s standards for husbands and wives; your illness is the direct result of sin in your life; specific sins lead to specific health problems.
I suppose that there might be some truth in the idea that holding sin in your heart can lead to breakdown of bodily function. Certainly there is correlation (not causation) between a healthy spiritual life and positive outcomes following a hospital stay. But drawing parallels between particular sins and various diseases seems dubious at best, downright evil at worst.
There are three things wrong with this. I will cite the Biblical refutation for blaming sin for illness first. In John 9:1-3, Jesus speaks with his disciples regarding a blind man they have found:
As he went along, he saw a man blind from birth. 2 His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” “Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” said Jesus, “but this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him.” (NIV)
In Jesus’ day, at least some people would have believed this very thing—that a person’s health was bound up in either his own or his ancestral sin. Jesus lays this one to rest by assuring them that this was not so. He also effectively demonstrates that his miracles have as much to do with instruction for us as with healing an individual. In ministries that blame the victim, both of those truths are lacking.
The second problem is judgmentalism. This morning, our church had a service along with four other local congregations. The pastors of all five (total) churches delivered a great message about judgment and freedom. Our pastor gave the definition of judgmentalism as assuming you know someone else’s motives. When someone tries to make claims of personal sin as the cause of illness, that is bald judgmentalism. If one believes we are all sinners, then how does one person’s “hidden” or “unforgiven” sin cause illness, while another’s does not? Or while another’s overt sin does not? We simply do not know what is in another person’s heart. We cannot know that fear or anger or lack of submission are causing disease, because we cannot know that those are the sins someone is enslaved to.
Third, the claim that specific sins equate specific diseases can be easily refuted by reality. A few small “studies” or annecdotal evidence are not enough to prove such a claim. This becomes even more pronounced when we add in things like healing. If the root cause of (I’m making this up) peanut allergy is really the sin of resentment, then why are people not cured when they repent? Are they not praying hard enough for forgiveness? Are they not really sorry? We are promised forgiveness whenever we confess. So if that is what is needed, then why does it appear to work for some people and not others? And why are there lots and lots of people who are resentful, but not suffering from any kind of allergy at all? It becomes clear that this is no more than an attempt to control others through pseudoscience.
We need to be wary of any ministry that claims we must clean ourselves up before approaching our Heavenly Father, even if that takes the form of purging our sins before asking for healing. We also need to be wary of anything that pretends that the Bible is a medial or a science text. It isn’t, and it was never meant to be taken that way. What a gross misuse of our holy Scripture.
