Introduction
Within the local church are found persons with diverse health concerns. This may be physical, psychological, and even emotional and social. Such people long for wholeness and acceptance. It is not difficult to sight such persons in a local church that is on the cutting edge. The local church must speak to their healing situation and bring them to reconciliation. The wave of the charismatic renewal which blew over the Christian landscape in the 1960s brought with it a novel understanding of the sense of the spiritual. The powerful presence of the Holy Spirit in the life of the Christian is an understanding that accompanied the movement. Many Christians today have it that the active presence of the Holy Spirit offers them the ability to find the solution to every form of ailment and frailty that bother humankind. The Christian who struggles with the challenges is regarded as a person who does not have a good understanding of the Christian faith. It seems that a point on which this disposition and practice hang is the teaching that it was never recorded in the Bible that Jesus, the founder of the Christian faith, became indisposed hence Jesus’ followers must follow suit in demonstrating this holistic divine health in their life. The fate of Christians who battle various health concerns hangs in a balance. By careful examination of some examples from Jesus’ life and utterances, this essay departs from this philosophy and presents that, excepting his sinless nature, Jesus Christ was fully man and bore all the weaknesses of man, including the possibility of becoming unwell. It suggests a rethinking of this concept of divine health and points to the local church as the instrument that can enable the shaping of the concept of healing and reconciliation. Health has been used in the sense that World Health Organization defines it.
THE DISTORTED VIEW OF DIVINE HEALTH
Some are often of the view that once a person comes to accept Christ, divine health is imputed unto the person. This will make the person not liable for ailment. They usually proudly say that “I have never been to the hospital,” “I am problem-free,” and statements as such. Medical science, though it is pursued, is looked down upon.
Perhaps this issue of whether health is provided by the divine or medical science has been in existence for many years. It is on record that ancient Egyptian publications define scientific ways of approaching healthcare. Before this time of medical science, people pray to gods to provide health to their subjects. Then, came a time when medical science was combined with an appeal to the divine to provide a life without ailments. Due to the teachings of some church fathers such as Augustine that demons are responsible for all diseases of the Christian, medical science was looked down upon again until the enlightenment.
The Christian movement, which puts emphasis on divine healing among other spiritual experiences, revived the old practice of appealing to solely the divine to provide health. Essentially, this belief is no news to world history. This belief hangs to a large extent on the life of Jesus—albeit it is a mistake of his life—that he lived a life free of ailment. This problem calls for a reflection on the life of Jesus as one who is fully man.
CHALCEDON AND THE BIBLE: THE HUMANNESS OF JESUS
Before the Chalcedonian ecumenical council of the Church, teachings about the nature of Christ to a large extent presents Christ as divine and human though the Jews in the days of his earthly life saw him as just man, the son of Joseph and Mary. These contrasting views about Jesus eventually birth numerous arguments concerning the true nature of Jesus in the days when the West was the haven of Christianity. Popular among the controversies is that of the Arians. The Arians scratched away the divinity of Jesus and made him inferior to the Father with the argument that Jesus was the first being created by God, the Father. Consequently, the first Council of Nicaea was convened to discuss the Arianian argument. This was followed by the fourth ecumenical council which was conveyed in AD 451 after the Council of Constantinople and the Council of Ephesus. The Chalcedonian Council defined Jesus with respect to the trinity thus:
Following, then, the holy Fathers, we all unanimously teach that our Lord Jesus Christ is to us One and the same Son, the Self-same Perfect in Godhead, the Self-same Perfect in Manhood; truly God and truly Man; the Self-same of a rational soul and body; co-essential with us according to the Manhood; like us in all things, sin apart; before the ages begotten of the Father as to the Godhead, but in the last days the Self-same, for us and for our salvation born of Mary the Theotokos as to the Manhood.
It is clear from this statement of Chalcedon that Jesus is fully human. He carried the complete nature of humankind except that he is without sin. This underpins the fact that Jesus Christ bears any other weakness of humankind. To reject this is to reject the full humanness of Jesus. The Charismatics of Accra in their look upon Jesus with respect to health, place emphasis on his divinity and ignore his humanness. This remains an unsolved problem.
RETHINKING DIVINE HEALTH: THE BIBLE AND THE FRAILTY OF JESUS
Drawing on the Chalcedonian confession, the man Jesus would bear the physiology of humankind. He would need air to breathe and respire to gain energy for physical activities. He would need to eat. He would need to grow. He would be sensitive to his environment. Jesus would also need to move from one place to the other as part of the life processes of humankind. He would have to bear emotions. The list continues. The Bible bears witness to this life’s activities of Jesus.
A reading of Heb. 5: 7 reveals that Jesus is aware of his own weakness. It was recorded that, “In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and pleadings with loud cries and tears, to him who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverence.” The “flesh” mentioned connotes Jesus’ humanness. His crying shows that Jesus had fears thus he was emotional as humankind. The part of the human brain called the amygdala located in the temporal lobe that is responsible for human emotions was in full function. This calls to attention his human anatomy. He will bear all the body parts of a male human being.
So human was his body physiology that when he became hungry whilst, on his way from Bethany to Jerusalem, he looked for food on a fig tree. His unsuccessful harvest led him to command the tree not to beat fruit again (Matthew 21:18-19). With respect to his nutrition, he was accused of being a glutton and a drunkard because he “came eating and drinking” (Matthew 11:19). Being human and exposed to frailty would mean that he gets tired from his work. John 4:6 records that, “Jacob’s well was there; and Jesus, tired from the long walk, sat wearily beside the well about noontime.” The fact that he gets tired would mean that he would have to take rest to become revived. Consequently, after a long and hard day of preaching and teaching, he undoubtedly became tired and while he was en route to a place on a boat with his disciples, he fell asleep. So deep was the sleep that when a storm broke out and placed the boat and their lives in danger, Jesus was per his human nature oblivious of what was going on (Mark 4:36-38). With respect to physical growth, the Bible bears witness to the fact that “Jesus grew in wisdom and stature” (Luke 2:52).
It is too obvious that Jesus was indeed human. Being subject to human weakness would mean he may have fallen ill before. It is too weak an argument to put forward that it is recorded nowhere in the Bible that Jesus was taken ill. We can extrapolate from his other weaknesses. There are other physiological needs of any humankind and hence the physiological needs of Jesus, that were not stated directly in the Bible but can we conclude that he did not mean those needs? For instance, it was not accounted anywhere in the Bible that Jesus passed urine. But can we deny that he did not go to the gents? He takes food and water. These undergo digestion. Excess water would have to be excreted. Jesus would have had headaches or stomachaches and other ailments humankind is exposed to.
In an utterance, Jesus appealed to an axiom about a physician. He quoted, “Physician, heal yourself.” Jesus was aware of the existence of medical practice even before he was born nevertheless, he did not in any of his teachings disprove seeking healthcare from medical practitioners meanwhile issues of healing come up every now and then during his ministry. Before Christ, Hippocrates, the father of modern medicine who lived between 460-377 B.C., gave a rational explanation for disease and adopts a scientific approach to healing. Jesus rather appealed to the saying about a healthcare provider. In a parable, he told a story of a Jewish man who was attacked by bandits and left injured while on his way to Jericho from Jerusalem. A Samaritan came by and took the dying man and provided him with medical care (Luke 10:30-35). He used this story to teach about hospitality.
We must not teach that after someone is born again, the person will not be liable for ailment. Divine health essentially does not mean a Christian life is without ailments but a health that is kept by God’s strength even in weakness. Rethinking divine healing will enable Christians to bear with those who suffer and not regard such people as people who are faithless. This must be pursued in the local church.
A HEALING COMMUNITY
The local church must be positioned as a healing community. Here the wholeness that many people desire must be attained. This special niche that the local church occupies in the larger society must be pursued by all means. It is a place in which those who are heavily laden are supposed to find. The rest they find in Christ is nurtured in the local church. This does not merely make the local church a help group where people join to find acceptance, but rather, a place where the divine encounter with Christ is made tangible. It is a place where the divinity and the humanity of Christ are supposed to come home to people and be applied in everyday life.
The local church is supposed to be an organism that should facilitate easy access to people who are infirm. How the local church conceptualizes wholeness would enable this. The idea of healing must conform to the doctrine of Christ. Just as Christ did not hide his humanity, we must not pretend that we are a super breed with no frailties. The result of this would be a local church that is made of people who are smiling behind tears, which tears can be dealt with by the local church machinery standing on the power of the Gospel. The local church must create space for the infirm within the congregation. All must be welcomed and they must feel accepted indeed.
In addition to prayer for healing, the local church must intentionally employ the services of professionals such as psychologists, medical doctors, and counselors, among others, to provide therapy of various kinds to persons who will need them. This would also contribute greatly to healing. The liturgy of the local church must be designed in such a way that people are allowed to share their advice, concerns, and testimonies toward the edification of all.
CONCLUSION
This essay has shown that Christians are still exposed to frailties thus while the Pentecostal-Charismatic movement came with it a lot of good things, the movement’s divine healing perspective is found to be faulty. The view of the life of Jesus has been redirected to show that the man Jesus has human qualities indeed. The concept of divine healing is seen to be an awakening of an old idea of total reliance on the divine for healing without paying attention to medical science. The local church has a special role in tipping the balance. The local church must rise to the task of being the hub of healing and reconciliation.
Written by Dr. Stephen Ofotsu Ofoe
