Hi there,
For many years (17) I have been a strongly practicing Christian. My faith was unwaivering, for the most part, and I was more than just a 'pew-warmer' every Sunday. I preached on a few occasions and led home Bible studies. My wife and children have always followed suit. And then a time came when I took my faith to unprecedented levels, even for me, and started to believe God for more than what the average Christian puts his/her faith out for. That was when the whole deck of cards started to come crashing down.
It started with the question of evolution. I vehemently opposed it and supported creationism absolutely. I had a David Attenborough D.V.D in my possession explaining and endorsing evolution which I didn't watch for 18 months because I was fearful of its content. Then one day I put it on. And I wept when I saw it. The emotion that came over me as a 35 year old man was weird. I was dealing with the beauty of evolution and its trappings and the fact that I felt I had been lied to for so many years by pastors, christians, etc. all at the same time. I oppose creationism now with more might than I ever opposed evolution.
Which led me to scrutinize the Bible a little more closely. I am shocked at the amount of error it has. And yet Christians are forever rationalising that error; trying to make a square peg fit in a round hole as it were. Then I stumbled upon your website which poses the very questions, albeit in a different format, that have troubled me over many years. God's healing, or lack of it. You're right, the Bible is unambiguously clear on the promise of healing and yet I have never witnessed it in a way that confirms it as true. And yet so many Christians pussy-foot around the rationale that maybe this is all wrong.
To end, let me share this experience with you which I feel proves a point which I'll make at the end. At the school where I teach, a certain boy drowned in a pool (not a student of ours but a random, unsupervised visitor). While the paramedics and the family of the boy were all there, I decided it was time to exercise our faith. I pulled a certain colleague aside, a strong Christian, and suggested to him that we pray for God to resurrect this boy from the dead. This was not a cynical move on my part, merely an exercise of faith and scripture. This particular colleague was in, but his caution to me was that we show sensitivity to the family and pray 'around a corner', in private as it were. Of course the boy remained dead and we went our separate ways. But I was troubled by this colleague. I felt that if he really believed in the miraculous like he said he did then his caution would not have been there. Who would want to show sensitivity to people who you believe are about to receive the greatest gift ever?! Here's my point: even the devout, strong Christian believers (most of them anyway) don't really believe in miracles, and dare I say God. They just don't know that they don't believe. I bet if one could subject a whole lot of Christians to hypnosis (!) the results would be alarming as to what they actually believe. By the way, this colleague was subsequently made an elder in our church; go figure!
Chat later,
[name]
