I can't tell you how many times I've said to God. "How about just once when I go to the bed side of a sick and dying person and pray in Jesus name they are actually healed immediatly?" The resurrection is the way that most Christians justify the person getting sicker and sicker and dying. Of course the resurrection is a form of healing in which one's body is restored to its perfect and healed state. But I believe that's not proper biblical exegesis. Just once in the many times I've done those prayers for people I want them to jump out of bed and say "God touched me and I'm healed let's go home". Now I'm not a cynic, and I have plenty of testimonies about answers to healing prayers. It happens all the time. I'm just saying its always been long distance for me and the success rate percentages are usually much less than 50 percent.
If God were real, healings would happen like you desire them to. If prayers were answered, people would jump out of bed screaming God touched them. And guess what? God would have a LOT more believers, including me. The fact that it does not happen like you want it to, is not evidence that it works differently than you think. It is evidence that he is not up there in the first place. Your entire post is just your mind doing mental gymnastics to make up an excuse for God's ineptitude. You are trying to fit a square peg into a round hole, all the while the truth is staring you in the face. Square pegs don't fit in round holes, no matter how much you try to excuse them for it.
Sick people get better and worse all the time. The fact that someone was being prayed for does not mean that they were healed from the prayer, anymore than a person who rubs peanut butter on an open wound and finds it miraculously healed the next week can say that the peanut butter was the reason for the healing. There is no statistical advantage to being prayed for. None. Also, isn't it a bit egotistical to ask God to heal someone, when it was God who
allowed them to have their problem in the first place? If you think God can heal someone, and you know God sees all things, then you can safely assume that God knew that person was going to get sick in the first place, right? And the fact that he did nothing to stop it means that it is God's will that the person gets sick. Why would God listen to your prayer if it was his will that allowed the person to get sick in the first place? God stood by and did nothing while the person GOT sick. Why do you think he would want to fix it, if he didn't step in already to stop it? Isn't your prayer just asking God to change his mind to suit yourself? Why would a perfect God EVER need to change his mind to suit OUR wishes? Oh the ego.
So here is what I have determined from reading scriptures and how it is applied to today's world. The power of miraculous healing is not designed to be a health care plan for Christians. Besides, I've heard of God healing unbelievers at times of other healing miracles happening to all kinds of people. God's miraculous healing is not a way to undo all the damage we do to our own bodies and our environment on a general basis. Are people healed who have lived a sinful and self damaging life? Of course some are but its certainly not the majority of the time. And it doesn't mean that if you aren't healed that your somehow less of a person or that you necessarily are lacking in faith.
The scriptures are man made books. They are not from God. You should read some biblical history to get a real feel for what early Christianity was like, and how much of the original scriptures we actually have. Anyway... you are just proving my point here. Look at what you are doing. You are trying to explain why there is no advantage (in terms of healing) to being a believer. You RECOGNIZE this, yet you can't see where it really leads you. Believers and unbelievers get better and worse all the time. Hell, even the pope has health problems. People who lead a sinful life are healed just as much as people who don't. There is no benefit (in terms of healing) between being a Christian, a Muslim, a Hindu or an atheist. Stop trying to rationalize it. Square peg, round hole. By FAR the better explanation is... all gods are fake. The world makes MUCH more sense from a healing perspective if this is true.
So the question is: What is the reason for God healing if it isn't simply to make people healthy for their own sake. The answer according to the scriptures is very clear. The healing powers (and other miracles) of Jesus Christ and its application for today is to give clear evidence of the authority of Jesus Christ as to who he said he was and who we believe him to be. God in the flesh and the creator and author of all things. Its not about us, its about who God is and God's authority. To look at it any other way is sinful and selfish of us. Healing is not a perk for being a Christian.
God doesn't heal people. People heal people. Medicine heals people. Prayer gives no statistical advantage. Jesus had no healing powers. He was a man. A wise and interesting man. A Jewish, apocalyptic preacher. That's it. If God is the author of all things, as you say, then he is the author of cancer, Alzheimer's, starvation, disease, plagues, and all sorts of fun loving things. He deserves as much blame for the bad things as he deserves credit for fixing them. In your book, he should get credit for all of it. You won't say that though. I am sure "sin and the fall of man" will creep into it, but is it really
just for God to punish ALL men for the sins of our ancestors? Would you like to be punished for something your great-great-great grandmother did? No, that's just stupid. I don't blame God for a single thing, because the whole thing is fake, and you KNOW it makes more sense logically to think that way. If you take your religion out of the equation, you don't need to make your excuses. The world looks as if there is no God. People get sick and healed as if there were no God. You just can't see it. Faith has blinded you to the much simpler answer.
What I'm about to say is something most people don't want to acknowledge because its too hard for them to swallow. If you look into it most of the greatest strides forward of Christianity in the world have come not because somebody was healed, but because somebody was martyred. And some of the greatest testimonies of conversions have come from unbelievers who watched a Christian get sicker and sicker and die and do it with peace, assurance of what happens next, and even complete peace in their hearts. Also people accept Christ many times because they run across those who not only have something to live for but something they are willing to die for also. The greatest expansion to Christianity in the early days of the church was not the apostles going from city to city healing and preaching the "Good News" for that was only the seeds being planted. The biggest expansion of Christianity came about because of the forums in which Christians were fed to the lions. We don't want to think about that because so many people want Christianity to be a premium life and health care plan when it isn't.
So you are saying death and suffering and being fed to lions led people TOWARD God? That these things are good things. I'm sorry, but you can keep that to yourself. I would never, ever want to be part of something where the most powerful being in the universe can't find something better than suffering and death to spread his word. Think about what you are saying here. This is the mentality that drives planes into buildings. Martyrdom holds a lot of power because people think to themselves, "well if that person is willing to die for their belief, then they must be right." Could God not come up with a better system of spreading his word more rapidly than feeding his biggest fans to the lions? Please... use your head. Can you think of any other religions where people are willing to die for their God? A better question might be, can you think of any religions where people will NOT give up their lives in defense of it? Willingness to die for a belief in a god does NOT mean that the particular god is real. It only equates to a deeper delusion.
People accept Christ for hundreds of reasons. Sometimes they have a traumatic event in their life. Sometimes they start dating someone religious who leads them that direction. Sometimes they just want to think there is a heaven. MANY times it is because they were born into a specific region with a specific religion with religious parents who indoctrinated them, and nobody ever told them both sides of the coin. But these reasons are the same for every religion ever invented by man. Christianity is no different. You don't have the monopoly on this stuff. All religions have these same problems you have. Why do people suffer and die? In your God driven universe, you have to come up with (really poor) excuses to explain this. Don't think it's a poor excuse? Original sin is probably the dumbest idea to explain suffering ever invented. All of humanity punished horribly over thousands of years because the first 2 fools ate an apple, when they were told not to? Laughable. Without God, suffering is a natural part of life. We are an imperfect animal species on an ever changing planet. Sometimes we suffer, sometimes we don't. No need for the gymnastics.
It's all fake. All of it. You don't have to struggle with the questions you have if you just simply acknowledge the fact that the world really looks like there is no God in play. You do this with every other God ever invented by man. So do I. Why can't you see that the same reasons you and I both dismiss the other Gods are the same reasons I dismiss yours?
