Mark Miller once made a statement that has forever stuck with me: “The Bible is all true…but it does not contain all truth.” I believe you would agree with me that God gave us the ability to learn and pass on our knowledge of the world, so that we can build up wisdom through discovery. You would certainly want your brain surgeon to have gotten his education from just the Bible, and your ship captain to have some knowledge of a map, a compass, and how the ship’s engines work! God’s gift to us is a book of spiritual guidance and history, a community of people, and our ability to learn. Science is not in opposition to God, it discovers and glorifies Him when done with Him in mind!
I begin with this train of though because people often criticize the Bible for not giving more clear medical guidelines, or for often suggesting practices that cause people to lean more on faith for their healing than science. I believe that the Bible balances this approach well. As I read through the most specific laws regarding cleansing, disease, and even epidemic sickness in Leviticus and Numbers, I am reminded of a few key ideas that I wish to pass along:
The Bible’s medical guidance is often pretty advanced:
The Bible defines an authority figure, a process, and isolation for both people and buildings showing signs of dangerous contamination. Many of the animals it defines as unclean are, generally, not as good for you as the one’s it approves for the Jews to consume. Although I’m no expert on the ancient world’s medical practices, I find that these restrictions and processes are pretty advanced. Today we understand microorganisms, disease transmission, and hygiene in a way they could not. It was gracious for God to provide a law that required them to follow practices that helped them avoid the outbreak of disease. Just imagine how much more devastating a serious disease would have been in ancient times, when there were no hospitals, medications, and sanitizing agents to help control disease!
The Bible’s medical guidance is also often spiritual:
Although a disease or circumstance often had very rational origins, it is also often the timing of God that causes hardship to come upon a group of people, which is why a medical process was also almost always coupled with a spiritual act of repentance and cleansing. There are even a lot of circumstances where God did not follow conventional medical cures to solve a medical problem, showing His people that He can and will often heal them if they will heal their own hearts first, the most noteworthy example of this in is Numbers, when God chooses to have the people look upon the figure of a snake to counteract the venom of serpents who had invaded their camp and were killing people.
Balance, again, is the key. Not every sickness or circumstance should be interpreted to have spiritual origins. And every cure should couple the wisdom we have in medicine with a plea to God for healing. To isolate one from the other can often mean asking God to heal something supernaturally that He has given us knowledge to heal naturally–robbing people of their purpose and taking the significance of our accumulated wisdom He has allowed us to collect away. On the other hand, trusting doctors to cure us without asking God to intervene, and seeking anything sinful in our own lives we should take the opportunity to ask forgiveness for, robs God of the respect and opportunity to intervene personally and powerfully in our lives.
We need always keep in mind that from the first pages of Scripture, the world is broken because of humanity’s unwillingness to obey God. Plants do not grow as well as they should, all of nature is out of sync and in conflict with us, and sickness reigns where everlasting life would have existed in it’s place, because we disobeyed God and sought the knowledge of good AND evil. Sickness, disease, pain, and death are ultimately our fault, not His, but He graciously intervenes in the midst of it all to provide for us.
For those who seek God’s forgiveness, a new paradise and everlasting life is again our promise: our healing will ultimately be a reality! And, for those who walk in faith, God extends to us protection, empowerment, and resources in this life in much the same way as He sent food for Israel for 40 years in the wilderness, and kept their sandals from wearing out.
God’s Word often outpaces human knowledge.
God’s Law can be trusted and followed, even when we don’t fully understand why.
And the answer to our crisis is always faith: faith in God and faith in the ways God has allowed us to advance our knowledge for health.
Let’s lift up our hearts and minds today in prayers of faith: repenting for our sins and those of our world, asking for God’s healing, thanking Him for how much He’s allowed us to learn about treating sickness, and asking for strength and wisdom for each person who is in the medical field, working hard to help others in this specific time.
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