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I want to add a pastor's perspective to the situation making the front page of the newspaper lately.
I know the community is saddened when a 10-year-old girl dies. We grieve with the parents, Wesley and Laronda Hamm, who will face charges for child endangerment because they refused to seek medical attention for their daughter, Jessica.
They are members of the Church of the Firstborn, a rather independent group of religious people here in the Tulare area who don't use "man-made medicines," but instead believe in "living Bible faith." (Quotes from articles in the
Advance-Register).
Then Lena Lawrence adds a letter to the editor that concludes this way: "Religion seems to hinge so much more on muddled mind games than common sense." She makes the same error the Church of the Firstborn does: dividing what should not be separated. Call it a "false dichotomy" if you will, or an "unwise split." When people take two things made to be in unity and split them apart, nothing good comes from it. And you end up in "dumb corners."
In this case, to say as Lena Lawrence does, that a person can seek either medical attention for a disease/injury (natural world) or pray to God for healing (supernatural world) without being hypocritical is plain foolishness. Who made this world? The very first verse in the Bible says, "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." The supernatural and the natural realms are ruled by God, through his son Jesus. (Hebrews 1:1-3; Colossians 1:15-17)
Who made your body? God did, says Psalms 139:13-14. Do you know that your body fights germs and disease every day, because God make it that way? God works through the natural realm, including our immune system, doctors, surgery, medicines, diet, exercise to keep his creation alive and free of disease because God loves us. And God works through supernatural means of prayer, the Holy Spirit's power in a Christian life, spiritual gifts of healing and miracles, the name of Jesus, and the Holy Bible to defeat disease and sickness when it gets beyond "natural measures."
Jesus perfectly reveals the will of God the Father in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John -- and he consistently defeats disease along with sin found in his creation. In Mark 5:42-43, when Jesus finishes raising a little 12-year-old girl who had been sick from the dead (supernatural), he urges his parents to give the girl something to eat, and cares for her natural needs. Jesus doesn't split the two natural and supernatural realms apart, and neither should we.
Both the Church of the Firstborn and Lena Lawrence would do well to drop the "false dichotomy." What God has joined together, let no one separate. Jesus uses both natural and supernatural means to defeat disease, every day, because He loves us all. He made us all. As a member of the Healing Rooms team of Tulare, I see it every week how God masters sicknesses with our immune system, medicines and doctors, as well as through prayer and the power of the Holy Spirit, who is God living in every Christian born again from above.
Pastor Tim Vink
Tulare Community Church
Source: Tulare
Advance- Register.com - Originally published Tuesday, October 21, 2003
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