Objection: Our Sickness, Disease and Illnesses Keep Us Dependent upon God

Dependent upon God for what, exactly?  For providing some small amount of relief for a horribly painful condition?  For just being able to make it through another day of agony?  For providing extra money because you spent everything on doctors but are no better but rather worse?  The objector is certainly not depending upon God for healing because that would take away the very things that are supposedly beneficial, being like a “refiner’s fire” in the objector’s own words.

Like many other objections, this one paints disease in a “good” light by claiming that it is actually beneficial to us.  Why then, did Jesus minister in such a way that ALL who wanted healing were healed?  If sickness were beneficial, He would have been robbing them of a chance to be “kept dependent upon God.”  Surely there would be at least one case like the following:

Mark 17:1-2:
And behold, a severe asthmatic came to Jesus looking to be healed.
And Jesus turned around and said unto him, “Your sickness is a good thing for you because it keeps you dependent upon God.  It benefits you to have to believe God just to be able to take your next breath.  You wouldn’t be nearly as dependent upon God without asthma.  Therefore, keep it and appreciate the benefits that every labored wheeze confers.”

So this objection fails The SAME Test.  If Jesus never turned away a sick person and said that the illness was actually God’s way to make him depend on God, He would never do so today.  He most certainly would not have redeemed us from the curse of the Law (Galatians 3:13), which included every sickness (Deuteronomy 28:61) if it were God’s perfect will for even ONE person to suffer from sickness to get some kind of spiritual benefit.

Plenty of sinners are horribly sick, yet somehow their maladies do not force them to suddenly become “dependent upon God.”  If this benefit fails to work for them, how could we think that it would work for believers?  From what I’ve seen, sickness only makes sinners more bitter at God, often pointing an angry finger at Him for His supposed unwillingness to heal them or His supposed “will” of “letting” a loved one die a miserable, excruciating death from sickness.  In fact, uninformed believers often react the same way.

Sickness CAN make you dependent upon medicine, doctors and hospitals, all of which are costly in many countries.  It CAN make you more dependent upon relatives or convalescent homes to take care of you.  But nothing about it makes you more dependent upon God.  In fact, if you really “depend on God,” that means that you act on His Word that declares you legally healed, and you receive the healing that He has already paid for you to have.