Objection: Preaching Divine Healing Shipwrecks the Faith of Many
This objection usually goes something like this:
********************
THE DOCTRINE OF “FAITH HEALING” SHIPWRECKS YOUR FAITH
by Lorelei Felsen
John and Mary were good Christians who believed their pastor’s teaching on “receiving healing by faith.” When Mary got sick with cancer, the church encouraged her to believe that she was healed by Jesus’ stripes. She did all the right things and got medical help, but the doctors couldn’t cure her. She died. John was devastated. He reasoned that since faith for healing didn’t really work, faith for anything else didn’t really work either. He reasoned that he must not really be saved, and he couldn’t believe the Bible or trust preachers anymore. He went back into the world. He and his drinking buddies ended up starting a strip club with their meth revenue. John was just one of many whose faith was shipwrecked by the doctrine of faith healing.
Peter’s son was paralyzed in a car accident. The heartless faith people tried to tell him that it was his fault for not believing Psalm 91. Then they condemned them both for not believing in healing. There was no compassion, only judgment. Some members of the church started avoiding Peter because they were embarrassed to be around “faith that wasn’t working.” Noting their obvious lack of love, Peter and his son left the church. For a while, they avoided church altogether. Now they’re at the same non-Bible-believing fake “church” they used to attend where they aren’t even told that being born again is the only way to avoid hell and where their slogan “Come as you are, stay as you are” is painted over a rainbow. Peter and his son are still not serving God in any meaningful capacity today. The doctrine of faith healing shipwrecked their faith.
Get away from the doctrine of faith healing before it sinks your boat, too.
********************
It is ironic that people say that teaching faith shipwrecks faith when the only reference to “faith” in conjunction with “shipwrecks” is in 1 Timothy 1:19: “Holding faith, and a good conscience; which some having put away concerning faith have made shipwreck.” In other words, they did not hold to their faith and they decided to just live any old way, violating their consciences, and they shipwrecked their faith. This would indicate to me that you want to hold to faith teaching, not run away from faith teaching!
But regardless of the words used, there are people out there writing books and articles like the one above. It usually boils down to two cases, both of which are included above. The first is the man who “tries” faith healing and is disillusioned with Christianity in general when it “doesn’t work,” and the second is the man who is mistreated at a “faith church” and abandons church altogether.
The first-case scenarios always try to impress you that the people did everything “by the book” and still got nothing. I don’t know why the person died and neither do you. The writer wants you to assume that the only possible explanation is that the doctrine of faith healing is flawed and that the person did everything right. (I heard of a book that insists that a couple did everything exactly as they were told by a certain named faith teacher, but they lost their child by refusing medical help. That’s silly, because the faith teacher in question does not teach avoiding medical help. If they didn’t listen closely when it came to that, they probably weren’t listening too well to the rest of what he said.) It’s presumptuous to think that you know everything that’s in everyone’s heart. God isn’t going to reveal everything to you, either. He said Himself that the secret things belong to Him, but that which is revealed belongs to us (Deuteronomy 29:29).
However, AS ALWAYS, an argument from experience is useless when you’re discussing doctrine. I could tell you how God healed me supernaturally of an untreatable condition in my left eye that was ruining my eyesight. I simply believed I that received when I prayed, and then I held fast to my confession for almost two weeks until my healing suddenly manifested. My testimony could be used to “prove” that the doctrine of faith healing works. Testimonies of all kinds can be used to make opposing points. Why did it work for me and not for your cousin Mary? I don’t know, but I’m not going to stop believing that I receive when I pray just because your cousin Mary didn’t receive anything. Why should I stop doing something that’s working? If you want to discuss doctrine, discuss Scripture, not experience.
There are true stories like the one above. Plenty of people have left churches over this very thing. I can understand why this happens, but what are we supposed to do – undermine everyone else’s faith by preaching that healing is not for all today? This would lead to a lot more unnecessary premature deaths. Dare we take sides against Jesus when He said we could believe we receive when we pray and have what we ask for? The case of the disciples who could not cast the demon out of a boy does not prove that they could not have done so or that anything was wrong with the doctrine of casting out demons in the name of Jesus. Jesus said they could have done it and then He did it Himself. The failure of His “top guys” to believe in their authority did not negate the fact that they had that authority. Yet the “experience” objectors would cite this as proof that healing was not intended for that boy and that the disciples really didn’t have the ability to do anything. They would conclude in error that Jesus should not have taught them that impossible faith stuff.
Always remember: Experience never proves or disproves doctrine!
Now on to the second-case scenario. There are bad apples in some bushels, and I’m sure that there are “faith churches from hell” that point fingers and condemn people. As long as there are immature believers, such things will happen, and there will always be immature believers as long as people continue to get saved! Some pastors are immature, too. Not all churches get started with a divine mandate from God! Some churches start because someone in another church got offended, split the church, and dragged some of the members out to start his own new church. You’ll certainly find immature pastors at those places! Some ministers don’t have any compassion. I’ve met some! It is always sad to hear the outcomes of people’s experiences with such churches and people.
No sensible person is going to go up to someone with an injured child and say, “This wouldn’t have happened if you just believed Psalm 91, you know. Why don’t you just believe God for his healing – don’t you have any faith?” The good “faith churches” (and there are plenty of them, regardless of the picture that the opposers paint) do demonstrate compassion for the sick and injured. They not only provide spiritual support and encourage these people in faith, but they also provide natural assistance as well. The people who are embarrassed to be with anyone who stays sick more than a day after praying are those who are themselves insecure in what they believe.
If you have any acquaintances who relate stories to you like the ones above, I would not rush to any conclusions unless you check the church out personally. For some reason, people like to rush to the side of a person with a sad story of emotional abuse by a church. There is often another side to the story, and you won’t get it from them! We live in a victim-oriented society where most people just automatically take sides with an individual against an organization. Sometimes the church did abuse people emotionally, and sometimes the person who left just had an attitude problem! From what I have seen, a lot more people leave churches for the second reason than for the first.
The fact that there are sad stories like these should warn those of us who do believe in divine healing to make sure that our faith is working by love (Galatians 5:6). We do need to guard against being so lopsided on faith that we neglect love and compassion and mercy and become like the Pharisees whom Jesus rebuked! It is your responsibility to make sure that you stay balanced instead of spiritually one-sided. Your pastor is responsible for feeding you a balanced diet, too, but the buck stops with you. Don’t just listen to one preacher’s tapes or read one author’s books. Read the Bible – all of it, not just the parts that a certain faith teacher quotes a lot.
In closing, let me say that there have been plenty of “faith churches” that have been ruined, not by any problem with the teaching, but by sin! (This is true of other types of churches, too. It is not exclusive to “faith churches.”) They taught faith for healing, but they did not live their faith as far as their dominion over sin was concerned. Remember – a man’s moral failure does not invalidate his teaching. You get doctrine from Scripture, not from the moral track records of people espousing different doctrines. (Jesus said to obey the Pharisees’ teaching but not to imitate their conduct. Some of their teaching was correct, and that fact wasn’t invalidated by the fact that they sorely lacked mercy and failed to “walk the walk.”) You cannot reach a conclusion about a church’s doctrine just because of the way some of its people act.