In Acts 10.38 Jesus healed everyone oppressed by the devil, not struck with illness by God.
We need to avoid a one-dimensional theology, unless there is a one-dimensional god and a one-dimensional spiritual reality that we are trying to understand. I consider that the spiritual world, and the God who created and governs it, are not less complex than the physical world and the people in it. Thus it seems much too shallow to ask: Did God do this, or did the devil? The most ancient theological document known to man even knew better than to pose such a simplistic either/or question to the complex matter of human suffering and sin. Would you say that Job's sufferings (which included loss of loved ones, loss of property and loss of health) were God's will or the devil's will? Who sent the evil spirit to King Saul? Would that be the same God who drove the spirit away when David played the harp?
Jesus went through much persecution but i don't remember him getting ill to demonstrate a lesson to the people.
Nor does it mention Him ever scratching his knee in a fall, as a toddler, nor getting a splinter or hitting his thumb with a hammer in the carpenter shop. Yet I can not find, in these omissions, some basis for a doctrine that Christians are exempt from these things. Why would God only exempt us from certain pains and sufferings and not from others? That is the question in the last paragraph of my last post (which you cited), which I was seeking to hear you answer. You did not answer any part of my question. I really would be interested in knowing what you or anyone else may give in response.
This is not a sparring match...it is a sober discussion seeking to understand sacred truths. The point is not to win an argument by rhetoric, but to eagerly cross-examine our own propositions, and those of others, which undergird our respective opinions, and to see whether they might be flawed, so that we can move forward toward a better grasp of the things of God. When boxing, it is advantageous to dodge incoming blows, and then to then seek to deliver one's own blows. In searching for truth, we do not make it our aim to win an argument by avoiding the questions that challenge our theology. We look straight on at the most challenging questions, ask honestly whether they can be answered with integrity, or whether they may serve to correct our present inadequate viewpoints. Your answer dodged my question, and presented no new light. I am under the impression that the challenges I raised in my last post are unanswerable by anyone holding your position. If I am wrong, then please answer the challenge. If I am right, then why not come over to the right side of the topic?
In the beatitudes i don't recall him mentioning illness as a blessing from God.
True. Nor did He mention gas chambers, firing squads, being fed to the lions, or being burned at the stake. All of these involve death by destruction of organ systems—just as cancer, AIDS, diabetes, Alzheimer's , etc., do. If you say that the violent deaths in the former list are all instances of being persecuted (something that Jesus did endorse and experience), but that sicknesses are not brought upon people by human malice, and therefore cannot bring glory to God, I believe you are being too narrow in your thinking. Why should persecution from the devil, in the form of sickness, not be regarded as potentially as glorifying to God as is persecution from the devil through people? If you wish to say that God has found no way to glorify Himself in the disabilities of Joni Ericson Tada or Nick Vujicic (and many other disabled saints that I have known), then you and I are looking at different realities indeed.
I acknowledge that through an illness we can come to the end of ourselves and become closer to God just as through any tribulation. However so much illness seems to be just random with no redemptive purpose that i can see.
Faith is the evidence of things not seen. I did not claim that I can see how every disaster, holocaust, plague, war, economic reversal, etc., specifically works out for the good, or how it furthers God's purposes in the lives of everyone involved. In this, you and I share common ground. Both of us can say, "so much illness
seems to be just random with no redemptive purpose
that I can see." The difference is, I can see in my lack of understanding an opportunity to trust in the character of God and in His promises. I can see in it an opportunity to glorify God in stepping forward to minister to the suffering, and even to learn the lessons of resignation to the will of God that disappointment and confusion can bring. These challenges to our faith do not only come in the form of
sickness that seems random and purposeless, but with many other disasters and crimes from which innocent victims suffer, which have no relationship to sickness.
So my challenge to someone with your viewpoint remains: Your theology apparently leaves no room for God to make use of seemingly random sickness, but it is able to accommodate equally random aggression, hatred and violent attacks on Christians by evil people? I am looking for some biblical or rational justification for such an artificial dichotomy. For example, I once suffered great discomfort when I contracted the giardia parasite from a contaminated water source. I found it most displeasing to me. But given the choice, I would choose giardia over 14 years of intermittent torture in a Communist prison. But your theology will allow me to suffer the latter, but not the former. My question remains—Why?
So many elderly parents get alzheimers and die a slow torturous death , just as painful for the children as the parents. Did God cause that to teach a lesson? How about kids who get brain cancer and die in front of their parents, another lesson from God?
You might be surprised by many of the answers you would get to this question from many of those very parents, if they were here to answer you. I know from experience that many of them would answer without hesitation that they learned the deepest lessons of their entire Christian lives while enduring the lingering illness of a child or an aged parent. God is a great economist. I am sure that He can bring many lessons out of any suffering, as well as fulfilling its purpose of testing us to see if we will remain steadfast in our faith and loyalty to Him.
I would make one clarification of what I understand to be the biblical teaching. You asked, "Did God cause that..." I am not suggesting that God is necessarily the cause of Christians' sufferings—whether it be of sickness, persecution, natural disaster, or whatever. But I am of the view that God does not always wish to remove the suffering, because of its potential to serve a larger purpose.
My mother died of tongue cancer and at the end she said she accepted whatever God's will was so possibly through the illness she drew closer to Him but do i think God gave her the cancer? No i think she got it because she had been a cigarette smoker.
I am terribly sorry for your poor mother's suffering. I am glad, however, that she found herself drawn closer to God through it. I would imagine that God, who seeks to make the most out of all things, also intended to bring you and others closer to Him through it. Unfortunately, that does not usually happen unless family and friends of the sufferer can also see (even if only by faith) God's sovereign intentions in His providences. Your mother may have gotten cancer as a result of smoking (I will take your word for it), but once she had it, the ball was in God's court. He could heal her or not, and it sounds like her faith was in Him.
There is no disaster in dying with our faith in God. In fact, Paul said that such an outcome is "far better" that an extension of life here on earth(Phil.1:23). I have always believed this, and, if I were to have a deadly illness, I would not have any compelling desire to have my life here prolonged (in fact, I do not presently have any illness, and I still have no compelling desire to have my life here prolonged). For forty years, I have longed for nothing so much as to be in the presence of Jesus. If sickness should start me sliding more quickly toward that blissful end, why would I wish for God to interfere with that?