No So Cohesive Thoughts on Terri Schiavo and Word of Faith Teachers

Today is the fourth anniversary of the death of Terri Schiavo.  I don't really know what to say about it, except that I guess I just wanted to acknowledge it. 

TerriSchiavo

I miss her, this stranger.  I miss praying for her.

Four years ago, a real woman's life was taken from her under guise of compassion and alleged choice.  She was not brain dead.  Though living with a profound cognitive disability, she was not completely void of cognitive awareness (a 'vegetable' being the derogatory term), although, that would not have made her any less of a person nor any less worthy of care had she been.

We have a terrible fear of acquiring a severe disability, and we have a terrible fear of those with severe and profound disabilities.  Until that fear is resolved, the prejudice that leads to institutionalization and this kind of murder will not end.

Before we blame the secular bioethicists and the 'liberal media', though, perhaps we who call ourselves Christians should look at our own ungodly reactions to people like Terri Schiavo, that is to people who are experiencing pain and suffering.

Frederick K.C. Price of Crenshaw Christian Center:

We don't allow sickness in our home." (Frederick K.C. Price, Is Healing for All? (Tulsa: Harrison House, 1979), 20

 ... how can you glorify God in your body, when it doesn't function right? How can you glorify God? How can He get glory when your body doesn't even work? ... What makes you think the Holy Ghost wants to live inside a body where He can't see out through the windows and He can't hear with the ears? What makes you think the Holy Spirit wants to live inside of a physical body where the limbs and the organs and the cells do not function right? ... And what makes you think He wants to live in a temple where He can't see out of the eyes, and He can't walk with the feet, and He can't move with the hand? ... The only eyes that he has that are in the earth realm are the eyes that are in the body. If He can't see out of them then God's gonna be limited he's not going to be helped...” applause (Frederick K.C. Price, “Is God Glorified Through Sickness?” (Los Angeles: Crenshaw Christian Center, n.d.), audiotape #FP605)

In John 5 we read about a man who had been sick for 38 years sitting by the pool of Bethesda for the opportunity to climb into the pool after an angel had stirred it and be healed.  When Jesus asked him, "Do you want to be healed?" vs 6), the man replied, ""Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, and while I am going another steps down before me." (vs 7) After that, verses 8-9 say, Jesus said to him, "Get up, take up your bed, and walk." And at once the man was healed, and he took up his bed and walked.

That's basically all these verses say about this man's healing.  However, both Joel Osteen, who often makes claim to the idea that being healed is one's own responsibility by believing a certain way, in his book, Your Best Life Now and Joyce Meyer in her book, Eight Ways to Keep the Devil Under Your Feet claim that this man lay around the pool feeling sorry for himself and making excuses.  Says Osteen:

If you're serious about being well, if you really want to be made physically and emotionally whole, you must get up and get moving with your life.  No more lying around feeling sorry for yourself."

Says Meyer:

I would think that after thirty-eight years, a diligent, determined person could have crawled over to the edge of that pool.  Even if that man had only moved an inch a year, it seems that in thirty-eight years, he ought to have been able to get close enough to the edge to just roll over into the water when it was stirred up."

And here is where fear and prejudice of disability seem to come through in Meyer's words:

Thirty eight years is a long time to lie somewhere, waiting for somebody to do something for you.  I would have been on the edge of the that pool, and next year when the angel came around, when that water started bubbling, I would have fallen in and said, 'Either I'm going to get healed or I'm going to die, but I'm not staying like this'" (emphasis mine)"

And dare we forget Todd Bentley?  Bentley spent the summer parading people with illnesses and disabilities on stage, either physically assaulting them or telling stories about how he had physically assaulted people at other times, mocking them, and proclaiming miracles for them, though not one single miracle could be verified by the secular media.  (Go to YouTube, search for Todd Bentley, and watch the videos for yourself.)

These are just a very few examples of well known Christians' 'appreciation' for suffering.  This is sad.

Thankfully, they do not represent all of us.

I read these words today in Andrew Comisky's book, Pursuing Sexual Wholeness:

 

Pursing Sexual Wholeness

In this lifetime Jesus does not intend to satisfy very craving of the soul, to remove every weakness.  For our deep longings are for Him above all else.  That longing within us is not merely the result of personal brokenness or the influence of family and friends: it's intrinsic to our status as the created, as children disposed to grow upward to the Creator, through His love. Our fallenness highlights the folly of attempting to secure ourselves on the earth, through the creature.  The Father employs the aches and longings that remain to keep us focused on Himself. 

But His purposes don't end there.  He desires to employ that which has yet to be healed as an avenue of His grace.  Through the wounds and deprivations  that He indwells, God creates in us a deep wellsring of compassion- His heart- toward others who are broken.  He graces us and intends to use us to grace others." 

Though Comisky is speaking to those who struggle with sexual brokeness, the same can be said for all Christians who want their best life now and expect bodily perfection and wordly prosperity.  We are all broken.  This brokeness forces us to find our strengh and sufficiency in Him.  We then, in turn, offer the same undeserved mercy and grace God offers to us to others, to people like Terri Schiavo, caring for and protecting their life.

It's the way of the Cross.  It's the way of Christ.