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A good God who doesn’t always heal? – Bradley Jersak

In A More Christlike God, I describe the self-revelation of God in Christ, who is self-giving, radically forgiving, and co-suffering Love. That image of God is cruciform, uncontrolling, but still deeply caring.

So how do we hang onto the image of God as a loving heavenly Parent when (1) Jesus told us to pray with boldness and faith, but (2) many of those prayers seem to go unanswered? What gives?
What follows is a dialogue with a friend about these complex and difficult issues:

AF: Hi Bradley:

I have a nagging subject that I found myself questioning a lot.

You wrote about it in this article:
https://www.ptm.org/qr-if-god-isnt-controlling-what-about-prayer-healing-miracles-brad-jersak
I like your book A More Christlike God and I agree to a great extend of what your saying.

But my background, like your own, is from the charismatic evangelical ditch and now when I see people close to me in pain and suffering from sickness etc, I have a hard time to cope with the fact that God actually performs miracles in the world.

BJ: Yes. And maybe that’s exactly the place to start. No agenda for signs or proofs or glitter or ego. The foundation of any healing work of any type should be the same as Jesus: “moved with compassion…” 
The reality is that there is so much pain and suffering in this world, afflictions of every sort, some of which include sicknesses, syndromes, and disabilities that derive from so many sources (genetics, environment, diet, lifestyle, bacteria, and viruses) and of so many types (physical, mental, emotional, spiritual — some incidental, some chronic, some fatal). To me, the sheer volume of suffering is overwhelming and has, at times, exceeded my capacity for compassion and left me in grief. 
Maybe grief is the next order of business. Grieving the reality of the human condition is not simply a hopeless and helpless response. It’s the groaning cry of intercession that can give us perspective. What perspective? To give us discernment to help where we can, to pray where we can, to love where we can, mindful that are not saviors so that we don’t create more harm through codependency. 
Because God is love, (1) God doesn’t control but (2) God does care and invites us to bring our cares to the throne of grace, asking for wholeness and healing, for patient endurance where we don’t see healing, for peace and for strength in whatever role we’re given. 

AF: At the end of the article, you wrote:

If God answers such a prayer, it is only because (1) Love is the highest law and (2) God saw, in that prayer, a willing human partner. God may respond to our prayers through very normal means or through highly unusual ways. But here’s the thing: my prayers don’t control how God will answer. I read of Jesus’ invitation to come to his Father with a bold ask, but I cannot presume to make demands of God as if God were my personal genie. When we do, I suspect that it is WE who want control… we want a tiny god who submits to our control.

Rather, I offer up my requests, raw and uncensored (like the Psalmist), and I leave the outcome and the people involved in God’s care. God’s care is always wiser and more mysterious than my diagnosis or my desire for control. But just as I can’t presume what God must do, I have also stopped limiting what God can do. With God, all things are possible, so I take Paul’s exhortation seriously: “Pray about everything.” 
AF: I can see your view of God as not controlling. But I know that people from my church and the charismatic movement would front with a lot of Bible verses talking about “pressing in,” like the widow and the unjust judge. And Jesus said, “Knock, and the door will open.” He also said, “Ask your Father in Heaven for anything, in my name, and it will be given to you.” And so on… 

What about all those verses?

BJ: First, I think it’s exactly right to return to the Gospels, to the very words of Jesus, where we see an invitation to prayers of persistent knocking, bold asking, and a reminder that God is a good Father. Believe me, I lean on these all the time. I pray with them in mind. That’s not the problem. The problem for me is what these prayers come to mean when, for example, a full third of my former congregation was comprised of people with disabilities in full-time care – rows of precious people in wheelchairs, others with Down Syndrome, many with severe autism, and beyond that, people with the full-range of addictions, and a general membership for whom the death-rate is eventually 100%.

The hardcore pressing-in charismatics had a way of showing up with enthusiasm, hitting a wall of discouragement, and then abandoning us in disillusionment because they concluded that either God didn’t answer or that we didn’t have enough faith. Either God or we failed to meet their expectations of the faith and the outcomes implied in those texts. But those of us who stuck around for 20 years were faced with questions: Do we stop caring? No. Do we stop praying? No. How do we care and pray when the quadriplegic from birth or the baby convulsing with a high fever aren’t miraculously made well? How do we respond when someone with three decades of daily grand mal seizures is healed … but ten others are not?

Same as above. We offer up our requests and trust God to hear and to act. What else can you do? Demand? Tried that. Despair? Did that. But what’s clear to me is that faith is not about working up psychological adrenaline to believe the impossible. It is more like putting the person in God’s caring arms and staying there with them regardless of how God acts or doesn’t.

AF:  And how can we actually balance the view of a God that loves people and is there in the midst of our pain and suffering with the view of a God that chooses some to be miraculously healed from cancer, whose legs grew out, blind that will see and so on… and still we know people that love God passionately, have people praying for them fervently and still… they wither away, and nothing changes for them. That really upsets me, actually, and I don’t really know what to make of it.

BJ: Yes. This is a mystery. These are the groans of grief that we come to see as prayers that always touch the heart of God, even if they rarely (to be brutally honest) generate the miracle cures to which we attach ourselves. I don’t know if balance is the right word for what we need. We ask, seek, knock, believing that God is a good Father, then we wait, watch, and weep with joy or sorrow as life plays out (and finally ends… I speak with the authority of a loved one in palliative care today).

AF: I believe in miracles; I believe in a good and loving God. I believe he wills for everyone to live a good and healthy life. And I believe he doesn’t control us. But if some people get a miracle, and some simply don’t? Then, is the conclusion that God actually favors some people over others? 

BJ: No.

AF: Or can some prayers be worth more to him?

BJ: No.

AF: Or can some prayers affect the miracle more?

BJ: I don’t know. Jesus affirms the faith of a good number of people in the Gospels. James speaks of the fervent prayer that is powerful and effective. Jesus calls for us to ask, seek, and knock. Jesus even promises that the Father will answer faithfully. And when the miracle doesn’t come, then what? Here are a few conclusions I’ve come to after a lifetime (literally from my mother’s lap):
No matter what, when nothing makes sense, and God is not healing what it seems a good Father would heal, either God is not good after all or God is good no matter what. Faith, for me, has led me to say, “God is good. Period. God cares. Period.” And this was not contrived. It was just a conviction that remained after the steamroller of life came through. I can’t explain it. But I trust it’s true, knowing also that the alternative is unthinkable.
Second, when God doesn’t seem to answer as we hoped, my mom said, “Then we commit it to the Lord,” meaning we put the person or situation into God’s loving hands and we both (1) leave them there, and (2) keeping bringing them there as often as we need to.
And third, when we see unrelieved affliction, we associate that with the truth that in Christ, God suffers with the one who suffers, with everyone who suffers, and Christ suffers what they suffer because his union with them is permanent and complete… and as low as they go, he will be there in co-suffering love so that ultimately, as high as he rises, he will exalt them in resurrection glory.

AF: Is it actually a matter of “having enough faith” for a miracle to happen? (Like I’ve been taught throughout my youth in charismatic churches). Or is it just a gamble who gets the lucky shot? 

BJ: “Enough faith.” How has that worked for us? Regarding the psychology of faith and our errors in that, maybe the story of Elijah and the prophets of Baal should tell us enough.
But healing and miracles… yes, that does feel very random (and again, very rare). Life is that way. Sickness is that way. Suffering is that way. In the great cosmic bus crash, people like me got much better seats in the bus than those who go face-first through the windshield and are maimed. Go figure. What if these are accidents of birth, of breeding, of geography, of timing? So here is a hard saying: Life is random, but God is not arbitrary. God is love. Consistently. So why not just restore everyone and everything? HE WILL. “Behold, I am making all things new.” Slow and messy as love, but ultimately and inevitably, the restoration of all things and all people is the only outcome for a good, merciful and just God, where through Christ, God is all in all. And that’s just what is promised (see the end of Ephesians 1).

AF: Sorry for my rambling, but these thoughts really get to me. And I can’t see anywhere that you have answered these questions straight up. And maybe you don’t have an answer either. That we should all just rely on the higher ways of God, and so on. And sure, I can buy that.

BJ: Well, these are the big questions, and I don’t have answers, but I do have convictions, tears, and prayers. I don’t like to default to ‘higher ways’ without a struggle, but I also know when I’m above my pay grade. May God bless us both in the struggle.
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Brad Jersak

Bradley Jersak is an author and teacher based in Abbotsford, BC. He serves as a reader and monastery preacher at All Saints of North America Orthodox Monastery. Read More