Lesson from cancer #1 (of 2): July 13, 2008


Some time back I saw a review of a blog series by John Piper, Don't Waste Your Cancer. At the time I was healthy. A few years earlier I had lost my mom to colon cancer, and I really didn't want to see this scourge as anything that could be thought of as positive. The word "hate" is still pretty close to how I feel about the disease. In fact, now that I have it, I feel even more strongly than I did before. I don't like the idea of asking, "So what have you learned from your cancer?" Nevertheless, after 6 months of coughing, weakness, pain, fear, isolation, and the like, I can distill two significant points that continue to demand my consideration. I present the first of these lessons here.

Update One reader posted this article by Tony Snow , posted in Christianity Today a year ago. His thoughts are pretty impressive.

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The first point involves questions about how God fits into all of this. There are a lot of viewpoints to choose from. John Piper says to view cancer as a gift from God. I really, really don't like seeing things that way, my Calvinisitic theology notwithstanding. In fact, as a father and husband, I find the view repugnant. I would not wish cancer on anyone, even people I don't like. That's not quite on the level of "love your enemies," but it's a step. On the flip side, those of a charismatic/pentecostal background might instead suggest that I trust God for a miraculous healing. Because I am in a quasi-cessationist environment a lot of the time, I typically just say that "God does stuff - and if not, why I am wasting my time here?" This usually diffuses arguments about the miraculous by putting the focus on the character of God rather than on hotly debated Bible passages. That is to say, I find myself in the place of the leper in Matthew 8: "Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean." Unfortunately, as I approach 6 months since the initial discovery of my tumor, it's hard to proceed to the next verse "I am willing ..."

I am certainly not the first person to face this quandary and its many facets. Over the past few months my family and I have regularly prayed to ask God to take away the cancer. However, as we do, many thoughts enter my mind:
- If I had been born 100 years ago, I would already be dead: chemotherapy was not a problem. I ought to be grateful for what I have.
- There are many people suffering chronic pain and illness for for longer than I have, and with better strength and attitude. Wimp.
- There are many people suffering for their faith, imprisoned, tortured, killed, neglected, who I barely even give a passing thought. What right do I have to ask for help while they remain alone and apparently forgotten?
- Those chemical exhausts from the lab downstairs at work probably did something to you. This is the natural outcome of being exposed to toxic waste. You brought this on yourself.

In other words, somehow in my mind, I don't think I deserve God's care in this matter, not beyond the statistical mortality rates in the medical literature. I've been able to rationalize this viewpoint by considering the writings of Paul (now David) Yonggi Cho, a Pentecostal pastor in Korea. He writes in one of his books of how he was hospitalized for a time. His church, active in prayer, effective in healing the sick, etc., prayed for him continually, yet he did not receive a miraculous healing. However, he brought the gospel message to the people he met in the hospital, and many were converted. He concluded that God's highest priority was souls. In my thoughts, then, I almost wear a badge of honor that "hey, I can do that too!" Well, not so much. Not yet anyway. I had a few "spiritualish" conversations from time to time, but nothing that would say, "Look at him! He's making good use of his cancer!" In all honesty, I don't really want to: I just want to get better, but that takes me back to "I don't think I deserve it."

One of the Christian leaders who formed a big part of my background is John Wimber, who passed away in the late 90's. During the early 80's and into the 90's, he made divine healing and power encounters a part of normal Christian conversation. While he had many detractors, especially in the cessationist part of the Christian community, in my view he dealt with the miraculous, with divine healing, with the reality "God does stuff" in a way that was genuine with theological and intellectual integrity. There was no flamboyant "man of God" talk, nor the disgusting appeals for lots of money. He was a teacher, turning people to pursue Christ wholeheartedly, and he practiced what he preached. Based on his teaching, I have come to view the miraculous aspects of Christianity to be related to our relationship to Christ in the same way that hot dogs and bologna are related to sirloin steak: they are the readily available by-products of the primary focus.

I had thought that, prior to his death, John Wimber was suffering from cancer, so I tried to find some article on the web regarding how he faced his illness. Ironically, I didn't find anything on the web, but I picked up my copy of his book, Power Healing, and started to read the preface, "A personal note." There he writes of his health concerns of the 1980's: a possibly damaged, overstressed heart, and the likelihood that he would die if he did not change his over-committed lifestyle. He writes

My doctor told me that I needed to control my blood pressure by taking medication and reducing my salt intake, to begin walking daily, and to lose weight. Furthermore, he said that if I went on living at the pace at which I had been living for years (in 1985 alone I was away from home for over forty weeks), I would most likely die from the results of stress. I complied with all of his directions.

But in my heart I did not comply with God's direction that I seek him for healing. People prayed for me, but I lacked faith to receive divine healing. These words may sound strange, but I in fact found it difficult to receive divine healing. Why? Because all of my life I have been a compulsive person, always working and eating more than I should, and I felt it was just that my body had started to break down. In other words, I felt subconsciously that I deserved my condition and that to pray for healing was to pray against what I deserved. I had eliminated the possibility of God's forgiveness and grace for healing in my life. This also meant that I found it easier to hear and follow doctors' orders than to receive healing prayer, because I felt the medical treatment and regimen were discipline for my wrongdoing.

There was nothing rational or reasonable about the way I felt and believed.

As odd as it is, I find it comforting that a man whose ministry was such an inspiration to me and to so many others would also have this same roadblock in his own thinking. It is important to recognize that his emphasis is not on the divine healing itself: it is that he had, in his own thoughts, judged himself unworthy of God's grace and forgiveness. This, in point of fact, is exactly where I am, and it is the first key lesson I draw from this experience. During my suffering these past few months, God has made clear to me his love and yet I have limited it in the sense that I can trust him to give me a humble, simple home after I die - maybe some jello and salad from time to time while the really important people get to be really close to him. That's not only irrational, it's flat wrong. As Cho writes in his books, God has no favorite children.

Wimber concludes his personal note with the first lesson I want to take from this experience: As you read these pages [of Power Healing] I urge you to seek not formulas and methods for gaining a temporary reprieve from sickness and death; I urge you to seek the Lord and Lifegiver himself, Jesus Christ. That way, regardless of the visible results, your prayers will always have power for healing.

For the sake of length, I'll write about lesson 2, "Take one day at a time," tomorrow. Oh, rats, that's almost contradictory, isn't it. Oh well.

Thank you for reading.

Posted: Sun - July 13, 2008 at 07:23 AM           | |

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