Should I Take Medicine?

In yesterday's post I promised I would explain this statement: "We don't believe in ignoring a health problem just because you prayed about it." There are people out there that believe that accepting medical assistance when you have prayed for healing indicates a lack of faith in God. We don't feel that way, and I'll tell you exactly why.

Not every healing happens via an instantaneous miracle. In Mark 16:18 Jesus said that whoever believes in Him "...will lay their hands on the sick, and they will recover." Recovery from sickness is not always instant. (See yesterday's post for more on this.)

But I also don't think that every "they will recover" has to happen without medical help. I think every healing comes from God, whether you take medicine or not, because of the simple fact that doctors cannot heal people. Medicine does not heal you, and any honest doctor will tell you the same.

Let's step back for a second and think about something very simple: a paper cut. When you get a paper cut, you probably don't even wash it and put a bandage on it unless it's a pretty serious paper cut that is bleeding (does that even happen?) You don't take any medicine, and yet it heals anyway. That's because God made our bodies so that they can repair themselves given the right circumstances. That healing is very much part of the natural world, but it absolutely comes from God because He placed that mechanism in your body.

Let's say you get a deeper cut. It's bleeding, but it doesn't require going to the hospital. You wash it, put some ointment on it, and put a bandage on top of that. In a few days it is healed up completely, and probably you can't even tell that a cut ever happened. Did the ointment heal the cut? No, it did not. It mostly kept it from getting infected, but it didn't instantly knit the cells back together. Your body contains platelets, white blood cells, and other mechanisms that work together to close up the skin. The medicine didn't heal you; your body healed itself, and that healing comes from God.

When the nurse practitioner was explaining to me the various medicines that are going into my chemotherapy cocktail, she told us that one of them simply reveals the cancer cells to other cells. The way I understand it, some cancer cells can disguise themselves in such a way that the white blood cells that would normally attack and destroy those mutated cells don't see them as abnormal. This particular chemo medicine flags those cells as abnormal so the white blood cells that are already there will attack and destroy them. Once again, the healing mechanism is already present in my body; the medicine will just assist the healing process that God already created in defending my body against the invasion.

Every medicine is there for one or both of two reasons: to assist your body in healing itself, or to make you more comfortable so your body can heal itself (painkillers, anesthesia, etc.) Even the very best medicines that science has discovered cannot actually heal you. Healing always comes from God. And that's why I don't have any problem believing God for recovery while simultaneously taking advantage of the medicines that God placed in the world and allowed super smart people to discover that can also help us. They won't heal me: God will heal me.

Please, if you become very sick, pray and believe God for your healing. I hope these blog posts help you with that. But if the Holy Spirit does not specifically speak to your heart that you should not take any medicine, please prayerfully consider what modern medicine has to offer. You're not going to Hell for taking an aspirin, or getting a flu shot, or taking chemo, and you don't somehow invalidate your faith and forfeit your healing by doing those things. In fact, when this blog post goes live a few days after I wrote it, I expect to already be sitting in a chair taking my first chemo infusion, and I'll be thanking God the whole time for the skilled and caring medical staff that is treating me.

Tomorrow I'll get back to the Long Story!