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Hi Brady,
The first defense, if you are Catholic, is that the Church teaches authoritatively
that sickness is sometimes a cross from the Lord, with redemptive value.
Secondly, St. Paul also testifies in the Scriptures that prayers do not always obtain healing, not
for lack of faith, but because God wishes to show his power and grace through our
weakness.
Finally, it is true that healing the sick is part of the mission of the Church (CCC
1509,
Matthew 10:8), and that the gift of healing is a work of faith. Faith opens one
to this healing.
The Church has let lie for a long time this charism of healing,
though it is now being revived.
The Church has also let lie relatively under-used
the Sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick, which I believe would be a powerful means of healing if
allowed for more than grave (life threatening) diseases. Nowadays, we walk around
with forms of life-threatening disease that people didn't know they had in past generations.
Still to teach as Hagin does, is to isolate one part of Scripture from another, and
to make the person at fault for not being healed. It presumes to know the will of
God in all cases, and that we can harness the power of God by our positive thinking,
which is a magical belief, a New Age belief (you create your own reality), and a
cruel belief.
We should, however, be quicker to ask for healing, less worried about sickness, and
completely trusting in the Lord — that He loves us and wants good for us and will
help us. If we pray with faith and trust, we can be sure that God will respond in
the best way.
There is a connection between mind and body and between soul and body, nevertheless,
that doesn't mean that the mind or soul can control the body, or that everything that
happens to the body is subject to the mind or soul.
I try to be like St. Paul when
bit by the serpent — he shook it off and kept going as if nothing had happened. God
would provide and He did, yet another time St. Paul fell ill almost to death for a
good while. He took that in stride, also, and was grateful for eventual deliverance.
Mary Ann
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