10 January 2024 Mark 1:29-39
There is very little dispute that Jesus’ reputation spread because of his powerful ministry of healing. Many think that such a ministry today would have an equally powerful, if not greater effect.
But we do have such a healing ministry today. It is even bigger.
Life expectancy in the United States in 2024 is roughly 20 years longer than it was when the Baby Boomers were born. The change is even more dramatic compared to what life expectancy was a century ago – in 1924 Americans could expect to live only to their mid- to late 50s. People no longer die at anything like earlier rates from colds and infections or even heart disease and cancer. Some may object that this is because of science, and modern medicine, not divine healing. It is because of people, not God.
But where do science and modern medicine come from?
Have you ever wondered why modern science never developed in ancient Greece? The Greeks had the basic math to begin modern science – why didn’t they? Or the Romans? Or the Chinese, Egyptians, or Indians? The reason is religious. All those civilizations believed that the earth was the center of the universe in much the same way as the drain is the center of your sink – it is the lowest place, to which all that is base and corrupt sinks. Their cosmological assumptions didn’t permit them to think that there was anything much good to be derived from looking closer at the earth. So they didn’t. The opposite assumption, viz., that there is something good to be derived from close examination of the earth, is the minimum assumption necessary for modern science to begin. It was also necessary for enough people, with enough training and enough time, with enough money and institutional support, to be available. Those conditions didn’t come together until the emergence of Christian Europe of the High Middle Ages, and that is where modern science began.
The worldview of the Bible, and people who believe the Bible, has made modern science possible.
Since that time medical knowledge has increased exponentially, especially since the 18th century. Not only that, but nanoscience and quantum mechanics are beginning to show that in the realm of the very, very small – in the very building blocks of physical reality – there is encoded information. There is no code known to our species that is not the product of Mind. In short, it appears that science is showing there is Mind behind the universe.
We have encoded information in the realm of the infinitesimally small, we have modern medicine, and people no longer die at anything like earlier rates from colds, infections, heart disease or cancer. It is all because of God.
It is arguable today that we have the wildly increased health and healing we witness and enjoy every day because God made a good world that could be discovered by people, and those discoverers would find goodness all the way down, finding technologies and medications that heal all the way down, and finally finding God at the bottom of it. It is arguable that God did it this way so that health and healing would expand, and they have.
We have a ministry of healing today that is far bigger than it was at the time of Jesus because God made the world, and us, so that we would be able to participate in that healing and make it grow.
And we have. And we do.
Miracles of healing are happening every day right at the end of our noses. Perhaps we all need to be a bit more honest and realistic about where these health blessings come from.
Comments