This is a touchy subject and I’m hesitant to discuss it. But… well… I’m me and can’t help but wonder a few things. My wonders began when I read a piece in Charisma Magazine detailing a Christian’s thoughts on a fellow Christian’s death from cancer.
Doctors confirmed only 10 months ago that my friend Benny Benson had a malignant tumor in his spine. He underwent treatment, but in the end more tumors appeared. Nothing could stop the spread of the disease—not radiation, chemotherapy or surgery. He died on Jan. 31, and I spoke at his memorial service in New Hampshire on Feb. 12.
Yeah. Cancer sucks. It’s probably one of the worst ways to go. I’ve had friends and relatives die a slow, agonizing death from the ravages of the disease and/or treatment. Everyone can get cancer, many of us already have it, but just don’t know it…. yet.
Benny had it, and Benny died.
More than 500 people attended his funeral. Many of them were college students who had been discipled through Benny’s campus outreach, which he carried out with his wife, Cindy. Like so many of Benny’s other friends and family members, these students had prayed for Benny to be miraculously healed of the cancer.
But in the end, Benny got the ultimate healing—by stepping into eternity.
Herein lies my rub. If Benny had been “healed” it would have certainly been due to a deity. Since he wasn’t healed, he now received the “ultimate healing.”
Good grief.
Whenever loved ones are taken from us we ask hard questions. Why does God allow cancer to ravage people’s bodies? Why doesn’t He always heal when we pray? Why would He let a guy like Benny, who was only 58, get sick with cancer when he was seeing amazing results in his campus ministry?
Perhaps people get sick because people get sick. It’s really not that confusing.
Miraculous healings do happen sometimes. But when they don’t, we assume we said the wrong prayer, didn’t exert enough faith or harbored some secret sin in our hearts. We trivialize the Lord by turning Him into a genie in a bottle. We think He exists to perform miracles for us—as long as we rub the lamp the right way and say the right magic words. But that is a silly and immature way to approach an omnipotent God.
Nope. Miraculous “healings” don’t happen. Remissions happen. Sometimes the body heals itself. Illness go away. But to give credit to a deity probably probably isn’t on the list of possibilities.
That’s how I decided to approach Benny’s death. I refused to ask whether we prayed and fasted enough, whether the healing anointing was strong enough or whether we strained enough in our faith to produce a miracle. The greatest miracle occurred when Benny stepped from this life into the next and began an eternity with Christ. He now fully understands the words of Jesus in John 11:26: “And whoever lives and believes in Me will never die. (NIV)”
No, I disagree. How we die is simply a moment. What matters is how we live, the (hopefully) years that we walk on this planet. If Benny lived a good, happy life, then that’s what matters. Everyone’s going to die. Some of us will die too soon. Dying is part of life. I don’t understand why we need to complicate the issue to such a degree.
