Revelation: Speaking Truth to Power

Wall Street’s “Charging Bull” sure has come 

a long way from being a “golden calf”...

This is one of what might be a couple of follow-ups to my post on interpreting Revelation (See Here).  While I’m still not offering the typical “future events to come” interpretation, it is a book relevant for our day which is my main reason for looking at parts of it. This is to say that what John is revealing to the seven churches of Asia applies to churches across generation and geography in every era. Why? Because Empire still lives on and the whole earth, including large portions of the church, follows that Beast! The church needs ears to hear, eyes to see and the willingness to unmask the Anti-Christs, Beasts and Harlots of Revelation for what it really was in John’s day as-well-as what it is in ours.   

The Beast

 Looking first at Revelation 13, John is calling out the people’s blind loyalty to the Roman Empire (again see my other post for why I would correlate the Beast to Empire).  The Beast comes out of the sea and has ten horns and seven heads(13:1) which, as Ted Grimsrud says, symbolizes “the power of domination” and domination is antithetical to the power of the Slain Lamb.[1]  So also, the rest of its animal-attributes (bear paws, lion’s mouth) are given to it to paint the picture that this thing is a violent devourer(13:2). 

The verse then says that the seven-headed monster has blasphemous names written on its head(s).  What this probably implied to the ancient imagination was names that speak of fidelity to the Beast or equate itself to God such as, well, God, or Son of God, or Lord, or Messianic-Caesar, and so forth, but they will get the hint that any Beast-Empire demanding such recognition would always be quite the counterfeit. 

            As the chapter continues, Grimsrud points out, the motifs of “worship” of the Beast and the Beast’s “conquering” unfolds (13:4-6) but in the text it raises the question of who indeed can fight against the Beast (rhetorical propaganda in this chapter but a concrete question overall)?[2]  The statement is that the people all seem to consensually follow because any kind of physical resistance would be futile! Yet, the counter theme and exception is the perseverance and faith of the saints refusing to follow suit, but also refuse to fight like it fights (13:7-10).

            Then the second Beast rises from the earth (later revealed as the false prophet 16:13; 20:10) and speaks like the dragon (revealing that its power ultimately came from Satan). His job, however, is to support the first Beast and exercise authority on its behalf drawing people in with signs and wonders(13:11-14).  The subsequent oppression results in the people willingly taking the mark of the beast, six hundred and sixty-six, so that they can be part of its economy (13:15-18).  However, to draw from Grimsrud again, some deciphering of this number may be irrelevant.  It was a symbol pointing toward the people’s consent of the human-empire even though it would ultimately fall short of God’s completeness (seven hundred and seventy-seven) especially since Rome promised power, wholeness and peace.[3]

Nevertheless, John is warning the churches of Asia about Rome saying, in Bauckham’s words, “…either one shares Rome’s own ideology, the view of Empire promoted by Roman propaganda, or one sees it from the perspective of heaven, which unmasks the pretentions of Rome… Roman Empire is portrayed as a system of violent oppression, founded on conquest, maintained by violence and oppression.”[4] In brief, don’t be enthusiastically swayed by all the Empire’s vitality and prestige because in God’s eyes it betrays His creation and is anti-Christ.

The Harlot

Jumping ahead to Ch. 17-18, we meet the Harlot.  The Harlot is adorned in seductive colored clothing, but more crucial she is decorated with Rome’s finest commodities: gold, pearls and jewels and even drinks from a gold cup (Rev.17:4).

So, while John gave symbols and critique of Rome’s politics before, in this chapter he links the political with the economic by using symbols of commercial trade.  Simultaneously, and given that the Harlot rides the back of the Beast, we must see them as interconnected at least in their shared interests.  As Bauckham points out, the merchants of Rome benefited from the Empire because Rome (the self proclaimed eternal city) offered certain privileges and security for participation and bolstered their status within the society’s pecking order; thus “the Harlot lives well at her client’s expense.”[5] 

However, John’s main critique here is that the Harlot is an intoxicating deception (17:2), but one that will itself be devoured by the Beast (17:16).  Consequently, John’s angel explains, just as the Harlot’s self-glorification and luxuries will be brought to ruin and turned into torment and grief, so also will it be for those who get caught with her (18:3-7).  It is in this place of ruin that merchants can only greave the loss of the consumers even though it was the Empire that gave her power in the first place (18:11-19) but Grimsrud asserts that its fruit always rested on the backs of slaves and human souls.[6]  This brought an indictment against the Rome (their current Babylon), and those benefiting from it, as traitors. Its violence and inequality was an anti-creational and therefore seditious act betraying human life (18:20-21).    

Present Significance

If this has not felt reminiscent of America, especially now, I can only urge you to reread it.  The Beastly-Empire and its Harlot live on driving willing participants (with which it cannot operate without) for its political vitality and silos of wealth. It is a Pyramid and the Beast protectively sits at its top.  

Now before anyone goes quoting Rom. 13 or 1 Tim. 2:2 at me, let me say, yes, I believe we are subjected to governing authorities (they kind of make it that way) and yes we should pray for our leaders (and even the ones you disagree with in authority), but we Christians have another responsibility. It starts with dissociating ourselves from all that does not reflect the world’s Creator. We need to be a prophetic voice against unchecked power and a refuge for the poor, the hungry, the orphans, the widows and the immigrants (Lev. 19:33-34; Deut. 14:29; Jam. 1:27). This is especially true when authority feels rebuked (Isa. 1:17) and labels us traitors of their agenda.

Empires are part and parcel to a world that operates under domination as the main form of power. Its assumption is that it can coerce by deciding who is slave, who is free, who lives and who dies. This spirit aims to form us, but it is not real power! Who knows this better than those who have suffered the most? They are no longer blinded by the delusions that the Empire conscripts: its control, security and manipulated-logic. It is those who have both suffered and been comforted by God that know the Empire decides temporary things, but has no real power in the end (2 Cor. 1:3-5).

When you can let go of its lies and become aware that you live in God’s creation, you get to tell an alternate story.  The story is that we can let go and not cling to our lives because we die to living on our terms and become alive to the reality that we belong in the hands of He Who holds our lives and the lives of our oppressors. We are free to say No to the Beast that tells us to betray each other for something unattainable.

Power through domination is Anti-Christ. It is rooted in an ego that believes itself to be self-made, rather than other-formed, and by which every person is either a tool for its own success or a stumbling block in need of removal. So let me end by saying that it is the job of each generation to unmask this Beast and join the never-ending story of the Lamb who leads us another way.

[1] Ted Grimsrud. Revelation Notes: Chapter 13. Retrieved January 24, 2017 from https://peacetheology.net/2015/07/03/revelation-notes-chapter-13/

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid. With that said, I do know there are others (much more competent in Koine Greek than I am) who also say that 666 was a version of Nero’s name and was a mark or branding for people who wanted to buy and sell in that time period. So that is another interpretative aspect worth explore, though I don’t think it negates Grimsrud’s point.

[4] Richard Bauckham. New Testament Theology: The Theology of the Book of Revelation (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 35.

[5] Ibid, 36.

Christmas Poem: Remembering that it Happened Once

Icon in the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem

Remembering that it happened once,

We cannot turn away the thought,

As we go out, cold, to our barns

Toward the long night’s end, that we

Ourselves are living in the world

It happened in when it first happened,

That we ourselves, opening a stall

(A latch thrown open countless times

Before), might find them breathing there,

Foreknown: the Child bedded in straw,

The mother kneeling over Him,

The husband standing in belief

He scarcely can believe, in light

That lights them from no source we see,

An April morning’s light, the air

Around them joyful as a choir.

We stand with one hand on the door,

Looking into another world

That is this world, the pale daylight

Coming just as before, our chores

To do, the cattle all awake,

Our own frozen breath hanging

In front of us; and we are here

As we have never been before,

Sighted as not before, our place

Holy, although we knew it not.

Wendell Berry: From his 1987 Sabbath poems.

Revelation and Interpretation

God: Slain Lamb or Golem

This is the beginning of what might become several posts on the topic of Revelation since I will be spending some time here over the next couple of months.  So I thought I probably needed something of a preface that explains how I could come to the conclusions I will about various aspects of the book.  I say this primarily because this is one area of the Bible where I (as do an increasing number of theologians, Biblical academics and so forth) strongly disagree with the prominent scholars, pastors and mainline evangelicals on its interpretation. It is often read as some straight-forward vision of future events without consideration for its literary genre. So if you are looking for bible codes, blood moons, or any astrological fortune-telling interpretation, it is not here. If you are looking for the return of a violent Jesus and/or blood-thirsty vengeful god, well I’m afraid John subverts all that too. However, if you want to see a letter with a prophetic critique of church and Roman Empire (and all empires to come) with an apocalyptic construction, well then stay tuned my friend!

Since I am mostly utilizing Richard Bauckham’s work here I want to begin with what is his take (amid all the negativity that gets put) on the book. He says, “The method and conceptuality of the theology of Revelation are relatively different from the rest of the New Testament, but once they are appreciated in their own right, Revelation can be seen to be not only as one of the finest literary works of the New Testament, but also one of the greatest theological achievements of early Christianity.”[1]

To begin, the literary composition of Revelation actually has three categories: prophetic, apocalyptic and letter.  Its “prophetic” aspect is actually not normal given that Christian-prophecy was primarily an oral practice in the New Testament church.  Bauckham makes the point that the vision itself was a private and spontaneous event which was orally reported to the church after it occurred, even if it happened while they were gathered together.[2]  While John’s Revelation does depict an oral vision (of critique, judgment and energizing-hope), we cannot overlook that it was a skilled and sophisticated literary composition that is more complex than most visions. This would mean that it was an altered depiction based off of a visionary experience, but do not think that this falsifies or detracts from its authenticity. Rather, as Bauckham suggests, after careful reflection on the revelation John could only convey the message of the vision by creating a literary composition dense with themes, images and meaning, rather than just retelling the actual vision.[3]  This is to say that our average words are insufficient for the task and cannot bear the weight of what God has revealed to us in our consciousness, visionary capacity and/or feelings.

Revelation as an “apocalyptic” work, however, carries close ties with its prophetic elements and is often cited as an apocalyptic-prophecy.  John uses a narrative framework common in the apocalyptic tradition for this revelation in a way that reveals a vision of the unseen world’s relationship with physical reality. Its generic relationship to other Jewish apocalypses is seen in how “a narrative framework, in which a revelation is being mediated by an ‘otherworldly-being’ toward a ‘human-recipient’, disclosing a transcendent reality which is both temporal, insofar as it envisages eschatological salvation, and spatial, insofar as it involves another, supernatural world” (as J.J. Collins defines it).[4]  The point here being that the apocalyptic imagery that John constructs is how he thought it best to utilize words in a way that would paint the vision he had: A vision of overwhelming and cosmic perspective and one that speaks directly into the early church’s world.

While it is often debated as to where specifically apocalyptic-theology originated, its function, as Gorman says, does seem to consistently work to “sustain the people of God, especially in times of crisis, particularly evil and oppression.”[5]  This is pertinent as it reiterates the point that while in one aspect it uses vivid and inflated imagery to make the vision visible to the church, it simultaneously acts as an expression of hope for the oppressed and a critique of both the oppressors and dualist Christians trying to be on both sides of the issue (God and church vs evil and governing-powers).

This leads us to the “letter” aspect of Revelation. It was also a circular letter addressed to seven churches within Asia who lived under Roman occupation: Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia and Laodicea. Bauckham suggests that while John would have probably known this letter would find its way to other churches (to which he offers an indirect “and this goes for you too”) he blatantly addresses the situations and failures of each church in the seven messages (Rev. 2:1-3:22).[6] 

Thus, John’s introductive acknowledgment of these church’s situation is set up because John believes (or was told) his vision expresses an important relation to their situations. Moreover, with a pre-determined audience, John’s pointed imagery probably wasn’t mysterious in the first-century minds of his hearers, just as the imagery of something like our political cartoons isn’t mysterious in our minds. Because of this it will again require more from us, who are removed from the first-century, while interpreting.

To conclude here, while this apocalyptic-prophetic-letter is full of meaning for the church in every time period, it was not written to us, so prepare to take nothing at face value and interpret everything through another world’s current events, symbols, contrasts, parallels and cross-references.  The barrage of imagery John uses is drawn from several well established literary traditions, but it is applied to his own contemporary time. Therefore, the books character is formed by all that is happening around them which is essential to understanding its meaning. 

Consider these ideas to see how this might change interpretation:

1.      The serpent/dragon (Rev. 12:3-9) can be compared with the serpent in Eden (Gen. 3:14-15) as both symbolize sources of evil who aim to thwart God’s work (Adam in the Genesis verses and Jesus in the Revelation verses).

2.      In Rev. 17:8, when the Eastern invaders ally with the last “beast”, which the serpent/dragon has raised up from the bottomless pit, it is echoing their myth about Emperor Nero’s future return as head of the Parthian hoards to conquer Rome (historically the Parthian Empire was a constant threat to the Roman Empire).[7] Nevertheless, Nero is pointedly rooted in the serpent here.

3.      The common theme in both of these is that the evil serpent can only raise beasts to govern and be followed, while God rose up a “slain Lamb” (Messiah) for the world to follow. The slain Lamb’s followers will be an army that “defeats” by their testimony (not military action or WMDs, Rev. 12:11) and they will be known by doing the works Jesus taught rather than what the violent beast demands of them (Rev. 2:2, 19, 23; 9:20-21; 14:4, 12; 16:11; 19:8; 20:12-13; 22:11).

 In essence John establishes symbols (old and current) to develop the notion that all that is seen is intrinsically tied to all that is unseen and we need to wake-up to who and what we are following. Anti-creator will beget Antichrists and Creator begets Christ; one steals and one heals. So, while I say all this to set up whatever else I write about Revelation, these genres and themes are something to think about while setting out to read it for yourself.

 

[1] Richard Bauckham. New Testament Theology: The Theology of the Book of Revelation (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 22.
[2] Ibid, 3.
[3] Ibid, 10.
[4] J.J. Collins. ‘Introduction: Towards the Morphology of a Genre’, Semeia 14 (1979), 9. 
[5] Michael J. Gorman. Reading Revelation Responsibly: Uncivil Worship and Witness: Following the Lamb into the New Creation (Kindle Locations 505-506).
[6] R. Bauckham, 14-15.
[7] Ibid, 19.

Gomer and The Post Election Church

Da Vinci's Magdalene

This is for the Christians horrified over the election outcome: don’t be! This is for the Christians that are excited over their political champion winning: don’t be!  We have one hope and it is not in temporary things like systems, platforms or positions. No, it is in a Messiah that we have hope. This Messiah united us in the Eucharist of remembered suffering which can be remembered best when the meal leads us to stop trying to be winners and with a glad heart pick up the cross.

You may then ask what about our moral obligation to use our voting-voice? I contest that we are not obligated to bring God’s kingdom about through the management of any pagan-empire like Franklin Graham and the American Renewal Project suggest. In fact I believe that such “moral obligations” has less to do with obligatory matters and more to do with the church deeming an unrepentant social structure holy out of a desire for control. If you want a moral obligation, it is love for God, for the world and for someone who does not deserve it. It will look like radical attachment to friend and foe.   

We should stop and ask ourselves, is it even our job to control the country’s morality?  The reality is we can no more force someone into Christian morality through laws than America can bomb terrorists into a “higher” morality.[1] Not one bit of this softens hearts, offers mercy or tells of a Messiah that died for his enemies. Yet, as we keep trying to unlawfully manage American politics it is we who will be conquered by its corrosive nature; it is a beast after all. So until the church is satisfied with Jesus as our president, the Sermon on the Mount our constitution and the witness of God’s mercy our national anthem, just expect that God will have to come get Gomer from her new pimp every four years. If that sounds too harsh, well then just remember that the Church can always become the faithful partner living counter to the cultural that sells itself for self-preservation.

[1] I ripped that line off of Bill Cavanaugh and I make no apologies for it, unless he demands one.

Living Contemplatively

The way of Jesus is not something that can easily be made intelligible or attractive to others, at least not if we are honest.  We worship a Messiah who spent his ministry homeless, offending both church and state and made his crucifixion the primary practice for his followers (Matt 16:24).  So realistically if televangelists (and the like) moved from saying things like “how would you like God to bless your status, health and wealth beyond your wildest dreams, or how would you like clarity and certainty for all that God has planned for you?” to “would you like to learn how to let go of success, become self-emptying, vulnerable, trusting without seeing and humbly die to yourself every day?” people might not be so quickly drawn to it. 

Yet, the letting go of old patterns, desires and attitudes is very much a central theme in our discipleship. So when there is a Christianity that asks very little of you; promises you the world and is completely marketable, run away!  It is noise that teaches impatience for how things are now and it focuses your present attention in a false future (of power and monetary hope) instead of in, well, the present where we and God live.  There is much to be learned right here right now and our attention to that becomes God’s primary way of teaching and forming us.   

We are in need a contemplative stance which Richard Rohr defines as: “a standing in the middle, neither taking the world on from power position nor denying for fear of the pain it will bring. We hold the realization, seeing the dark side of reality and the pain of the world, but we hold it until it transforms us knowing that we are complicit in evil and also complicit in the holiness [we embody sinner and saint Matt. 13:24-30].  Once we can stand in that third spacious way, neither fighting nor fleeing, we are in the place of grace out of which newness comes.”[1]

            So, I suggest a good deal of transformation will begin in our prayer life. We spend time petitioning to God for needs, which is fine, but we need to spend more time learning the language of presence, interior silence and stillness (aka contemplative prayer: the biggest waste of time for most ambitious minds).[2]  Learning to let our obsessive and compulsive feelings and thoughts go is central to turning our attention (or gaze) to God’s active presence which is intrinsically present everywhere. This is to say that Heaven and the universe are interwoven (which I have written more about here).  Those who have learned to trust the Holy Spirit in silence have learned this well and it forms a new vision of how to be in the world.  As Wendell Berry mentions, “There are no unsacred places; there are only sacred places and desecrated places.”[3] We tend to only reserve small spaces for God like church buildings and burning bushes, but everywhere you stomp around is hallowed so be careful how you tread. 

As we tune in to God’s presence the inner work of the Holy Spirit helps us to dwell with God everywhere and we can “un-pantheistically” allow dignity, voice and subjectivity to all of creation (as appose to objectifying it).  We can resist being hurried and taking all for granted because it all suddenly has importance to us. We can defy being chief consumers, disposers and protectors of our entitlements because all is an appreciated gift. We can stop living in reaction to our anxieties and to others no longer fighting to stand over them, but with them. We can bear the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (Gal. 5:22-23).  The contemplative journey takes us from individuals climbing above creation and reconnects us as jointly vital participants in it.  This interweaving process may sound odd in juxtaposition to all the detachment talk, but it is really coming to the resolve that “we are not a religion of pure detachment or pure attachment, but a dance between the two.”[4]

Nevertheless, this should change how we talk about being followers of Christ and what salvation is really all about, which I cannot sum up better than Rohr:

The following of Jesus is not a ‘salvation scheme’ or a means of creating social order (which appears to be what most folks want religion for), as much as it is a vocation to share the fate of God for the life of the world.  Jesus did not come to create a spiritual elite or an exclusionary system for people who ‘like’ religion, but he invited people to ‘follow’ him in bearing the mystery of human death and resurrection (an almost nonreligious task but one that can be done only through, with and in God).[5]

Thus back to my main point; I do not know many on this journey who feel it is an initially attractive or sellable one (though it becomes a fully loved one). It does, however, form a person who, without really knowing it, exemplifies the Gospel and becomes oddly attractive to others because it is oddly genuine and wonderfully different in world that is parched in places we did not know we were dry.         

[1] Richard Rohr. Everything Belongs: The Gift of Contemplative Prayer (New, York: Crossroad Publishing, 2003), 171.

[2] For contemplative prayer resources (short of finding a church in your area that meets to learn and practice it) Fr. Thomas Keating (a Trappist Monk) has an audio book called “Contemplative Prayer” which is very helpful. Also Richard Rohr touches on it a lot in his works “Everything Belongs: The Gift of Contemplative Prayer” and The Naked Now: Learning to see as Mystics See”. Keating and Rohr pair wonderfully together!

[3] Wendell Berry. Given: Poems (Berkley, CA: Counterpoint 2006), 18.

[4] Richard, Rohr, 170.

[5] Ibid, 179.

Prep Gardens not Bunkers

For the last decade I have become increasingly interested in most things agrarian, especially gardening.  I feel it draws together my theology, ethics, love for ecology and aesthetics and even family life.  And of course I just like playing in the dirt.  What makes this pertinent to what I am going to say is that gardening was not something I just decided one day to invest time and money into.  I came from parents that gardened and mini-farmed and no they weren’t hippies, (at least not by the time they decided to farm). But, they did come from agricultural families and communities. So, this was a learned and inherited interest and one I am grateful for. I have come to appreciate the long traditions that pass from one generation to another. I have also come to appreciate the contemplative reflections of life, failure, patience and the humility of the close and practical connections we share with the dirt; and I appreciate the process of growing plants, food and me.  It has given me a vision of our interconnectedness.

Why am I telling you all this?  To put it simply, it is because we live in a culture dominated with contrary investments and now I am watching the church, quite literally, buy into it.  We buy into things that offer self-security because we are afraid of being without or losing what we gained or just saving ourselves, but then we set ourselves at odds with others to keep it.

Of course we shouldn’t be all that surprised since it is the cycle many Christians entered into some time ago with pre-tribulation raptures, flighty heaven theologies and prosperity gospels, just to name a few of the things that should be “left behind”. 

Now within my own community I am meeting more “doomsday preppers” who store up to secure for their own needs and store weapons for their own protection (for my thoughts on the weapon topic see here).  We have those trying to secure wealth in case of an economic collapse and tell me to buy up gold and silver in preparation. But, no matter the medium for our security, it is all self-focused escapism which comes at the cost to many other things necessary for life’s flourishing.  It’s like Norman Wirzba says, “We have assumed that we can know and pursue what is best for ourselves, all the while disregarding the needs of the communities, natural and human, that sustain us.”[1] The reality is none of us are big enough for that and to continue denying our “biological kinship” with creation will only make our destructiveness increasingly evident.[2] Might I add, this stands in full-scale opposition with the gospel by which we are offered the freedom to affirm this life not escape it.

However, if we stop devising new self-preserving ways that avoid trusting God with our lives, we might just end up becoming a church that is faithful.  We might become a church that feeds our neighbors.  We do not have to be a false church that returns to the historical arrangements of power struggles and hierarchy. We do not have to be dualistic Christians who, as Brueggemann says, “…juggle [God’s] good purposes and our hidden yearnings and try to serve two masters, try to live two narratives, try to live two dreams, and [become] weary.”[3]  This was the cycle of Israel before Jesus and it suffered greatly. But with Jesus, life comes from our surrender and death because we have finally touched our impuissance, or our inability to do it alone.  Until we reflect deeply on our own fragileness, limits, interdependence on the elements, ecosystems and communities to which we belong, we will find ourselves on the wrong side of the competing voices and withdraw into isolation and abandon the rootedness and loyalties that bind us together.

   

[1] Edited and Introduced by Norman Wirzba. The Art of Common Place: The Agrarian Essays of Wendell Berry (Berkley, CA: Counterpoint Press 2002), viii.

[2]Ibid, ix.

[3] Walter Brueggemann Prayers for a Privileged People. (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 2008), 43.

Everybody Jesus Healed Died…

Lately I have spent a lot of time reading the Gospels (currently Mark) and there is one thing standing out at the moment: all them healings! People flock to Jesus in droves knowing that he can heal their infirmities and while there are clearly times when he is happy to do it, there are also times he seems reluctant and worried that they are missing the point of his being there (Mk 1:32-38)  Nevertheless, Jesus faithfully responds to faith and heals.

It is in light of this that I inevitably hear the question, “if God can heal, then why doesn’t he heal everyone?”  Note that I am not trying to debate whether faith healing is real or whether God still heals. I am going to throw you all a “Pentecostal-bone” and let it stand as a glaring assumption.  With that said, we do not have to look far to see that many are left sick, disabled, addicted and so forth.

For me, getting the answer to this is secondary to another question, “why did God even heal at all?”  Like my title says, everyone Jesus delivered, healed and raised from the dead died later on.  The healing aspect of his ministry was clearly not the resolution to creation’s bigger problem, so why do it?

It first needs to be understood that there is always a close link in Scripture between sin and sickness. Now this is not the same as deplorably telling someone that their (or their family member’s) terminal illness is because of the sin in their lives (if I am wrong then there has been a lot of murderous tyrants throughout history that pestilence missed the mark on).  No, in actuality, that kind of finger pointing mostly comes from those refusing to accept the burden of caring for those that will not be cured.  But, sin does seem to be the root cause in the undoing of order in all its forms, hence the reason Jesus calls himself a physician instead of a judge.  Sin itself was ultimately sickness unto death with God being the one and only cure. 

So, I would suggest that Jesus as the living icon of God is an important feature to remember.  Jesus heals and does signs to tell the part of God’s story that words cannot bear. It begins with his entering into and experiencing all its brokenness, but then he reveals himself as its solution; the cross-shaped tree whose leaves will heal all nations (Rev. 22:1-4).  Consider the idea that all that needs to be said by God cannot be spoken or written with fleeting words, but can only begin to be understood through mystery and symbol within Jesus’ life.  It is not a far leap from there to see that our lives in praxis, sacrament, suffering and joy are in fact living symbols too, and ones that echo our participation in God’s story. 

The enemy to such a proclamation can only be the very thing Jesus was revolting against which was an empire built on privilege and exclusion. Look at how the Jewish leaders in Jesus day had epitomized this aspect. They were married to their purity laws for fear of contamination, it was tribalism run amuck with ideas that say “we are special” and “your sickness and brokenness can only bring us down” (Mt. 15:1-14; Mk 3:1-6).  However, Jesus not only seems unworried about contamination, but heals/cleanses and brings them back into the community they live expelled from. If this doesn’t tell the story of God bringing creation back from exile, I don’t know what does. 

Jean Vanier helped bring this into focus for me when he said, “Between all of us fragile human beings stand walls built on loneliness and the absence of God, walls built on fear—fear that becomes depression or a compulsion that we are special.”[1]  Walls reveal a fundamental lack of risk and trust and I promise you no healing can come from that.   But we were given a Messiah that is the very presence of God and made a point of tearing walls down; now we should too.  So, while it is not the solution itself, such symbolic rhythms in our lives point to a mysterious but actualized hope that restores all of creation and reintegrates all that was lost, even when it has yet to be fully revealed.

Now, if you are left with more questions than you have answers, then I did my job, but I would recommend starting here when asking unanswerable questions like why doesn’t God heal everybody?

[1] Stanley Hauerwas & Jean Vanier. Living Gently in a Violent World (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2008), 26.