So, does God in His Word have something to say about law and about education? You betcha! Unfortunately, not much is said about those two subjects in churches. Why not? Why should the church be bound to the “religion mountain,” where the world is happy for the church to stay … as long as we let them do their thing on the other six mountains? Why does the church willingly agree to not bring “religion” into the marketplace and to keep church and state separate?
In every area of life that concerns man, God has given us directives that are there for our life and well-being. He, the Creator, did not leave us comfortless and without solutions. His Word is our solutions manual, and He speaks to us through His Holy Spirit, giving some men gifts of wisdom and understanding so that we can build on the principles contained in His Word and teach and help others. Should not those who have laid claim to the job of proclaiming the Word of God actually go into the WHOLE counsel of God and not just that which is common and comfortable?
So what about our health? Did God create a holy office called Medical Doctor, imbued with special wisdom and knowledge that nobody else has (like a judge in the arena of law or a pope in the arena of religion)? Did He send down the Holy Spirit like a dove on the pharmaceutical companies to give them knowledge, wisdom and understanding to heal people … a second Pentecost, after which the Holy Spirit took a vacation along with all of His gifts to men, including healing gifts?
When did you last hear a preacher talk from a pulpit about what we eat, suggesting at least that God does have something to say about what is beneficial for our physical bodies and what is not, beyond the oft-cited use of Acts 10:9-15 to say that the New Testament disposed of the Old Testament dietary laws?
When has a sermon series ever been developed around Ezekiel 47:12, which tells us plainly that God made the fruit of trees for our food and the leaves for our healing? Why have we allowed pharmacology (witchcraft, according to scripture) to relegate natural medicine to the Granny Clampett school of doctoring (“eye of newt and wing of bat …”)? Scientifically speaking alone, if pharmaceuticals are primarily man’s attempt to copy and patent for profit what occurs naturally in nature, why do we assume that the copy will somehow be better than what the Creator created for us? (And why aren’t preachers shouting this truth from the mountaintops?)
What is God’s best for us? If God’s Word tells us that it is His will that we be in health and prosper, would not that include wisely heeding the Creator’s mechanisms whereby health and longevity are accomplished?
Why are churches missing the opportunity to help feed their surrounding communities, not just with soup kitchens and food pantries, but with farmer’s markets and co-ops and CSAs – with “teach a man to fish” instead of “give a man a fish” opportunities? If FDR found the nationalization of American agriculture to be so important that it took second place only to his seizure of our banks, why do God’s people not also realize how important it is? How many miracles did Jesus do around food and drink? Again, where is a sermon series that goes into why He chose that topic as important, beyond simply an opportunity to showcase His tremendous power?
When there is an opportunity to minister with food, will God’s people step up and deliver actual good nutritious, healthy food … or will we be happy to deliver a few bags of canned goods and boxes of dry pasta? (There is always that opportunity, by the way, as people all around us are literally starving to death by avoiding nutrition while they stuff their faces with empty calories, sweets and chemicals that “taste good.”)
Oh, that’s not “spiritual” … and everyone knows that the church is assigned only to that which is “spiritual”! Really?
Come on, people! God wants us to be well, to be healthy, to live long lives and not to die of “old age” or sickness and disease! But where are preachers suggesting that one ought not just to take the word of a doctor who tells one, “You’ve got six months to live”? After all, who made that MD God? Should we give someone the power over life and death such that we let him exercise the mere power of suggestion that statistics prove results in death more often than not? But preachers don’t have medical degrees, and we’ve succumbed to the logic that, therefore, they aren’t qualified and have nothing to say about health (when God’s Word clearly DOES).
Stand up, preachers! Learn the truth and speak it fearlessly, you who have been given the privilege of a platform from which the words that are spoken are automatically treated with respect as authoritative!
If churches would set aside one evening a week for a seminar on health and even invite in proprietors of local health food stores to speak, it would be another good use of a facility that is most commonly underused for only “religious” activities on Sunday. And if Christian farmers and organic gardeners, natural doctors and chiropractors, acupuncturists and nutritionists, etc., were afforded the same respect and given that platform from which to speak, imagine the understanding that might start to come about – that “full time Christian service” is something that we ALL are called to, and that it isn’t reserved for the “clergy” on the “religion mountain.”
