Hit or miss, I opine Nagas are gullible to the soul when it comes to spiritual experiences. Part of that cake is because of our animistic past or native religion, whatever you want to call it. Our culture and spirituality are thick as thieves. When it comes to Christianity today, the desire and hankering of Nagas for the supernatural is clear as noonday. This has intrigued and triggered many noxious and venomous teachings among us. The foxiness of such teachings or practices is their innocent innocuous outward show. But when clamp down on such teachings or teachers one can catch them with their pants down because all they have is cock-and-bull story as phony as the three dollar bill. It is high time for us to be on guard. Here, with pleasure I cast aspersion to the fraudsters by simply calling a spade a spade. Popular Perfect Myths will take more than a write up. This is the first among them.
Perfect Health
I bet in ease that you have heard of the spurious spurious sham that it is the will of God for you to have perfect health. If not something is wrong with you. What a shame. This is where I have to hear my friend when caught with fever, retrospect and said, “Ayale, for a few days I didn’t pray properly now look, I have fever.” I go, “really?” and that’s about it. My friend had that idea because of teachings that perfect health is the basic right of a believer. What an idea Sirji. Such teaching intrigues people, why wouldn’t? After all, who wants to be sick? Because of this, we have preachers conniving cheap shot to fame and power in abundance. It appalls and peeves my nerves when they go further overboard to say that sickness is a curse and against the will of God. For heaven’s sake, who under the sun is not sick? It grieves me to grave to let the terminally ill or physically handicapped to hear such a horrendous lie. They are shot to hell and a million insults are added into their injury. They have had enough to deal with why take them further for a ride of guilt which is uncalled for. Is that the gospel of the bible?
Perfect Health
I bet in ease that you have heard of the spurious spurious sham that it is the will of God for you to have perfect health. If not something is wrong with you. What a shame. This is where I have to hear my friend when caught with fever, retrospect and said, “Ayale, for a few days I didn’t pray properly now look, I have fever.” I go, “really?” and that’s about it. My friend had that idea because of teachings that perfect health is the basic right of a believer. What an idea Sirji. Such teaching intrigues people, why wouldn’t? After all, who wants to be sick? Because of this, we have preachers conniving cheap shot to fame and power in abundance. It appalls and peeves my nerves when they go further overboard to say that sickness is a curse and against the will of God. For heaven’s sake, who under the sun is not sick? It grieves me to grave to let the terminally ill or physically handicapped to hear such a horrendous lie. They are shot to hell and a million insults are added into their injury. They have had enough to deal with why take them further for a ride of guilt which is uncalled for. Is that the gospel of the bible?
Before one gets the idea that I am against healing, I am not. I believe God heals today but I doubt He promises perfect health. It is one thing to say that God heals and completely another thing to say He promises perfect health. There is heaven hell difference. Perfect health theology is born from certain verses and not the entire bible. It is half-baked at best. The problem with such approach is as simple as this; the bible teaches that “….there is no God” (Psalm 14:1). What? A Sunday school kid knows that that is not true, but how? It is because s/he takes the entire bible into account. The passage is about fools who say there is no God. All to say, if one take certain parts of a passage and negate the context and correlation with the entire bible one can say anything one wants to say. That’s exactly true of the perfect health teaching. They say what they wanted to say and not what the entire bible says.
The perfect health idea fails to paint the full picture of the gospel. It is lopsided and wonky. There are numerous instances in the bible where it talks of suffering, in that sickness is implicit. Apostle Paul was a spiritual giant both in theology and practice. In his ministry God healed and delivered all kinds of sicknesses. He even raised a sleepy Christian from death. In one instance he was even taken up for a ride in paradise (2 Cor. 12:4). Paul had every reason to be proud as a supernatural Christian. To keep him in place, God placed a thorn in his flesh. The precise meaning of the ‘thorn in the flesh’ is debated but most commentators consider it a physical ailment. He prayed to God three times to remove this ailment but God replied that His grace was sufficient for him. Paul with that declared that for Christ’s sake he delights in his weaknesses (2 Cor. 12:1-10). Paul wrote to Timothy, his spiritual son, asking him to stop drinking not only water but use a little wine because of his stomach and his frequent illnesses (1 Tim. 5:23). Epaphroditus got ill when he was with Paul. He was the messenger of the Philippian church who brought gifts to Paul. He was ill and almost died but God restored him (Phil. 2:25-30).
According to the Perfect Health theology, Paul, Timothy, Epaphroditus and the many more in the bible were under the curse of sickness. Paul didn’t have the faith for healing (duh). Timothy had frequent illnesses because he didn’t pray enough. Epaphroditus became sick because he didn’t reach Paul on time. Whatever! Perfect Health theology has no explanation for such cases. They are biased in naive. Opportunist for fame and power is all they are.
An ardent student of the bible can point out hundreds of instances and reasons why Perfect Health theology is wrong. The point is made here and that’s the purpose. Perfect Health theology is a myth. It is neither biblical nor practical. You don’t need to be guilt driven when you are sick. Instead, rejoice with Paul in your suffering, because suffering will produce perseverance, perseverance, character; character, hope; and hope will not disappoint you (Rom. 5:3-4). We have a perfect hope and future. There is a perfect place preserved for us to enjoy perfect health in the future with God. That does not mean we don’t need to pray for healing today. We should pray for healing and believe it because the bible tells us to.
