You are at the Duke Comprehensive Cancer Center at Duke University Medical Center. You are there because this is your last hope of being cured of cancer. You have lived your life, your entire life, as a Christian. You are not one of the Bible thumping KJVers who want no parts of medical help and berate those who do. You are not an applicator of Pauline rules for the early church, you are a person of simple faith in a man called Jesus who you believe came to earth in human form, lived a life of doing good as an example to others, and died a horrible death so that humanity could have redemption with the God of creation. In short, you have lived in peace with your neighbor, done good to those who would take advantage of you, and spread love and goodness wherever you went.
You are now in the pit of tribulation of a terrible disease. Cancer is one of the major diseases in our country affecting nearly everyone either with the disease directly or someone close to them. Few people in this country can say their lives have not been saddened by cancer. And here you are, after multiple doctors, medicines and medical treatments, hoping for a miracle at this very prestigious outpost in the battle against your disease. O yes, it is your disease now. Many people love you and are praying for you, but in the end it is you against the disease. Manu y Manu. And you are holding to your faith, so faithfully taught you by Sunday School teachers, youth leaders and ministers your whole life.
The scripture running through your head almost constantly is Psalms 103.3b “…and heals all your diseases.” Psalms 103.3a you are sure took place in your life at an early age when kneeling before God you asked Christ into your heart and He “forgave all your sins…” Between the thoughts of healing all your diseases you see short vignettes of your own times of caring for the sick, the hungry, the discouraged, the homeless and the broken hearted. You remember the Christian council you gave, the long nights praying with a new widow or now orphaned child. You remember in between the “heals all diseases” scripture running through your mind the blessings of the Beatitudes. You can point back to your times of mourning, of meekness, of hungering and thirsting for justice for the less fortunate, of choosing purity of heart rather than to be stained by lusts of the flesh, of the times you were the peacemaker and, yes, even to the times when you suffered humiliation and shame for standing for Christian principles.
But rising above the others is the refrain, “…heals all your diseases.” Over and over. “all your diseases.” Doesn’t this cancer that now is mine qualify as a disease? Why God? What more must I do? What more CAN I do?
Suddenly I break your thought process as I come into your room. Surgical Chief of Cancer at this amazing care facility that I helped design, build and staff with the best of every known treatment, equipment, medicine, discipline, doctor and nurse available in the world. Dr Ican Help at your services. I tell you we have just made medical history and we now have in our facility the ability to completely and forever cure you entirely of cancer.
Now what is running through your mind? Maybe this new procedure, this medicine, this cure? I imagine so.
As you anxiously wait for Dr. Ican Help to go on you can hardly contain yourself. “Is it complicated? Is it difficult? Will it cause me more suffering? What, where?”
Dr. Ican Help replies, “It’s quite simple, really. We kill you. Not a painful or agonizing death you understand. But a very painless injection of barbiturates, paralytics and potassium.”
“But that is no cure,” you cry. “That’s death. That is what I’m here wanting to avoid.”
Literalist. Biblical literalist. This is exactly what is happening when we teach Bible literalism.
We take the word “heals” out of context, substitute the contorted definition of death being that “Final Healing” and force feed it to our congregates. And while Christians everywhere take the scripture at face value and believe that not only CAN God heal them of every disease, He will heal them of every disease. And we have lied to them just as surely as Ananias and Supphria lied to Paul.
Taking the Bible literally is a lie. Go all though the Bible and you will find scriptures that at face value say one thing but to the “Bible mature” mean something else. If it means something else other than what it says it is metaphorical. The language, events and characters of the Bible cannot be taken literally across the board. The language, events and characters drift between literal and metaphorical all though the Bible. And we have ministers standing in their pulpits every Sunday with not enough education to define metaphoric.
In addendum, upon response from my trusted theological probing partner, I will make this concession. At first blush it seems incongruent to have a literal God and a metaphorical Bible, considering the fact that we believe the Bible is God breathed.
Here is where I find clarity in the apparent dichotomy. God is indeed literal. But He had to use humans to take the message inspired in their soul or brain or heart and put it into words of the language of their day. I believe that neither the authors of the scriptures nor the audience of the day could have understood literal explanations of God's inspiration. I believe they did not have the clarity of understanding to speak in literal terms and thus used metaphorical and allegorical stories to convey concepts and events, perhaps even characters.
The problems come when we assign literal meanings to metaphorical writing. We twist the scriptures and abuse the gospel.
