Healing versus Curing

Once a month our church offers a healing service to the community.  Healing has been part of the history of the church’s practice since the days of Jesus.  After all, one of the reasons people were attracted to Jesus in the first place was because of his wonder-working powers – healing paralytics, causing the blind to see, cleansing the lepers, exorcising demons! 

Still, faith healing has taken on negative connotations because of charlatans who have used the gullibility of the ill to make a mockery of the spiritual practices of healing.  In addition, the rise of modern medicine has led to the American public’s placing an incredible amount of faith in the medical profession as the sole practitioners of the healing arts.  So, what is the church’s role, if any in the realm of healing?

A recent radio program on Charlotte Talks, led my Mike Collins of WFAE, included several professionals from both religious and medical arenas, discussing the difference between healing and curing, and the necessity of both.  The consensus among these professionals was that while curing is a term we reserve for targeted health problems of body and mind, healing is better understood as “well-being,” in the midst of all conditions, whether cured or not.  One of the doctors pointed out that there are those who are often cured of their disease but are so disoriented by the process of cure that they never seem to get their life back together.  In other words, they may have been cured of their illness, but they are not yet healed.  While others, never experiencing cures, nevertheless become stronger and more resilient in the process of treatment – more whole than they were before. 

One of the things we learn about Jesus in his healing ministry is that he was always reaching for something more than cure.  To the paralytic he said, “Your sins are forgiven,” and only afterward did he say, “Rise up, and walk.”  To the leper who had been cured of his leprosy, Jesus says, “Rise, your faith has made you well.”  In each case, Jesus is aiming at something more than cure.

We all want to be free of pain, illness, disease.  Just take stock the incredible amounts of medications that Americans take.  Americans also are characterized by increasing amounts of self-medication in the form of substance abuse.  But, for all that . . . we are not very well.  I am convinced that healing is often neglected in our desire for cure.  And I am confident that the church, as the vehicle for Jesus’ continued healing ministry, has something to offer a hurting world. 

Through prayers accompanied by the traditional practices of anointing with oil, or laying on of hands, people do experience healing.  While not everyone receives cure, everyone may be healed, and the workings of God in the midst of all this remains a mystery which is not under our control.  But of one thing I am confident, whatever pain we are dealing with – mind, body, spirit - God invites us all to be well.