In a magazine article I just read, I was reminded of that pivotal story in the Bible that describes the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt. The story of the Exodus tells a story of promise and fulfillment; longing and realization. Yet, that story by itself is incomplete. It is much more than just a record of some event in ancient history. I have read that some of the Jewish Rabbis relate that each generation must relive that story in their own time and context. In that sense, the Exodus story is retold over and over again by successive generations as they identify their own captivities and the quest for freedom from bondage to them. And, it is ultimately God's story and the story of humankind's willingness to enter into this journey with God.
During that movement from captivity to freedom, God fed the Israelites in the wilderness with the miraculous provision of manna to sustain them on the way. In the 16th chapter of Exodus, where this story is told, we find that the Israelites are complaining about the food that they have been receiving from Moses. They recalled the "old days" when everything seemed better, even though they had in reality been under bondage to Egypt as slaves. When God gave the Israelites this miraculous food, they named it manna, which means, "What is it?." Verse 13 states that "It looked like coriander seed, whitish. And it tasted like a cracker with honey."
As the Rabbis have written, we, too, face our own "journey" through our time. As people of the church, we no longer live in the place where we used to. Technology, society, globalization and the increased inter-dependency and inter-relatedness of nations and peoples, as well as the decline in the "authority" of the institutional Christian church in many parts of the world, have created a new wilderness that we must "walk" through. It is certainly tempting to look with exasperation on the state of the church today and to long for the "good old days" when we new the hymns we sang each Sunday, when all of our children attended Sunday school, when new churches were being built, and all of the stores were closed and the only traffic we encountered was that of people driving to and from church or, perhaps, going out for a Sunday-after-church drive.
But the world has moved on. And we, all of us and the church, are called to be on the move, watching and hoping for the best for our world and for the successive generations that will inhabit it; gazing at that pillar of cloud and the pillar of fire both day and night that signals where God would have us go (See Exodus, chapter 13). Our journey is not about keeping the church as it was, as though it could be petrified into a state of permanency. The church should not be static and moribund. Rather, like our God, the church must be dynamic and generative. We must be a gathering of people energized by faith, hope and love.
We cannot be a church that longs for the imagined past (everything really wasn't all that great, anyway.) And, we cannot even be only a church that strives to satisfy today's members and friends. We must gather together those who are yet to fully experience the strengthening love and compassion of God. We must gather with great intention what God has provided as sustenance for us, namely, the doing of God's will, living with trust in our God, letting go when needed and stretching out to grasp what God offers to us today.
Monday, June 03, 2013
Thursday, January 24, 2013
Should Pastors Be Sued For Malpractice?
This post was written to allow me to vent AND to provoke critical thinking regarding the things that are typically said as statements of faith or belief. It is not a call for some kind of civil action.
Recently, I ran into a man that I sometimes see at my church. A regular member of a Pentecostal church, Bill (not his real name) considers himself to be a kind of lay minister and, evidently, preaches and teaches in his home church on occasion. It is very obvious that "Bill's" faith is very important to him and that God is experienced as a very real presence in his life.
As we spoke together, Bill told me that his wife is dying of cancer. In fact, she is undergoing hospice care and, as happens in situations like this, her body has begun the process of shutting down. Bill and I talked about how much he and his wife had shared together over their many years of marriage and of their hopes for a future that seemed out-of-reach.
However, even as he was expressing his grief and sadness, Bill told me that he was assured by his pastor that his wife was going to undergo a miraculous healing. Indeed, his pastor told Bill that he had "heard a word from God" that God is going to heal his wife. Bill said that his pastor told him that it would "be at the last minute," but that he knew that God was going to perform this miracle. And Bill and his wife, as well, are confident that this will happen even as they both witness the continued deterioration of her physical condition.
My hope is, of course, that Bill's wife experiences just such an incredible miracle of healing. I hope that her case goes down into medical history as a recovery from the brink of death that no physician can explain. But I also know that this is unlikely to happen. The fact is, while many people have recovered from dire physical conditions that seemed insurmountable, there are certain realities that we must face and we are then forced to accept that life does come to an end. There are conditions of disease or illness that one cannot recover from.
Yet, here we have this pastor making a statement of fact regarding recovery from a physical condition that, as far as I know, he is unqualified to make. He did, indeed, make a diagnosis and, as a result, provided a prognosis of recovery from this cancer. And I know that this is not the first and only time that a pastor or "someone from the church" has done the same. Time and time again, I have heard people assure someone that God is going to provide a healing. Unfortunately, the reality is that many of these people did not receive that healing.
So, what happens when the miraculous healing fails to be realized? Often, we simply ignore the failure and we carry on as though nothing happened. The pastor expresses grief and now adjusts her words to those of condolence. The assurance of healing becomes the assurance of the entry of the deceased into eternal life with Jesus. For many thinking people, this heralds the end of their relationship to a church, or even to a sense of the value and relevance of Christianity. People and communities are damaged.
Maybe we have been too soft on these purveyors of false hope. Maybe we are too quick to excuse the claims of medical insights from unqualified people simply because they are from "the church" and they are only speaking out of their faith and that they really only mean well, after all. Maybe pastors and others who represent the institution of the church should be held accountable for making unsubstantiated claims. Maybe they should be sued for medical malpractice or for, at the least, practicing medicine without a license.
Of course, I am not referring to the many faithful clergy and lay persons who lovingly offer comfort to those who are suffering from illness or disease. There are many incredible examples of people of faith who provide supportive companionship and caring and who share in prayer to God for strength and comfort. Many prayers are said in faith asking for God to guide the medical care-givers as they apply their education and experience in order to discern the best treatment options for a patient. And there are those who have spent hours in a "ministry of presence" with those who are suffering and for those who grieve. Our human experience is blessed by those people.
At the same time, there are those who by some sense of entitlement mislead others into false hope under the guise of pastoral ministry, both clergy and laity. It is a pretty heady experience to be looked at as a special mouth-piece of God, by both clergy themselves and by those they minister to. But, perhaps, it is time to hold those people accountable. Perhaps, we too easily excuse unsubstantiated claims of "knowing" out of a too sensitive concern about judging another's faith. Maybe faithfulness calls us to acknowledge our human condition as it really is.
Recently, I ran into a man that I sometimes see at my church. A regular member of a Pentecostal church, Bill (not his real name) considers himself to be a kind of lay minister and, evidently, preaches and teaches in his home church on occasion. It is very obvious that "Bill's" faith is very important to him and that God is experienced as a very real presence in his life.
As we spoke together, Bill told me that his wife is dying of cancer. In fact, she is undergoing hospice care and, as happens in situations like this, her body has begun the process of shutting down. Bill and I talked about how much he and his wife had shared together over their many years of marriage and of their hopes for a future that seemed out-of-reach.
However, even as he was expressing his grief and sadness, Bill told me that he was assured by his pastor that his wife was going to undergo a miraculous healing. Indeed, his pastor told Bill that he had "heard a word from God" that God is going to heal his wife. Bill said that his pastor told him that it would "be at the last minute," but that he knew that God was going to perform this miracle. And Bill and his wife, as well, are confident that this will happen even as they both witness the continued deterioration of her physical condition.
My hope is, of course, that Bill's wife experiences just such an incredible miracle of healing. I hope that her case goes down into medical history as a recovery from the brink of death that no physician can explain. But I also know that this is unlikely to happen. The fact is, while many people have recovered from dire physical conditions that seemed insurmountable, there are certain realities that we must face and we are then forced to accept that life does come to an end. There are conditions of disease or illness that one cannot recover from.
Yet, here we have this pastor making a statement of fact regarding recovery from a physical condition that, as far as I know, he is unqualified to make. He did, indeed, make a diagnosis and, as a result, provided a prognosis of recovery from this cancer. And I know that this is not the first and only time that a pastor or "someone from the church" has done the same. Time and time again, I have heard people assure someone that God is going to provide a healing. Unfortunately, the reality is that many of these people did not receive that healing.
So, what happens when the miraculous healing fails to be realized? Often, we simply ignore the failure and we carry on as though nothing happened. The pastor expresses grief and now adjusts her words to those of condolence. The assurance of healing becomes the assurance of the entry of the deceased into eternal life with Jesus. For many thinking people, this heralds the end of their relationship to a church, or even to a sense of the value and relevance of Christianity. People and communities are damaged.
Maybe we have been too soft on these purveyors of false hope. Maybe we are too quick to excuse the claims of medical insights from unqualified people simply because they are from "the church" and they are only speaking out of their faith and that they really only mean well, after all. Maybe pastors and others who represent the institution of the church should be held accountable for making unsubstantiated claims. Maybe they should be sued for medical malpractice or for, at the least, practicing medicine without a license.
Of course, I am not referring to the many faithful clergy and lay persons who lovingly offer comfort to those who are suffering from illness or disease. There are many incredible examples of people of faith who provide supportive companionship and caring and who share in prayer to God for strength and comfort. Many prayers are said in faith asking for God to guide the medical care-givers as they apply their education and experience in order to discern the best treatment options for a patient. And there are those who have spent hours in a "ministry of presence" with those who are suffering and for those who grieve. Our human experience is blessed by those people.
At the same time, there are those who by some sense of entitlement mislead others into false hope under the guise of pastoral ministry, both clergy and laity. It is a pretty heady experience to be looked at as a special mouth-piece of God, by both clergy themselves and by those they minister to. But, perhaps, it is time to hold those people accountable. Perhaps, we too easily excuse unsubstantiated claims of "knowing" out of a too sensitive concern about judging another's faith. Maybe faithfulness calls us to acknowledge our human condition as it really is.
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