I scrolled through my Facebook timeline and saw a post about a man who had a stroke as recently as three days ago. That man was coming home today. Three days later. The poster proclaimed, “God is so good and such a healer!”
Earlier the same day, I took my family to the Covid-19 memorial in downtown Washington, D.C. The public art installation by Maryland artist Suzanne Brennan Firstenberg honors more than 680,000 people in the United States who died from Covid-19. One white flag represents each person lost. The flags are small. The scale is immense. On the day I viewed the exhibit, more than 701,000 American lives were lost. More than 4.55M lives were lost worldwide.
I considered the Facebook post. If God gets the credit for healing, who gets the credit when people are not healed? Avoiding attributing millions of Covid deaths to God while we praise God for healing in isolated cases presents a God who is either unable to heal, unwilling, or disinterested when we most need a God that heals. I’m sure the family of the man who suffered a stroke are appreciative. Over 4.55M families are having a different experience with God.
Having this conversation is essential during a time of conscientious religious objection to vaccines and mask mandates. We know or have heard someone who believes God for their health and potentially healing from Covid, should they contract it. For those people, this point cannot be overstated.
God has let over 4.55 million people die from Covid.
God did not heal them. What is God’s special relationship with us that God will act differently should we contract Covid? Do we believe none of the 4.55M people were in a relationship with God? Did God not also love them?
Faith leaders have a responsibility to wrestle with the reality that two things are simultaneously true. God is a healer. God also does not always heal. When we acknowledge both, what does that change about our view of God?
We need to believe that God is a healer when healing is still possible. After a diagnosis or accident, God’s capacity to heal is the source of our hope that our time with those we love is not ending. Hope is necessary. But when that hope does not produce what was hoped for, we are left with pain, questions, and no place for the love we had to go? For the past two years, hope quickly turned to grief for far too many people for faith leaders to avoid the discussion about God’s willingness and capacity to heal and our role while we hope.
I am happy the man who suffered a stroke came home. I am grieved that over 4.55M people will never go home again. It is the responsibility of faith leaders to be honest about what God does and does not do. It is not an exercise in destroying hope but one of informing it. We cannot afford a hope that leads to inaction when action is required.