Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Yeah, and I think, I think what sometimes back to the forcing or the influencing, those to speak in tongues when they're young.
And then there are those that also will say you need to also be praying for the healing. And if you don't, why should you expect it?
Or if you do pray for it insincerely, but if it does not happen, then either you're to blame potentially for unconfessed sin or a lack of faith or trust, or worse than that, that somehow you're blaming God as not being capable or desiring to do that.
[00:00:34] Speaker B: Yeah, I saw all those things when I was a youngster in the Pentecostal movement. And again, this becomes too autobiographical and I'm sort of sorry about it, but.
[00:00:42] Speaker A: Oh, I'm fascinated by it. And I only want you to talk about what you're comfortable talking about.
[00:00:45] Speaker B: You know, I think it's autobiographical. But I'm not alone. You know, there are, I'd say, countless others who went through the same experience.
And again, it seemed to me so often when people weren't healed, then the recourse would be, well, there's sin in my life, okay, that I haven't repented of. And so, okay, so that has to be taken care of or it's God's fault or I didn't have enough faith. I mean, there are all kinds of explanations. And what it was all too rare was a willingness to see God is sovereign and I'm not going to govern, try to govern how God will deal with humanity.
[00:01:30] Speaker A: Well, I think about the apostle Paul, whatever the thorn was that he prayed fervently, prayed for three times for God to remove, and all three times God said no. And then the ending is, my grace is sufficient for you. And then I've heard others say that we're all wounded people.
Some wounded, some are, some are self inflicted wounds. But without our wounds, where would our power be?
[00:01:54] Speaker B: That's beautiful.
[00:01:55] Speaker A: You know that it keeps us humble, it keeps us prayerful and dependent on God.
You know, I have a toothache right now.
I can complain about it, or I can, you know, I can go see the dentist, which I will tomorrow, or.
[00:02:12] Speaker B: You can get real old like me and have dentures and then you never.
[00:02:15] Speaker A: Will have a problem.
[00:02:16] Speaker B: Never.
[00:02:17] Speaker A: Well, it's interesting because I actually have a longtime friend who would say to me, by his wounds you're healed and you don't need to allow that pain to affect you. In fact, you can pray it away.
You don't have enough faith potentially, Todd, or you're not praying Hard enough. And that gets into the whole prosperity gospel of this health and wealth gospel.
Let's talk about that a little bit because I'm clearly gonna go to the dentist. But.
[00:02:43] Speaker B: Take money when you do take lots and lots of money.
[00:02:45] Speaker A: But once you give me enough money, can you fix my tooth?
[00:02:48] Speaker B: Yeah. But when you have dentures, I mean, you're free.
My former student and colleague Kate Bowler, I think has done wonderful work in making clear that we cannot manipulate God.
And things happen and they happen within God's sovereign judgment. And we live within that faith. We have to have that faith, that we accept that.
And if that were only more broadly understood, I think we'd be a much stronger.
[00:03:23] Speaker A: Well, I think on one hand, God knows everything we need, everything we encounter or experiencing, good and bad and painful, and loves us and wants to help us and care. So on one hand I can ask God for anything, but at the other, I have to be realistic to know that the way in which God might remedy this element or this problem might come through other people. Because if everyone's made the image of God and God does use people to bring about healing in a sense, and I mean doctors.
But then there are those, you know, there are those like Oral Roberts or Benny Hinn in modern times where people will show up at a tent meeting, a crusade, a fill in arena.
[00:04:03] Speaker B: Kathryn Kuhlmann. Yeah.
[00:04:05] Speaker A: And they literally, they're going there in the anticipation of being healed.
Now, I've been fascinated by this because it seems like potentially because of the faith, naivety, whatever you want to call it, of the person. There are people in the, you know, say 10,000 people in arena that you and I both know that there may be actually some true healings that occur.
And yet there are many that are probably fabricated or they just don't happen at all.
Talk about that a little bit.
[00:04:36] Speaker B: I go back to Kate and there's a line in her book.
Well, she's written several, so I'm not sure which book it is now, but a line that has meant a lot to me. She said, Christians are people who worship the baby who was born to die.
And you unpack that, that we are a people who worships God.
We worship God incarnate in Jesus Christ, but at the same time that baby died and was born to die.
And there is a reality of sin, infinitude.
And you know, and this is what it's too easy to lose, lose sight of.
[00:05:26] Speaker A: So you're saying God in Christ being fully God, fully man, the God, man, born to die.
[00:05:32] Speaker B: Born to die.
[00:05:33] Speaker A: And, and that was inherent because of taking on the flesh, which means he was also fully could truly be tempted. But then he dies. And then the whole crux of Christianity, First Corinthians 15, it's about the resurrection. And so he shows Christ by not just dying, but by rising again, that he's more powerful than death and sin and disease and all these things, toothaches, all these things that, that plague us. And so therefore, as Christians, then you're saying that would be our hope too, is that we know we're dying, we know we're deteriorating.
[00:06:06] Speaker B: And that's the next paragraph. I mean, actually, the line that I just quoted from Kate is at the end of a chapter.
I'm sure that if you were sitting here, she said, yeah, that's the beginning of the next chapter.
I mean, absolutely, that's all part of it. But what we lose sight of in the particular conversation about the healing is that we die, we suffer, and we all do. And that's just part of our lives and the cross we bear as being humans.
And yeah, there are healings that take place. I mean, Lazarus was raised from the dead, but he did die again.
[00:06:45] Speaker A: Right. I mean, as did those raised with Christ at the resurrection.
They died again, too.
[00:06:52] Speaker B: Lazarus did die.
There was a delayed in all this. Yeah.
But I think Pentecostalism has done an enormous amount of good and only look in the U.S. i mean, the world's seen as a whole much bigger story. I mean, I'm going to try to teach a course on world Christianity in my church in the Falls. I've been looking around and probably about 1.2 billion Catholics in this world, but maybe 600 million Pentecostal Charismatics and second largest Christian movement on the planet, 600.
[00:07:33] Speaker A: Million in the world today. Pentecostal.
[00:07:35] Speaker B: That's.
You can't nail that down with precision. But religious demographers are moving in that direction. 600 million, more than a half a billion. And people are charismatic Pentecostal.
Well, there has to be a reason. These things just don't happen by accident.
So for a movement to have grown this fast around the world and touched this many people, obviously it has done them a huge amount of good. It's done the church a lot of good.
And I, I'm one of the.
Ultimately, I think American Pentecostals did some things that harm people, including me.
But at the same time, the global movement has done a vast amount of good for Christianity.
