Hidden

A woman in the crowd had suffered for twelve years with constant bleeding, having spent everything she had on doctors, and she could find no cure. Coming up behind Jesus, she touched the fringe of his robe. Immediately, the bleeding stopped.
“Who touched me?” Jesus asked.
Everyone denied it, and Peter said, “Master, this whole crowd is pressing up against you.”
But Jesus said, “Someone deliberately touched me, for I felt healing power go out from me.”
When the woman realized that she could not stay hidden, she began to tremble and fell to her knees in front of him. The whole crowd heard her explain why she had touched him and that she had been immediately healed. “Daughter,” he said to her, “your faith has made you well. Go in peace.” Luke 8:42-47 NLT

Hidden. That one word describes this woman’s problem, and in a sense describes her. She had a problem that she hid from the world, and so in a sense, she was hiding her true self. Vaginal bleeding was not a subject that people talked about openly in that culture and age. Furthermore, when a woman was bleeding she was regarded as ceremonially unclean, and so therefore could not engage in the normal religious activities that were an integral part of the society and culture. If she was bleeding continuously, she could never engage in such activities. Twelve years is a long time to be on the outside of the normal social life of the community. It is a long time to be regarded as unclean. It is a long time to be avoided by others, for according to the rules of Leviticus, any person who touched her would also be regarded as unclean (Leviticus 15).

So this woman was an outsider. She was likely unmarried, since a man would not want a woman who he could not touch. If she had been married then she may have been abandoned. I like to think she had a husband who loved her and who stood by her side regardless of her awful affliction. But I know that may be wishful thinking. The likelihood is, therefore, that this woman was lonely, poor, and depressed. Not to mention very tired. She must have felt that God had abandoned her.

But she had heard about Jesus, the healer. Perhaps she had seen what he was doing with her own eyes. Perhaps someone had told her about the miracles he was performing. And for some reason faith grew within her. It is hard to imagine why. After all, she had spent everything she had on doctors, and they had not helped her. She could be forgiven for thinking she was a hopeless case. But something about Jesus sparked hope in her, and her hope grew to faith.

There was one problem. Jesus was a rabbi, a holy man. Some were saying that he was the Son of God, but she hardly knew what that meant. Whatever, she knew the rules: her affliction made her ceremonially unclean. How could she expect a rabbi to touch her? If she walked up to him and begged him for healing, as she had seen other people do, he might ask her what the problem was. There was always a crowd around him. She would be forced to reveal her uncleanness to everyone and she wasn’t sure she could cope with the embarrassment. And she was not quite sure how Jesus would respond.

She was worried for him too. She didn’t want his reputation to be tarnished. She feared what people would think and say about Jesus if he did indeed touch her, and heal her. Would they shun him for touching her, when they realized his compassion had made him ceremonially unclean? Would they be angry at her for spoiling it for everyone else?

But she longed for his touch. She had not been touched by anyone for years. She believed his touch might heal her, might free her from her prison of loneliness. She suspected that the power that was in him could heal her, even if he was not conscious of it. So she came up with a plan. “Coming up behind Jesus, she touched the fringe of his robe. Immediately, the bleeding stopped.”

Of course her plan misfired somewhat. Jesus knew, immediately, that the touch he had experienced from this woman was intentional, not accidental. He stopped and turned and sough her out. Suddenly all the attention was on her, and her problem, much to her distress. Jesus could have said nothing. He could have kept that knowledge to himself, knowing that confronting her would bring embarrassment. But he didn’t. He called her out. Why?

Jesus knew the rules too. He had read Leviticus, had it taught to him from childhood. He wanted people to know that sometimes rules had to take second place to mercy, that there was no medical problem that would prevent him reaching out and touching a person who was suffering. He wanted people to know that sickness would never be a barrier between people and God. He wanted people to know that even things that had always been thought to make a person unclean were not a barrier to them receiving his healing touch. Jesus was not afraid of menstrual blood, any more than he was afraid of leprosy or any of the multitude of other illnesses that could make a person unclean. His touch neutralised the power of such things to separate a person from God.

I think Jesus was making another important point too, that women, in a society that regarded them as second class citizens, were equal to men, regardless of gynaecological realities. He loved them and valued them as much, not less, not more. He did not differentiate between them in the way that society did. He made a point of affirming this woman’s faith, in contrast to the somewhat disparaging remarks he had made about his own (male) disciples’ lack of faith just a short time before (during the storm on the lake). Jesus was setting an example, showing us the divine order of things, an order that humanity has so often forgotten, both then and now.

The faith of women is a strong theme in this chapter of Luke’s book. Though Jesus had chosen his “apostles” from among men, Luke is careful to point out that Jesus had female followers too. These were women from the extremes of life: from a young Mary Magdalene, previously demon possessed but liberated by Jesus, to a scorned prostitute whose life was transformed by Jesus’ acceptance and forgiveness, to a group of wealthy older women from the higher social classes who gave generously of their time and money. Then there was this woman, ostracised for years because of her chronic gynaecological problems, and a twelve year old girl, dearly loved but deathly sick, restored to life even as death had its claws in her.

The men in the chapter, apart perhaps from Jairus, do not come up as beacons of faith. The disciples, caught in a storm on the lake, were characterized by fear, not faith. The Pharisees, in their self righteousness smugness, were shamed by a sinful woman’s devotion.

The woman of this story could not stay hidden, and she could not hide her problem. In a sense she is no different to all of us. We go to great lengths to hide our problems, our sins, from the world, afraid that we will be ostracised or judged by our communities. None of us want our sins, our failures, our dirty little secrets, to be made public for the world to see. We are expert at hiding our bad side and only presenting the scrubbed up, squeaky clean version of us to the world.

But when we come to Jesus we cannot stay hidden. We are forced to confess our failures, our sins, as much to ourselves as to Jesus. We are set free, released, healed, and we can go on our way rejoicing. But acknowledging what we really are, who we really are, is important if we are to grow and develop into the people he wants us to be.

Real danger

One day Jesus said to his disciples, “Let’s cross to the other side of the lake.” So they got into a boat and started out. As they sailed across, Jesus settled down for a nap. But soon a fierce storm came down on the lake. The boat was filling with water, and they were in real danger.
The disciples went and woke him up, shouting, “Master, Master, we’re going to drown!”
When Jesus woke up, he rebuked the wind and the raging waves. Suddenly the storm stopped and all was calm. Then he asked them, “Where is your faith?”
The disciples were terrified and amazed. “Who is this man?” they asked each other. “When he gives a command, even the wind and waves obey him!” Luke 8:22-25 NLT

We live in an age of technology. We have endless gadgets to assist us in our daily life, which has made life easier in many ways than any age that has preceded this one. Definitely the biggest change that has occurred in my lifetime is the immediate availability of almost endless amounts of information to the masses of humanity. A tiny phone which I carry in my pocket gives me access to a worldwide library of data about every subject imaginable.

The result of this is that there is very little that is unknown. Wherever we go, someone has been there before, and they have recorded words and pictures of that place to give us an idea of what to expect. Before we embark on any venture we have access to real time information about what we are about to do which can inform our decisions about whether to do it.

In theory this makes our lives safer, more predictable, than ever before. In theory this should give us a greater sense of control, which should reduce our fear and anxiety in life, make us feel safer and more secure.

Yet as doctors we see an epidemic of anxiety taking hold of our patients, indeed many doctors are themselves affected, with indecision and paralysis the result. Rather than life becoming easier, it seems to have become harder. When it comes to health in the Western world, infectious disease has receded as the main cause of illness, being taken over by chronic diseases of lifestyle and aging. But in recent years the main cause of suffering, especially in the younger generations, is neither of these, but rather mental afflictions, psychiatric illness. We live in the age of depression and anxiety – of apathy, hopelessness, and fear. The technological age has accompanied this. It is easy to wonder if it has caused it.

The disciples of Jesus were eager to follow him wherever he went, to go wherever he asked them to go. On this occasion that meant embarking on a voyage across lake Galilee, an inland body of water that was known for its sudden storms. At least some of his disciples were seasoned sailors, but even they could not predict the weather all the time. If they had misgivings on this occasion Luke did not record them. They simply got in the boat and started out. They did not know what lay ahead.

Jesus, on the other hand, probably did have an inkling of what was going to happen, though he didn’t tell them. He knowingly led them into “real danger,” into harm’s way. Then he promptly went to sleep. As the storm arose the disciples’ anxiety turned to fear and they no doubt began to discuss amongst themselves what they should do. If there was a sail, they would have reefed it and manned the oars. But they quickly realized that they were too far from the shore, and before they could ever get there they would have been swamped and sunk. Life jackets did not exist then, there was no rescue service, and even if there was, no one had a mobile phone or a radio to call them. Even distress flares were a technology that was still a thousand years in the future.

The disciples had nothing to fall back on, there was no hope of rescue, and they began to realize that they were staring death in the face. They were gripped by fear. And there was Jesus asleep in the boat, the spray from the waves splashing over him. They woke him in desperation. He fixed the situation.

Why did anxiety not affect Jesus? Because he had something that try as we might, with all our technological marvels, we do not have. That something is control. Jesus could control the wind and the waves, he could command the storm to stop and it did. He could fix the situation with a word. In so doing he got his disciples out of trouble.

Having done so, he asked them a simple question, “where is your faith?” The disciples were still getting to know Jesus. They had seen him heal, they had seen him cast out demons, but they had never seen him command the elements. They were overwhelmed and though before they were fearful of drowning, now they were terrified. Who was this man they had thrown their lot in with? What couldn’t he do?

There is much we can take from this story. Not least is that we live in a dangerous world, and that sometimes Jesus leads us into danger. A life following Jesus is not always “safe” – there are risks involved which can provoke as great an anxiety for us as the disciples experienced. How often we cry out like the disciples, “Master, Master, we’re going to drown!” This story teaches us something about how to approach such situations, and indeed might contain some keys to how to cope with anxiety in general. It is timely for us in an age of anxiety.

It is natural to respond to anxiety by striving for control. But there are limits to the extent of our control. Despite our technology, we are not God, as much as would like to think we are. Disaster can unexpectedly affect any of us, at any moment. We cannot anticipate every possible scenario, much less control it. The insurance industry is built on this premise, and it is a thriving industry.

What this story teaches us is that though we have little control, Jesus does. And we are his friends, or we can be, if we follow him. If we trust him, he will save us. The key to anxiety is not insurance, nor technology, nor being always in control. It is trust. “Where is your faith?” Jesus asked his disciples. He asks us he same question.

Does that mean that following Jesus gives us control over our circumstances? Does it mean that following Jesus is an insurance policy that always pays out, guaranteeing a life free of suffering or pain? Yes and no. Our ultimate fate is sealed when we put our trust in Jesus. We have the promise of heaven. But though we are encouraged to pray “your kingdom come,” and we are challenged to live by kingdom principles here and now, the fullness of heaven is something that we will not experience before Jesus takes us there. We catch glimpses, of course, and they give us great joy, and increase our hope and faith. But for most, perhaps all of us reading this, the real thing will be after we have died and not before. How and when we die that natural death is uncertain for all of us. What is sure is what awaits us after, if we are followers of Jesus, if we have handed control of our lives over to him.

The more I think about it, the more convinced I become that the answer to anxiety lies in how we think about our own death, how we cope with the reality that we will all die. We live in an age of technological triumph and medical marvels, but they have not helped us cope better with death. In many cases they have made us less resilient, because they deceive us into believing that we have control, when in reality we don’t. Jesus offers a solution to the cause and the reality of death, a solution that nothing and no one else does.

What will we put our trust in? Our technology? Our medicine? Our insurance policies? Our own wisdom and ability? Our achievements? Our goodness? I don’t think Jesus is opposed to any of these. But they will not free us from our deepest existential angst, for we will all die. Jesus challenges us to see all our achievements realistically and not expect them to give us what we long for most deeply – eternal security. That is the ultimate solution to anxiety, and that is something that only he can give. Jesus is the only one who has defeated death, and he holds the key to us doing the same. Whatever boat we are in right now, whether it is on calm, or stormy seas, he says to us, “Trust me. I’m in control.”

Heaven

What blessings await you when people hate you and exclude you and mock you and curse you as evil because you follow the Son of Man. When that happens, be happy! Yes, leap for joy! For a great reward awaits you in heaven. And remember, their ancestors treated the ancient prophets that same way. Luke 6:22-23 NLT

Jesus says that following him may well lead to persecution, and challenges his followers to be happy when they are persecuted. It is not normal to welcome persecution. Our natural desire is to be loved, affirmed, included. Jesus’ challenge is to react not in the normal, natural way, but in an unnatural way: be happy, leap for joy!

How can we do what is so unnatural? Jesus says, simply, by focussing on the rewards of being a Christian, instead of the present suffering. That reward is in heaven.

However, we live in a world where heaven is not a common topic of conversation, even among Christians. We talk about many things when we meet people, but heaven is rarely one of them. The subject of death and what comes after is almost taboo in our society. Even as a doctor I speak seldom of heaven, though the end of life and incurable disease are part of my daily fare.

The goal of so many people’s lives, even Christians, is more about “heaven on earth” than “heaven in heaven” – the reward that comes after earthly life. That is the root of materialism, the pursuit of pleasure, the creation of heaven here and now. If heaven is a place of riches and joy, of great reward, we want it now, not in some vague supernatural future after death. Credit card thinking has taken over – buy now, pay later. Have it all now, fix up the bill some other time. But that kind of thinking is a deception.

Secular humanist thinking has discarded as fantasy the idea of heaven, and has replaced it with the dream of having as much as possible before we die, because after death there is nothing. Heaven is just wishful thinking, they say: “pie in the sky when you die.” Wake up and see that if you don’t have what you want now, you will never have it. This life is all there is. Are we to buy into such thinking?

Sadly, we Christians often do. We find ourselves aspiring to riches and comfort on earth, forgetting heaven. We start thinking in the way of the world, rather than the way Jesus taught us to think. We get deceived into seeing death as the final victor, and spend our life’s energy trying to make this life the ultimate experience.

Some sceptics see the idea of heaven as a construct used by the wealthy and the powerful to keep the masses in their place, to stop them aspiring to more. Rather than sharing their wealth, they offer the poor and needy heaven to keep them happy. They promise the poor riches in a future life, refusing to bless others with the blessings they themselves have received. But this is a distortion of Jesus’ words. He is not promising comfort and hope here to the rich, but to the poor. He has already spoken to the rich: “What sorrow awaits you who are rich, for you have your only happiness now.” (Luke 6:24 NLT)

How much should we focus on heaven? There is a balance to be attained here, since both extremes lead to problems. If our focus is all on heaven, we can end up ignoring the problems of the world around us and become too “heavenly minded” to be of any “earthly good.” If we ignore heaven, living as if it is not real, we expend all our energy on the materialistic deception – that the winner is the one with the most when he dies. But that is meaningless, and a “chasing after wind.” (Ecclesiastes 1 and 2).

Jesus says that focussing on heaven will bring us joy in the midst of suffering. And suffering is real. Few individuals are spared suffering of some kind during their earthly sojourn, though many go to great lengths to avoid it. We suffer ourselves, and we see those around us suffering.

The challenge for us, it seems to me, is to focus on heaven when we think of our own suffering, and focus on earth when we think of the suffering of others. This helps us to be like Jesus. However, our natural tendency is the opposite: we focus on earth when we see our own suffering, trying to create a protective cocoon around us, a world of beauty and ease and prosperity. But when faced with the suffering of others we say, “don’t fret, heaven awaits you.”

Heaven is not something we think of much these days. But perhaps it should be.

Hated

What blessings await you when people hate you and exclude you and mock you and curse you as evil because you follow the Son of Man. When that happens, be happy! Yes, leap for joy! For a great reward awaits you in heaven. And remember, their ancestors treated the ancient prophets that same way. Luke 6:22-23 NLT

It is not cool to be a Christian – a follower of Jesus – these days. Perhaps it never was. People look at you as if you are weird, as if you are unintelligent, and nowadays more and more as if you are a bigot, a racist, a sexist, or a “hater,” to coin a popular word. We live in a world where many of what are called “norms” – traditional values – are based on Biblical ideas. But it is considered far more popular, intelligent, enlightened, to challenge norms nowadays than to preserve them.

But even if we never say a thing about norms, or traditional values, we Christians are treated with anything from pity to skepticism, suspicion or outright hostility. Taunting Christians was popular in Roman times, when they were fed to the wild beasts in the coliseum, and it is popular now, when they are laughed at and not taken seriously because of their stance on things. There is nothing the contemporary media seems to like more than to make fun of Christians publicly.

Of course the very human behaviours of hating, excluding, mocking and cursing are not directed only at Christians. These actions are practised by many toward many, and, sadly, Christians themselves have sometimes been the perpetrators, as well as the recipients of such behaviours. Perhaps this is because hating, excluding, mocking and cursing are typically human, and Christians are human too. But such behaviours are not the way of Jesus, and any Christians who practise them are not following him, but the ways of the world, what the Bible would call their “human nature.” Jesus challenges us to do just the opposite. See what Jesus says a few lines later in this famous sermon: “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you!”

None of us like to be hated, excluded, mocked or cursed. Deep inside, all of us long to be loved, accepted, included, affirmed. This applies to believers as much as non-believers. As a doctor I see the results of this kind of cruel treatment. I see people who are depressed, angry, hurting, because they do not receive the inclusion and affirmation they crave, because they feel outside. I see people whose lives fall apart because they are victims of the unkind actions of others.

It is easy to judge Christians when they are silent about their faith, but it is an understandable defence mechanism. Christians long to be loved too, and if they know that publicly declaring their allegiance to Jesus can result in the opposite, no wonder they keep quiet. I have done the same myself many times: stayed silent when God is being mocked, like Peter in Gethsemane, denying Christ. My fear of exclusion or worse, has overcome my faith, even though I know that Jesus loves me more than any of these others.

I admire those who are open about their love for Jesus, publicly Christian, regardless of the reactions of the world around them. The price they pay is not uncommonly the kind of treatment that Jesus describes here. And that hurts.

Yet Jesus challenges us to be public, to acknowledge our allegiance to him, to be proud of him. Then in the next breath he warns us that doing so will bring pain and rejection. Hardly an attractive offer. But there it is. Inevitable pain.

How are followers of Jesus to respond to that inevitable pain? Jesus says clearly that they should be happy, that they should leap for joy. Is he crazy? Is he promoting masochism? Why would anyone rejoice at being persecuted?

Jesus gives two answers to that unspoken question: first, rejoice because a great reward awaits you in heaven; second, rejoice because you are in good company, you are walking with giants. It is certainly nice to be identified with the great men and women of the faith – the ancient prophets. That is affirming, that is inclusive. We gain a sense of belonging to something bigger than us, the fellowship of spiritual heroes. But this promise of heaven, what are we to make of that?

Jesus often refers to heaven, but it is not something that we speak much of these days. How important is it, and what part should this hope of heaven play in our lives?

Blessed

God blesses you who are poor,
for the Kingdom of God is yours.
God blesses you who are hungry now,
for you will be satisfied.
God blesses you who weep now,
for in due time you will laugh.

Luke 6:20-21 NLT

On Facebook we post status updates that describe how we feel. Happy, sad, anxious, bewildered, confused, excited and so on. Facebook gives us little “emoticons,” “emojis,” to give a pictorial symbol for each feeling.

“Blessed” could be seen as a feeling. It could be given an emoji to be posted on Facebook. I imagine a yellow “smiley” – giving a picture of someone who is happy, satisfied, comfortable, smiling. Readers would wonder what it was that was making the poster feel “blessed.” We would probably assume that something good had happened, that relationships were satisfying, that job, personal finances, or some aspect of their circumstances was particularly positive at present. Perhaps an unexpected bonus in some area or life.

We would not imagine any of the kind of people Jesus describes: the poor, the hungry and the sad. This seems to be a contradiction in terms. Surely such people are not blessed, they are cursed. Jesus doesn’t make sense. Is Jesus talking in riddles? How can we understand this?

I believe it is because he is not talking about feelings. Rather he is talking about status. He is not talking about something that comes from inside a person (feeling blessed) but about something that comes from outside (being blessed). Bless is a verb – a doing word. But who is doing the blessing? Because if someone is blessed, it implies that someone is blessing them. In this case, it is God who is doing the blessing.

But if God is blessing, why are the circumstances so difficult? To answer that we need to understand blessing. What does it mean to bless? There are quite a few examples in the Bible. Look, for example, at Genesis 27:28-29, when Isaac blessed (mistakenly) Jacob. It outlines Isaac’s wish for Jacob, that he would prosper. His blessing was greatly desired by Jacob, to the extent that he resorted to deceit in order to get it.

But the blessing was not a statement of the way things were so much as an expression of the way things would be. It could be said that when someone receives a blessing, when they are “blessed,” they are receiving a promise. Their present circumstances may be quite different to what is promised, but the promise brings hope that those circumstances will change. That the end will be better than the beginning.

When Jesus says “blessed are the poor, the hungry and the sad,” he is not talking about how those groups of people feel. He is talking about God’s promise to them. He is saying that God sees them, that God favors them, that they are important to him, and that he has not forgotten them.

So this is a statement about God, not about the people who are blessed. It says that God’s heart is inclined towards such individuals, because he is a compassionate and merciful God who loves them deeply. It says that God’s attitude towards the disadvantaged is quite different to the attitude of the world, which tends to have all its focus on the rich, the beautiful, the happy.

This is good news for those who are struggling, financially, physically, emotionally. It says that God has not forgotten them. It says that the way things appear is not necessarily the way things are. It says that the end will be better than the beginning, that the future is better than the present. It gives hope. And hope gives life.

Sometimes it is hard to understand why Christian believers seem to possess joy when everything around them, their circumstances, are so dark. Why even in the midst of trouble they have hope.

It is because they are blessed. They have received the blessing and they are living in the joy of what is promised, not in the misery of the present. They refuse to look at circumstances and say “God has deserted me.” Instead they look at what Jesus said, and what he did, and say, “God loves me.”

Christians are often criticized and mocked because of this stubborn hope. Christianity is discarded as unworthy of our allegiance, because it is just “pie in the sky when I die.” We want it all, and we want it now. We want good feelings now. We want riches and food and happiness now.

The rich, the healthy, the happy – they have it now. But they have already got their reward. There is nothing ahead that is better. There is nothing to look forward to. Is it any wonder that in this age, which is richer and healthier than any before it, that depression and anxiety is rampant, and that so many have lost hope. That is what happens when people lose sight of the blessing and the blesser, and live only for their own comfort, their own wealth, their own prosperity.

If you are poor or hungry, if you are weeping, take heart. God sees you, and he loves you. You are not forgotten. Your circumstances are not a reflection of your value in God’s scheme of things. There is hope. There is a future. It may not be in earthly prosperity, for that is not guaranteed. Your prosperity may have to wait till heaven. We will only ever get glimpses of heaven on earth. But heaven is coming, for those whose hope is in God.

And that is good news.

Sin and sickness

Luke 5:18-20 NIV
Some men came carrying a paralyzed man on a mat and tried to take him into the house to lay him before Jesus. When they could not find a way to do this because of the crowd, they went up on the roof and lowered him on his mat through the tiles into the middle of the crowd, right in front of Jesus. When Jesus saw their faith, he said, “Friend, your sins are forgiven.”

Which is most important? Sin or sickness? To the paralyzed man it would appear to have been sickness: he was severely disabled. Why did Jesus do what he did? Why even bring up the issue of the man’s sinfulness? Sounds insensitive and uncaring, almost cruel, as if Jesus had chosen to ignore the man’s “real” problem and focus on something irrelevant in the situation – his sinfulness. Was Jesus just using this poor man to pick a fight with the Pharisees? Jesus didn’t usually start talking about sin when people came to be healed, so why did he do it with this guy? Why not just heal him and let him go on his way rejoicing?

I don’t really like the word “sin.” It has so many negative connotations. Surely it’s better to focus on people’s strengths than their weaknesses, their potential for good rather than their propensity for bad. Why do Christians so often focus on the bad in people and the world, rather than the good? Why are we so negative? This tendency of Christians has given us a bad name in the post modern world in which we live, a world where the concept of sin has been relegated to the waste bin.

Jesus was a positive person. My reading of the New Testament gives an impression that people felt blessed rather than condemned by meeting him. Yet in this situation where sickness was apparently the main issue to be dealt with, and sin hadn’t even entered the conversation, Jesus chose to make the forgiveness of sins the focus, not the healing of disease.

It would be easy to think that Jesus was just using the man and his problems to teach the people around him a lesson and to provoke the Pharisees, but I think that would be misjudging Jesus. In my years as a doctor I have discovered that humans think in terms of cause and effect, and though it is not stated and was very possibly not even known by the onlookers, I suspect that the man before Jesus was a man racked by guilt. If Jesus chose to focus first on the forgiveness of his sin, and not on his paralysis, I believe it was because this was the deepest and most relevant need of the man before him.

How could that be? We have no way of knowing why the man was paralyzed, just that he was. Was it an act of stupidity which had damaged his spinal cord? Was he tormented by regret? Had his paralysis resulted from some wrongdoing – something “sinful”? Did he feel he was being punished for that wrong doing? Perhaps the stupid or sinful act that had led to his paralysis had resulted in the death or injury of another person, someone innocent of wrong doing. Was he racked by guilt?

I have even wondered if his sin might have been generally known in the community – that people around him knew that his paralysis was the result of his sin. Perhaps he received little sympathy for his predicament precisely because people knew it was his own fault. Perhaps he was judged by the community around him as being deserving of his suffering. Perhaps, apart from his few faithful friends, he was, like the leper in the same chapter, outcast.

The action of Jesus in forgiving the man’s sin was, I believe, more significant for the man than the healing that followed. This may be hard for us to imagine, with our preoccupation with the physical, but I believe that Jesus was in fact dealing with the man’s deepest need. The man could live with his spinal injury, but I believe his guilt was killing him. Even if no-one around him knew what was going on in this man’s heart, Jesus knew. It was that guilt that Jesus wanted to deal with first and foremost. Jesus went straight to the core issue.

Sin leads to guilt, and guilt can kill us. We ignore sin at our peril. Doctors, like anyone else, can be fooled into believing that sickness is the only thing that matters for people, but we need to seek to understand the whole person, and understand that the real problem may not be the one that seems most obvious. Sickness is, of course, extremely important, but it is not always the only thing, and it is not always the most important thing. Jesus knew, and we should be aware, that dealing with sin is often of greater significance in healing than dealing with sickness and disability. How we do that as doctors is an interesting question, but there is no doubt that it is important.

Leprosy and love

 

Luke 5:12-13 NIV
While Jesus was in one of the towns, a man came along who was covered with leprosy. When he saw Jesus, he fell with his face to the ground and begged him, “Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean.” Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man. “I am willing,” he said. “Be clean!” And immediately the leprosy left him.

I am a doctor and sickness is my business. When I see a person afflicted by a disease in the Bible I am naturally interested. Questions come automatically to mind. What was this man’s problem? Did he have the infection we now know as leprosy, which damages nerves and results in tissue damage and deformity? Or was it some other skin affliction? Luke says that he was “covered with leprosy.” Leprosy certainly has dramatic skin manifestations but it is more than a “covering disease.” The diagnosis is always important because it dictates the treatment. So what disease did this man really have?

But neither the man nor Jesus was interested in the diagnosis as such. Nor its treatment. Luke was a doctor and had no doubt seen many cases of leprosy over the years. Diagnosis and treatment was his business too. But beyond the qualifying statement that the man was “covered” in leprosy (which is not specified in the other gospel accounts of this meeting) he makes no medical comment.

I suspect this was because Luke had come to a place in his life where he was more interested in people than disease, and more interested in Jesus than medicine. He wanted to record the man’s words, because they said something about the person, and Jesus’ response, because it showed something about Jesus. The disease was the least important part of this story, even if for doctors it can easily become the most important.

Perhaps we Christian health workers can learn something from this. We meet people every day, and while diagnosis and treatment is what we do, we should never forget that the person before us is the most important thing, and, dare I say it, in every encounter we should be as interested in what Jesus can do for the people we meet as we are in what our own expertise and treatments can do for them.

So what do we learn about this person with leprosy, and what does this encounter teach us about Jesus?

Unclean
Interestingly, this man seemed not to see himself as sick, but as unclean. So when he came to Jesus his request was not for healing but for cleansing. Jesus responded to the man’s felt need. He did not say, “be healed,” but “be clean.” And the leprosy left him. He was, in other words, healed. He was no longer ashamed. He was no longer outcast. Instead, he was clean and acceptable, and life could take a whole new direction.

We doctors can learn much from this. We may understand the disease, we may have wonderful treatments at our disposal. But unless we can discern the person’s perceived need and address that, even if we can eradicate the illness, they will not be thankful, nor will they be healed. People are fascinating. A disease can be cured and the person can feel just as sick. A sickness can be uncured and the person can feel restored, cared for, loved, clean, healed. Health is more than the absence of disease, and, as important as the eradication of disease is, treating the person is even more important.

Feeling unclean is a common human experience. In the past this was often expressed as a burden of sin, but sin is no longer a popular concept. Juest the same, though modern secular people reject the idea of being sinful, the feeling of being unclean is no less a part of the human condition. Today it is expressed more often as a feeling of inadequacy, of being not good enough. We are not smart enough, not attractive enough, not successful enough. We feel like failures. We don’t make the grade.

We do all kinds of things to deal with such perceptions of ourselves, in order to make ourselves better, good enough. You could say that we do all sorts of things to make ourselves “clean.” But just like the leper in this story, we feel trapped in our selves, unable to escape. We are desperately worried what other people think, what they see when they look at us. We feel like this man “covered in leprosy,” “unclean.”

In our desperation, we come to Jesus. We come as messed up failures. We come as people who feel rejected and inadequate. We hear him speak, we see what he has done for others, and we find ourselves hoping beyond hope that maybe he will do the same for us. “If you are willing, you can make me clean.”

The willingness of Jesus
Jesus is willing. I love that. He wants to meet our need. He wants to make us clean. Jesus has our deepest anxieties, our greatest needs, in his heart. He cares. He loves. For every one of us, every individual person on the planet. He sees our struggles and our suffering and he is moved to tears by compassion. He reaches out and touches us, and says, “I am willing.”

It is this seeing, this caring, this compassion, that changes people. We doctors can learn from Jesus. We need to be like him. We need to express our willingness, like Jesus. Our focus needs to be on our patients, not just their diseases. We need to engage primarily with them, not their symptoms and signs, which are important but secondary. We need to listen to them to learn what their problems are, rather than try to redefine their problems to be something that we feel more comfortable or secure with. We need to respond to their felt needs.

Touching people
“Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man…”

Why did Jesus touch this man with leprosy? Surely he could just “speak healing to him.” Why did he touch him? There is much that could be said about that, but perhaps the thing that occurs to me when I read it is that touch is the thing that this man had lacked for years, and was perhaps his greatest need, his greatest longing. He had not been touched for years. People were afraid to touch him, because they might be infected, contaminated, unclean. This man had become “untouchable.”

But is it not touch that we all long for? How does it affect a man when he is never touched? Certainly he begins to feel unclean. He feels rejected. He feels unloved. He feels that life is empty and meaningless, not worth living. Jesus know all this. He reached out and touched the man. He said, “be clean.”

There is healing in physical touch. There is power in this kind of connection between two human beings. That is one of the drawbacks of remote medicine, where doctors and patients connect via telephone, or email, or Skype. Touch is missing. We know the value of touch in diagnosis (listen, look, feel). But I believe that touch is also part of the treatment, and it is a tragedy when that is removed from the doctor-patient relationship.

Seeing the person beyond the disease
How tuned into people are we really? How well do we see them, hear them, understand them? How good are we at seeing beyond the disease to the person? How willing are we to touch people, to show them that we care, to be moved to tears with compassion, to engage with people at an emotional level? How good are we at communicating to them the words and power of Jesus? How convinced are we that Jesus has anything to offer those who are aware of their own “uncleanness”? How much do we love them?

This word love is so misused nowadays. It is not a word that is often used in a medical context because it is mistakenly understood as an emotion, and emotions are unprofessional.

But love is so much more than an emotion, though emotion is an important part of love. And who decided that emotion and professionalism do not go together?

We need to rediscover the true meaning of love, and for that we need to look at Jesus. Then we will see what love is really like. We see it here in the story of the leper. We see it in so many of the encounters that are recorded between Jesus and the people he met. We see it in the final “work” of Jesus – his self sacrifice on the cross.

Manipulation

The devil led him to Jerusalem and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. “If you are the Son of God,” he said, “throw yourself down from here. For it is written: “‘He will command his angels concerning you to guard you carefully; they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone. ’” Jesus answered, “It is said: ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test. ’” (Luke 4:9-12)

Here we see the devil employing one of his oldest and most trusted techniques: manipulation. The devil clearly attempts to manipulate Jesus, using apparently innocent questions and suggestions backed up by carefully selected (and admittedly confusing) Bible passages to get Jesus to pursue a certain course of action. The devil wants to be able to trick Jesus into doing something which he believes has the potential to discredit Jesus and his Father, but even if it does not achieve that result, then at least to place Jesus into a position where consciously or unconsciously he is doing the devil’s will.

Manipulation is a strategy for control that the devil delights in. It is a behaviour that is easily observed in the interactions of the people we see around us, indeed, even in ourselves and those closest to us. We get angry when we feel we are being manipulated. We are horrified when we realise we are manipulators ourselves. We see manipulation in many areas of life, from relationships to advertising, from politics to entertainment. In each case manipulation is a way that people use to get others to do what they want. Sometimes the outcome is relatively harmless but often it is deeply disturbing. It can be frighteningly destructive, because the desired outcome of manipulation is control, and control means power, and power can easily be abused.

In the third temptation we see the devil trying to exploit Jesus’ uncertainty about whether the Father loves him, and whether the Father is able to save him. He uses a well known Psalm to sow doubt into Jesus’ mind. It didn’t work well with Jesus, because Jesus was secure in the Father’s love. The uncertainty the devil was hoping to exploit was simply not there. But such attacks often hit home when they are employed against us, because we are not so secure in the Father’s love. We are not sure that the Father has our best in his heart and mind.

Our deepest desire is to be loved. To be loved by God and to be secure in that love meets our most profound need. God goes to great lengths to communicate that love, and when we believe it and receive it into our lives there is the potential for us to be transformed. But despite God’s efforts we feel unsure. As such, we are fair game for the devil who wants to take us from unsure to unbelieving. He goes to great lengths to prevent or destroy faith in the Father’s love and goodwill. He uses our deepest anxieties, tries to awaken doubt in our hearts. He points to circumstances and says that they are evidence that God has abandoned us. He highlights God’s apparent silence, or inactivity, and uses it to discredit God. He encourages us to put God to the test, to see if he is really there.

But if we give in, if we put God to the test in response to the whisperings of the devil we are adopting Satan’s strategies. We are attempting to manipulate God, to get him to do what we want him to do, to do what we think he should do. We say to God, “if you really loved me you would …. “ (insert something relevant to you). But this is manipulation and it is no more right when we use it to control God than when we use it to control those we meet in our everyday lives.

God will not be controlled however, indeed cannot be controlled. Ultimately he is the one who decides. And when we cry out to God and he does not respond in the way we ask, the devil exploits our disappointment to cast even greater doubt on the love and power of God. He uses our reactions to turn us against God.

Evangelists and preachers have often been accused of manipulation, and there is no doubt that some religious leaders do use manipulative techniques to get people to act or behave in a certain way, just as political leaders do. Manipulation, when it is used as a method of control (and it is seldom used for any other purpose), is just as wrong when it is used with religious goals as it it when it is used for political goals.

I can imagine an objection: isn’t control of others important to maintain order and decency? Don’t people need to be controlled to create a manageable society? When the devil attempted to elicit Jesus’ worship by offering him authority over the kingdoms of the world, wasn’t he really doing a good thing for the world, giving Jesus control? Surely Jesus in control of the world would make it a better place.

Here we see the fundamental difference between Jesus and the devil. The devil wants to control people but God wants them to be free to choose. The devil wants people to behave in certain ways and will offer them any amount of good things to get them to do so, or alternatively threaten them with any amount of bad for the same reason. God, on the other hand, also wants people to behave in a certain way, but he does not force them, either with threats of bad or promises of good, in order to achieve that end. God simply says, I love you, and then waits for us to respond to his love. He does not threaten to withdraw his love if we do not behave that way. He does not offer us more love if we do. He loves us all, each and every one, the same. He loves us enough to die for us, but he never tries to force us to love him back. God tries to get us to change our way of life by loving us. The devil tries to get us to change by controlling us.

Often people ask the question, how could a loving God allow such things to happen? The answer is in some ways simple, even if it is confusing. God allows such things to happen because he loves us. If his way of relating to us was one of control rather than love, he would not allow such things to happen, because they are not consistent with his original plans and purposes for the world. But then we would not be free. And God’s greatest desire for us is freedom. He wants us to love him, but he will never force us to love him. He wants us to worship him, but he wants us to choose to do so. He wants us to behave in certain ways but he gives us the freedom not to.

We live in a world which is divided along religious lines. A large part of the world has been impacted by this God that Jesus showed us and of which the Bible speaks. That part of the world is sometimes called “the free world,” which is interesting. Why is it free? I believe it is because people there experience a freedom that comes from a God who wants us to be free. Non believers seem often to attribute this freedom not to God and the Bible but to evolution, the idea that humanity is constantly developing toward a better state. Such a concept is hard for me to accept. If evolution is such a powerful force for good, why do we not see it all around the world? Has the West climbed further up the evolutionary ladder than those in other parts of the world, and if so why? If evolution is random, surely every part of the world would have come the same distance as every other part. If the freedom we see in the West is better, a higher form of life – for the long term survival of the human species that is – then why have the billions who live in the non-west not simply died out, being of a lower life form, not conducive to survival?

Evolution is not a satisfying explanation for me of why things are the way they are. It doesn’t make sense.

The world I see around me is testimony to the existence of a God, revealed by Jesus, who loves the world, and who offers freedom rather than slavery. It is distressing to see increasing numbers in the West using their freedom to deny or denounce God, but God allows that. It is distressing to see people manipulating and controlling and oppressing others for their own ends. God allows such things because he is committed to freedom, and if he were to intervene he would need to take away that freedom, at least for some.

No, God does not control. He loves. He asks us to respond to his love, not his threats. He does not try to manipulate us into loving him. He speaks into our lives, he acts in our lives, and he waits for us to respond. If we don’t, then he pursues us with his love. But if we keep rejecting his love he eventually backs off. God will not force us.

There is suffering in the world. There is pain. We don’t understand it. The devil tries his best to convince us that freedom from suffering is the evidence of God’s love, and therefore logically speaking, suffering indicates the absence of God’s love. The life of Jesus challenges us to think differently, challenges us to believe that God’s love exists in the midst of the pain, that the presence or absence of pain is not a reliable indicator of the absence or presence of God’s love.

Indeed if we say yes to God’s love I believe we can endure the pain and suffering. I believe that deep down humans long for love more than they long for freedom from suffering. Ultimately I believe that love is more important to us than comfort. God confronts us with his love, he pursues us with his love, through the trials and tears of life. He relieves our pain, but does not always remove it. He dries our tears and comforts us in our suffering, but he does not guarantee a life free of them. He asks us to trust him even in the midst of our questions and fears.

There are important principles for us here as we confront the problem of pain and suffering in the world, whether we are professional health carers or just ordinary Christians, whether we employ “natural” or “supernatural” methods of healing. Both of these are important, for various reasons. We are called to relieve the suffering of others and to show God’s power over sickness. But these are not our primary calling. Our primary calling is to love. Even if I can heal all sicknesses, even if I can dismiss every pain, if I do not love I am nothing. The doctor who heals without love is nothing. The healer who heals without love is nothing. The healing has value in itself, but it will not make either the recipient or the giver into better people. Love is more important than healing.

Jesus resisted manipulation by the devil. He said no to the devil’s temptation to manipulate the Father. Jesus was not and is not a manipulator. The devil was and is. Jesus tries to change us by loving us. The devil tries to change us by manipulating us. Jesus is committed to our freedom, while the devil is committed to controlling us.

Are we people of manipulation and control, or love and freedom?

The stumbling block of suffering

The devil led him to Jerusalem and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. “If you are the Son of God,” he said, “throw yourself down from here. For it is written: “‘He will command his angels concerning you to guard you carefully; they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone. ’” Jesus answered, “It is said: ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test. ’” (Luke 4:9-12)

Why does the devil use Psalm 91 in his strategy to down Jesus? Read the psalm and see what it says. It is, on the surface, a very encouraging psalm that speaks about the love and protection of God for those who put their faith in Him. It reads a little like a divine insurance policy. Why does the devil draw attention to God in this way if he is seeking to discredit Him?

The answer seems simple. The devil knew, as Jesus knew, that the claims of Psalm 91 do not always eventuate, at least not in the way we would naturally imagine after reading it. History and simple observation show us that being a believer is no guarantee for the safe, secure, happy and prosperous life that is promised in Psalm 91. Suffering seems to be as often the experience of the believer as the non-believer. Indeed, even the Bible in other places laments the prosperity of the “wicked” and the suffering of the believer. The book of Job is an extensive argument about this very question.

The devil is simply exploiting this conundrum, this apparent paradox. He uses it to tempt Jesus to doubt the love and the power of God. He uses it to tempt us to his desired outcome – doubt, leading to unbelief. Psalm 91, and passages like it, have been a stumbling block for many who have put their faith in God, and indeed even a barrier for some to putting their faith in God in the first place. The devil knew it then and he knows it now. It is no wonder he used this strategy to attempt to destroy Jesus, and it is no wonder that he uses it now to try to destroy us. It is not suffering per se that the devil draws attention to here, but the reality of a God who does not always react to situations and events in the way we think he should.

As we read passages like Psalm 91 we can fall into two traps, traps that the devil would gladly see us caught in. The first is the prosperity gospel, the belief that being a believer is all about having a comfortable life, free of pain or suffering or struggle, rejoicing over the misfortune of our enemies. There is no doubt that many have become believers down through the ages for simply this reason, because they perceive that faith may lead to greater financial, economic, or social success. A simple reading of Psalm 91 can easy lead to such a perception.

The second pitfall is to fall into cynicism and unbelief as we compare the apparent promise of immunity from pain with the observed reality of believers who suffer. Pain and suffering is a part of reality, and any who work in healthcare are very aware of that reality, a part of the human experience that they observe every day.

We do not just observe the suffering of others. Often the suffering and pain we encounter is our own. We look back at how we gave our life to Jesus, we remember the very great blessings we experienced in one way or another, but we see the way the wheels have fallen off, as things have gone wrong in our lives, often for no apparent reason. We go from an overwhelming feeling of blessing to an equally overwhelming feeling of being cursed. It happened to Job in the Old Testament account. It happens to some of us. And in the meantime we see the “wicked,” the unbelievers, around us, apparently prospering. We begin to doubt God. There are those of us who abandon him altogether.

I read a novel recently which explores this question in painful detail – Silence, by Shusaku Endo, a Japanese Christian of the last century. It is soon to be released as a film by Martin Scorsese. It will be interesting to see what he makes of it. The novel does not offer any easy answers, but it is not a story without hope. Its strength lies in its willingness to not avoid the question. Interestingly, Shusaku Endo, despite his struggles in life, many of which are expressed in the book, did not abandon his faith. Just as Jesus did not abandon God in response to the temptation of the devil. But this strategy of the devil is and always has been a powerful weapon in his struggle against God, and all of us who have chosen to put our faith in God need to come to terms with the question in some way if we are to weather the storms of life with our faith intact.

How did Jesus deal with the devil? On the surface it would seem he simply sidestepped the question, refused to be drawn into the debate. And perhaps that is a good way for us too sometimes, to avoid being drawn into a debate that can be so fraught. But I believe there is more to Jesus’ response than just burying his head in the sand. He said no for a number of reasons. First, he thought about who was speaking. Could he be trusted? Should he be drawn into the devil’s games? What effect would that have? Second, he thought about the possible outcomes if he gave in and did what the devil had suggested. How might the Father act if Jesus threw himself off the temple? Would he rescue him? Or wouldn’t he? What would be the effect of a spectacular rescue? What would be the effect of no rescue? Third, he thought about whether he needed to prove the Father’s love, for himself, or for others. Was this kind of “proof” the kind of proof that he wanted to base his mission on? Was it the kind of proof that God desired?

I have previously written that Jesus recognised the devil’s voice and did not trust him. He also resisted doing the will of the devil, which in this case was to test God. Jesus was only interested in doing the will of the Father and since it was not the Father who had challenged him to jump off the temple he was not willing to do it. Jesus knew the devil’s voice and he rejected it, and he knew the devil’s will and rejected that too. We should follow Jesus’s lead in this.

But how did Jesus think about Psalm 91, the psalm so cleverly quoted by the devil? Jesus knew, as we know, that things do not always turn out the way we might expect after reading such a psalm. He knew, as we know, that suffering is a part of the reality that we live in, just as prosperity is. The prosperity of believers is true, but so is the suffering of believers. But what does it say about God? How did Jesus deal with the knowledge that part of God’s will was for him to suffer, indeed that Jesus’ suffering was absolutely central to God’s plans for the world? How do we deal with the fact that suffering may well be part of God’s will for us?

I believe that Jesus knew from a very early age that he was on the earth to suffer, but at the same time he never doubted the depths of love that God had for him or for the world. He questioned certainly – it is recorded in the account of Jesus’ crucifixion. “Why have you forsaken me?” he cried out from the cross. As we ourselves sometimes cry out in desperation. But he did not abandon God, even in his hour of ultimate suffering. He believed in God’s love and power to the very end. But what is the proof of God’s love? What did Jesus base his trust in God’s love on? How could God allow Jesus to suffer if he loved him? How can he allow us to suffer if he loves us? How can we be sure of his love?

The challenge is to stop looking at circumstances as being the determiner, the indicator, of God’s love. It is natural do do so, but we are challenged not to. I believe that we need to stop looking at circumstances as indicating truth. Suffering does not negate God’s love. Prosperity does not prove it. Suffering may be part of God’s will and prosperity may be a sign that we have surrendered to the devil. But if we don’t look at circumstances to know whether God loves us or not, what do we look at?

The answer, I believe, is to look at what God says about himself, and what God shows about himself and his purposes in this world, and finally what God does.

These are hard questions and I cannot say that I have resolved them in my mind. I struggle. I bumble along. I make mistakes constantly. I hold onto the love and power of God, some would say blindly, but I don’t believe that I have shut my eyes to reality. I am a doctor and I see the suffering of the world in its many forms. But I choose not to see that suffering as a sign that God doesn’t care, or that he has abandoned us, or that he doesn’t exist. I choose to believe, with Jesus, that God does care, that he is all powerful, and that despite the suffering I see that God is working his purposes out for the good of the world that he loves.

I believe that when he recorded this account of Jesus’ temptations Luke was also aware of these questions. He did not sidestep the issues. Luke wrote his book because he wanted people to know that there was a God that had come to earth in human form in order to show his love, and his power against sin and suffering and death, through an extraordinary life and an even more extraordinary death, followed by the apparently most extraordinary thing of all – the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. But even here at the beginning of Luke’s account the age old questions start to appear. We see the devil at work, we see him striving against God, desperate to discredit him, and we see the way God responded. We become aware that Jesus walked the same difficult path as us, confronted by the same painful questions, struggling with the same difficult choices.

Jesus shows us that the key to walking this difficult road is to hold onto what God says about himself, to believe first in what he says, not in what we interpret circumstances to be saying. This is faith. It sometimes (but thankfully not always) goes against “evidence.” We base our faith on revelation – what God has said about himself – and one ultimate “proof” – what he has shown about himself through the cross and resurrection of Jesus. We hold that ultimate proof above all other lesser circumstantial evidence. We are tempted by lesser things – material prosperity, safety and security. We want these because they feel good. But they are not reliable sources of the truth about God. We rejoice when we prosper, we weep when we suffer. But we see neither prosperity nor suffering as the ultimate indication of God’s nature and character. Rather we cling to the cross and the resurrection as the foundation for our understanding of God and the world, as difficult as that often is. That is what it means to be a Christian.

Led by the Spirit – into the wilderness?

Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, left the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, where for forty days he was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing during those days, and at the end of them he was hungry. (Luke 4:1-2 NIV)

Being led by the Spirit is a something that we Christians long for. It implies personal communication from the Creator of the universe to us as individuals, which is an extraordinary concept, and proof for many non-believers that we are deluded, bordering on insane. I remember hearing a talk years ago when a doctor was speaking about a standard psychiatric examination – Do you believe in God? Do you speak to God? Does God speak to you? – with a positive response in each case raising suspicion of mental instability, the last question the clincher. All of this comes of course from a particular scientific rationalistic worldview that says that God does not exist, that to speak to a non-existent person is at best fantasy and at worst delusion, and that to hear that non-existent person speak back is a sign of psychosis.

But here in Luke’s gospel we see the man Jesus being led by the Spirit, which implies clear direction by a supernatural being of a natural being. Luke the doctor seems not to have doubted the truth of this story, though it involved a cross-over between these two worlds – natural and supernatural. Indeed, Luke’s presuppositions and beliefs are radically different to a modern western doctor’s worldview. He writes quite publicly and without apology about things which we often prefer to leave in the realm of personal and private and not for rational consideration. It is a challenge for modern doctors who count themselves as Christians to adopt Luke’s approach rather than the approach of the medical culture of which we are a part.

But this passage is about much more than just the reality of the Spirit’s direction in the life of the believer. It speaks about a specific case of the leadership of the Holy Spirit in a person who has placed their trust in that Spirit. Jesus was not in this case led into joy and peace and happiness and fulfilment. Rather he was led into the wilderness. He was there for forty days and during that time he had nothing to eat. Matthew’s gospel indicates that he willingly gave up eating, that he fasted. Luke does not specify whether it was a decision that he chose or whether it was simply the circumstances. It simply says that he was in the wilderness and that he had nothing to eat. for almost six weeks!

I remember seeing the film, Into the Wild, years ago, based I believe on a true story about a young man who in his search for meaning decided to do what Jesus did – to go into the wilderness. There was, however, no supernatural guidance involved in that story, simply a desire for a better and purer life. One thing I remember from the film was how food became the daily obsession of this young man, who had decided to “live off the land.” His desperate hunger eventually led to his death when he unknowingly included some poisonous plants in his diet. It is a sad and somewhat hopeless story.

The story of Jesus’ six weeks in the wilderness is very different, but one thing that is common to the two tales is that long periods without food produce desperate hunger, and that the only sensible solution to that is a source of food. Severe weight loss and weakness would have been Jesus’ experience, and the background to his battle with the devil. But surely the smart way to go into battle is well fed and strong. It makes fighting easier and victory more likely. A starving army is already beaten, if the enemy is by contrast well prepared with food and training. Why would the Spirit lead Jesus into the wilderness and deprive him of food if the goal was victory over the enemy?

Different answers could be suggested, but perhaps the main lesson I have learned as I have reflected on this question is that we should not look primarily at our circumstances if we are wondering whether we have really been led by the Spirit. Circumstances can look pretty bad and we can still be in just the place that God wants us. Our experience can be pretty desperate and we are still following God’s leading. We can feel under major attack from all sides and too weak to fight, but we have not gone astray.

This passage tells me that suffering and desperation are as much a part of the Christian experience as that of the non believer, that even if suffering is not something that God inflicts on us, he does actually lead us into it at times. I don’t believe that God enjoys seeing any one of us suffer or that suffering is a sign that God has abandoned us, or that he doesn’t love us. After all, just before Jesus was led into the wilderness God had spoken words of love and affirmation over him. God allows his own Son to suffer, and he allows us to suffer too.

I don’t imagine that I can understand suffering. So often it seems so wrong, so meaningless, so stupid. How can I write that a loving God lets suffering happen, to those who love him as much as to those who don’t. It is easy to understand a God that inflicts pain on his enemies, but on his friends? These are hard questions.

But when I find myself in those places of pain and desperation, when I am hungry and weak and least able to resist the attacks that come at me thick and fast from every direction, I try to remember that Jesus, never doubting the Father’s love for him, has been in those places too, and I try to follow his lead.