Trust faith healers at your own peril

Editorial

In the past decade or so, any number of church or non-church organisations have sprung up promising everything from miracle cures to a personal relationship with the almighty – often both.
Faith healers they call themselves but we should not be blamed of being suspicious of their real motives. Some of these groups are money-making schemes, some are for the self-aggrandisement of certain individuals and some are plain crazy. Most are dangerous.
Especially dangerous are the groups which proclaim the ability to cure the sick, the lame and the mentally or physically infirm. They can do and have done untold damage.
We are a Christian nation and we profess everything that promotes good values and standards. But we need to be wary of “wolves in sheep’s clothing”, especially people in remote communities.
We’ve seen the high-profile stadium show faith healers around the world, mostly in the United States, but less visible are the smaller more localised “faith healers” who operate outside the mainstream churches offering cures through prayer or other religious practices.
That the whole process borders on blasphemy does not deter the desperate, the weak or the gullible who turn to these “churches” seeking miracles.
For while faith can move mountains, the best hope for sick people remains medicine. Religious groups professing otherwise are only kidding themselves.
There is a very simple and effective test that none of the so-called faith healers in the world is willing to take. They could visit the nearest hospital and empty the wards.
They could transform the world’s health systems and share their gifts with medical science. None has ever been willing to do and we should all ask them one very simple question: Why?
The Bible tells us of the miracle cures effected by Jesus Christ. “Pick up thy bed and walk,” He told the cripple. All Christians know the miracle of Lazarus.
But Christ’s miracles were performed in the full glare of publicity. The public saw what happened – and he sought no thanks, no recognition and certainly no recompense.
Compare his deeds with the shadowy faith healers we see around today and the showground antics of some of them.
They might do well to recall that the Bible records but once instance of Jesus’s temper when he turned on the money lenders in the temple furious that religion could be insulted in such a mean manner.
Many of the “modern” Christian sects and cults depend on the hopeless and the ignorant for their existence. Knowledge is their enemy.
These are the groups which we need to be wary of, and warn our neighbours to steer clear of them.
It’s time for a searching inquiry into the activities and status of many such organisations, Christian and non-Christian, who wrap themselves in the cloak of religion to give some veneer of credibility to their activities.
If they can truly heal the sick, let them do so and the world will thank them.
There is no shortage of sick people waiting to be healed. Let the healers go to them for that indeed would be God’s work.