Dear Anonymous

…what would it be like for myself or my immediate family to become sick or involved in an accident or something-- how would I approach it being that all the stuff I used to believe has changed and I no longer do all the stuff I use to do as a result of that. In the past, of course, I knew every scripture to quote and "stand on" and, of course, there would be church and all the pray lists of the saints and intercessors. But now what would I do especially since pretty much the only thing I can honestly say that I do believe at this point is that God is, sigh. I am interested to know how you are dealing with this from that stance.

Dear Anonymous,

My family and the churches we participated in had no overt theology on illness or misfortune—like, it was a test from God, or punishment, or caused by our own lack of faith.  Nor did we particularly have a theology of healing—like, "stand on the promises of God" (as the old hymn says) and you will be guaranteed health, wealth, healing.

Covertly, of course, I picked up a lot of those ideas—especially as we moved from denomination to denomination, and later as I wandered even farther afield in college (strong Calvinism from my college but "name it and claim it" from the church I attended).  But I never had a clearly articulated doctrine for myself.  We had a lot of health problems in my family and, though we prayed for restoration of health, we didn't seem too spiritually distraught when that didn't happen.  I mean, we grieved and were personally distressed by death and major illness but didn't feel we'd been cheated by God nor that we were guilty of something.

Actually, I developed a rather rigid doctrine of personal responsibility for health after I left religion and became a fundamentalist alternative healing nut.  I felt obligated to have a successful homebirth as a proof to the unbelievers—those who still went to hospitals for births.  Every cough or sniffle my kids got was a personal affront to me—that somehow I wasn't feeding them the proper nutrition and that if they didn't respond immediately to my dosing them that I'd be despised by my fellow-crunchy granoloids and the conventional medicos both.

As I have faced chronic illness these last four years, I have had to confront my beliefs that physical/mental health is indistinguishable from psychological/spiritual health AND that therefore I have control over it.  I still believe that health of body mind and soul are all of a piece but I am slowly coming to accept that much of it is outside our individual capacity to regulate.  Medical doctors and alternative therapists both have done a lot of victim-blaming toward me over the years, if not for the original dysfunction (assuming they didn’t imply I was conjuring it up to begin with) then for the lack of healing—that I didn’t have the proper strength of will to sustain the healing protocols prescribed, that I cheated on diets, or just plain “wanted to be sick” because it provided me more psychological benefit than not be ill.  In religion, I received this kind of condescension over attitudes and behaviors but never health issues.


If this post didn't address your question directly enough, please comment again and ask more questions, because I will be glad to write more specifically to your concerns.