By far the largest human effort in America today relates directly or indirectly to the presence of disease and of the distortion of Creative Intent in the area of human life. It is a major error to look in the wrong direction for the cause of a disease. It would seem to me to be an even more serious error not to notice the existence of intelligent evil at all.
Our theological way of understanding how to deal with disease begins to stumble at the question of eradication. We feel responsible to prevent disease because we see it modeled in the laws of the Old Testament. We feel responsible to heal disease because we see Christ healing throughout his earthly ministry. But the Bible doesn’t say anything about eradication.
Since Adam fell out with God, his entire lineage has been estranged and needs reconciliation through Christ. But the bigger picture is that the tension is not between humans and God but between hideous, plotting evil and God, and humans were created to be on God’s side in that conflict.
In this video from the Ralph D. Winter Lectureship, Professor Charles Kraft of Hearts Set Free Ministries, neurologist Brad Cole of godscharacter.com, Brian Lowther of the RWI and Pastor and Theologian Greg Boyd discuss the warfare worldview.
If we are to see a movement of Christ followers within every people, we have to address the basic question of “what keeps them from accepting and following God?”
I think there are three types of people in the world. (1) People who believe in God despite all the suffering in the world. (2) People who don’t believe in God because of all the suffering in the world. And (3) People who believe in God, are confused by all the suffering in the world, but have faith that scripture and the revelation of the Holy Spirit will provide better explanations.
One day four prominent evangelicals met for breakfast with a secular journalist. The journalist was writing a story about faith and disease. She posed this question: “Why did Jesus heal? After all, healing people doesn’t get them into heaven. But Christ sure used up a lot of his time healing. Why?”
Here we review Professor Andrew Delbanco's 1995 book about how Satan has vanished from the Western worldview and why it matters. Delbanco explains how Satan has gradually transformed from the embodiment and explanation of evil in the Puritan period, into something much more trivial in the world of today.
Medical practitioners are like the people at the bottom of the cliff patching up the people who have fallen off. Those who try to prevent disease are like the people at the edge of the cliff warning, "Hey, there's a cliff here!" But working to eradicate disease is akin to removing the cliff altogether.
Our current theological literature, to my knowledge, does not seriously consider disease pathogens from a theological point of view—that is, are they the work of God or Satan? Much less does this literature ask the question, Does God mandate us to eliminate pathogens?
Quoting Piper: "In recent years Ralph Winter has waved another wartime flag. It's worth waving here. God may use it to send some of you in a direction of ministry you never thought was ministry. Winter has been calling our attention to the effects of sin and Satan at the microbiological level..."