This is a hard article to write. Usually, when I write, I chuckle through, typing as fast as I can, but this one is different. It's different because it strikes where we live. It challenges the thread someone may be holding onto for dear life. I'm fully aware there may be some poor soul out there clinging to one ray of hope, however arrived at, and if something I say takes that hope then that person lives his remaining months in hopelessness, because of my words. I can't live with that. Just remember the words of Karl Marx. Religion is the Opiate of the masses. Not God, RELIGION! God is always free, religion is always for sale.
I believe in faith healing, but I do not believe in faith healers. The power of faith cannot be analyzed by empirical method. The power of the mind, or human spirit, likewise, cannot truly be measured, but the outward signs of charlatans can! Know them by their fruits. Faith healing is big business. All you have to do is look at any large scale production and realize the Beatles had nothing on these guys. The large, enthusiastic crowds, the adrenalin rush of meeting a religious super star face to face, the inner belief that everything's going to be fine is powerful medicine.
But that medicine comes from within, and once you give that medicine to someone else you basically doubt your own faith, relying, instead, on the faith of someone else being transmuted back to you. Faith! Belief! Think, therefore you will become. Know how you become a hit song writer? You believe you ARE a hit song writer. It works. I know. Bought five mansions using that. Still have three! And I'll be damned if I let some snake charmer take that away from me. Y'all keep that between us.
Not all faith healers are bad. When I started this article I intended to tear Oral Roberts' butt UP! . When I was a boy in Shreveport, Louisiana, he'd come on TV, and being seven years old I BELIEVED! My mother told me Jesus didn't have no TV show, and he was only in it for the money. Before starting this piece I watched several of his healings. I'd watched a video sent to me by my friend Chip Darby. I saw none of the signs of fakery. He explained he could do nothing and that it all came from God. No yelling, no dramatics, just a simple laying on of hands, followed by instructions to the person to check back with their doctor to verify any changes in their condition. He pretended no clairvoyant powers, reading from cards handed to him by the people. Oral was rare. If he was a fake I didn't see it. I do know, without a doubt, ever ONE of those super evangelists you see on TV, the Internet, or under a tent, has not more power than you have within your own self! Roberts always asked if the person had the FAITH to believe.
Healing come in all favors, great and small. From a heart condition to a simple case of the "blues" that disappears after a prayer. It does NOT come from the hand of someone dancing around a stage, like a fool with the crowd going into a frenzy as people fall on the floor. In 1954 I was in Schumpert Hospital. I had polio and encephalitis. Not much hope for me. Stick a fork in me, I was done! My mother went to pray with the nuns. While she was gone a nun came in to sit with me. She washed my face and told me I would get well. I walked out of the hospital the next day.
Does this sort of thing happen every day? Why did it happen to me? I can't answer either question. I was only four years old. I HAD no religion. After that my grandmother took me to a Baptist Church and the preacher told me I was going to hell, so I went there. The nun told me her name was "Margot." She became my invisible friend. She never lost faith in me, but in my arrogance I lost faith in her. It took me thirty years to circle back to that night. In Margot's effort there was no shouting, no dramatic gestures, only a mumbled prayer, and a brief washcloth on the face, followed by simple assurance. Years later I found out who she was, but I can't tell you here. You'll think I'm crazy. If we ever meet face to face I will tell you her name. Like Paul, all I have to do is close my left eye, and see the spots before my right eye, left by the encephalitis and Margot is right there. . I have no doubts.
You have to ask yourself, if a faker is promoting himself do the believers in the audience pay for his sins? Will the Lord turn away from His people to punish for the blasphemer? You hear about the "True" church, but they're ALL true churches from the Pope all the way to the snake kisser in Arkansas. Jesus said wherever two or more believers meet that He will be there. Can the faith of a thousand believers in a tent be cancelled by one heretic with a microphone?
Any basic human need can be capitalized on be it food, sex . . . RELIGION, and upon capitalization the essence of the original need becomes twisted and the issue becomes the property of the person doing the issuing. Mom's homemade apple pie is not enough, it has to be part of a Happy Meal. Your girlfriend, or wife never quite measures up to the movie star, and your simple faith has to be refined to the point where the rules mean more than the faith. Hordes of people fall on the ground at a tent revival. I checked Matthew chapter five and no one fell on the ground during the Sermon on the Mount. They didn't fall on the ground at the wedding at Cana either, and they were drunk!
I look for God's perspective in all things. Now, I don't tell everybody that so y'all keep this between us, ok? The way I see it God calls all the shots, and He doesn't do anything without good reason so when something comes along that I don't like I try to squeeze it into an understanding that He is in control and if I just don't mess with it everything will work out just fine. Oh, we have free will, just when we stretch that will God has to bring us back around to the original plan and sometimes you just gotta start again and get it right. In “Sharon” I explained it like this. Imagine the universe as a book, and God is the author. He creates us with free will, and sits back, letting us do our thing, but in the end He still writes the book and knows the overall plot.
You can't reject all healings. Remember the Master said, "Your FAITH has healed you!" Can a faith healer affect your faith? No, but he can affect your trust! The biggest mistake you can make is losing sight of that book I mentioned earlier. You're part of that, you know. God is the great director and God answers prayer. Sometimes He says, “CUT!" Eighty year old man, eat up with cancer. Comes to a tent. Faith healer does his song and dance. God says, "CUT!" You can't do rewrites for God. You want to be healed of a limp, but God knows you need that limp. It's in the book. You want money, but if you were wealthy you may be weak. You want a long life, but God gave you sixty years. He didn't owe you sixty seconds. You can't bargain with God, and neither can some TV evangelist, or preacher, or Pope. They are like having a court appointed lawyer. Plead guilty because you ARE!
God deals all the cards, but hope is the Joker. You can't stop hope. Sometimes the hope itself is enough. Your life is a busted flush, and there's hope. Sometimes hope just leads to acceptance. Suffering is perceived. There is a secret to life, but I cannot tell you. If you tell me I will tell you if you are right, but if I tell you what I know then it just becomes religion, and if I try to give you the secret and you have not ears it just becomes a mantra, and will do you no good, but once you find it you will sell all you own to keep it. I will tell you this; the universe is built upon the interaction of opposites, Ying and Yang, and once you understand that, then, you too will know the secret. It also destroys faith healers because it is an eternal truth against there is no retort, and it's not religion, it's FAITH!
Simple Ol' Boy From Austin
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