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Insofar as we should live in accordance with reason and truth, Jesus being the Logos of reality, I am requesting feedback from Christians and non-Christians to 'stress test' these arguments, to see if I have overlooked anything.
Mark 11:24 says,
The objection seems to be "we shouldn’t try to believe we have been healed before we’ve been healed, because we haven’t been healed, so we would be believing a lie, and Jesus, who is Truth, would not ask us to lie to ourselves."
There is another way to look at it -- assuming we are asking something that we are confident is in accordance with God's will (the Bible indicates it IS God's will to heal): A conditional view of reality, like in a computer programming “if X then Y” statement. “If you believe you have been healed, then you will be healed,” so, “I believe I have been healed, so even though it doesn’t look like it right now, I will be healed.”
‘But how can I believe I’ve been healed when I haven’t been? How is that reasonable?’ There are at least four possible answers to this question:
Mark 11:24 says,
My understanding is that the Greek literally says "have received it" but this is so controversial modern translations in the USA shy away from this and say 'will receive'. Then you find a lot of Christians saying "it may be God's will to heal you in heaven, not in this life", moving even further from the literal meaning of the text, presumably due to the petition not readily being granted.
The objection seems to be "we shouldn’t try to believe we have been healed before we’ve been healed, because we haven’t been healed, so we would be believing a lie, and Jesus, who is Truth, would not ask us to lie to ourselves."
There is another way to look at it -- assuming we are asking something that we are confident is in accordance with God's will (the Bible indicates it IS God's will to heal): A conditional view of reality, like in a computer programming “if X then Y” statement. “If you believe you have been healed, then you will be healed,” so, “I believe I have been healed, so even though it doesn’t look like it right now, I will be healed.”
‘But how can I believe I’ve been healed when I haven’t been? How is that reasonable?’ There are at least four possible answers to this question:
- It may be possible to not yet notice the healing. If holding a deck of cards and you think a particular card is missing, it is possible the card has been put back into the deck and you would not notice without looking more closely, and this card would be revealed over the course of play.
- At first glance we cannot tell whether seed has been planted and has taken root (i.e. at first it does not appear to be the case, e.g. looking at soil or a pregnant woman), but this does not demonstrate that it has not done so. Healing may be like this planted seed, requiring our faith for it to grow to culmination. (There have been reports of miracles occurring days after a particular event, as well as overnight while one sleeps.)
- Consider seeing Jesus walk on water. What does it mean to walk on something? We use the normal force of the electromagnetic field repulsion of solid lattices to propel ourselves forward. Water doesn’t have such solid atomic lattices to provide the normal force to enable walking: It becomes ice when this solid lattice has been formed. So Jesus is NOT walking on water, because this solid lattice structure is not present to be stepped on. But we see that He IS walking on the water, using the lattices to propel Himself forward even though those lattices are not present. So miracles may require an immediate “contradiction” whereby physical matter is subservient to God’s immediate will. Such “A and Not A” self-contradiction violating rules of logic is not a problem because logic only describes God’s providence, the natural world, when a miracle is not taking place. (One may object, “isn’t this the special pleading fallacy?” No: The rules for indoor soccer need not apply when you are playing soccer outdoors; the rules for meeting the Queen of England are different from meeting your coworker at the pub. Rules apply in some situations and not others according to the situation.)
- “for we walk by faith, not by sight” Paul tells the Corinthians (2 Cor 5:7). It is not what we see that matters, but what we believe. Thus you see theologians say that heaven and the spirit world is “more real” than this physical world, and Jesus says the kingdom of heaven is ‘within you’ (Luke 17:21).
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