Holy well

[Tellyontellyon]

I visited this Holy Well today at St. Non's in South West Wales...

I wonder what Christians think of these types of places... holy wells, shrines, healing places, places of pilgrimage, etc.?

Is it something you do?
What is the benefit?

I myself found it very calm and peaceful.

 

[Sketcher]

To the extent that it's recognized, people like to go there.

I have not been on such a trip. But I have been to the memorial at Gettysburg, and that was an experience (a secular one). I'll keep that trip as a reference point when determining the spiritual value of a trip to Israel, if I ever go on one.

 

[Tolworth John]

Is it something you do?
What is the benefit?

I don't go to so called 'holy places'.

Salvation is a Spiritual thing through faith in hat Jesus did. Anything we do is an act of love an obedience to Jesus. As Paul wrote our good deeds, or our religious acts are like used toilet paper, worthless.

 

[James_Lai]

Super beautiful place. Places of power are the real thing

 

[aiki]

I visited this Holy Well today at St. Non's in South West Wales...

I wonder what Christians think of these types of places... holy wells, shrines, healing places, places of pilgrimage, etc.?

Is it something you do?
What is the benefit?

Useless. There is nothing in all of the NT that indicates Christians ought to seek places and things for spiritual benefit, healing, etc. God is the Christian's Source of comfort, strength, illumination, and transformation, not places and objects. He is just as capable of being these things to the Christian who is in prison, or on a sick bed dying of cancer as to the one who is sitting on a sunny, hillside pasture, or walking through an ancient religious site.

 

[Lukaris]

Philippians 4:8

Psalms 148

posting to a brick wall.

 

[James_Lai]

1 Some time later, Jesus went up to Jerusalem for one of the Jewish festivals. 2 Now there is in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate a pool, which in Aramaic is called Bethesda and which is surrounded by five covered colonnades. 3 Here a great number of disabled people used to lie—the blind, the lame, the paralyzed. 4 From time to time an angel of the Lord would come down and stir up the waters. The first one into the pool after each such disturbance would be cured of whatever disease they had. 5 One who was there had been an invalid for thirty-eight years.6 When Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time, he asked him, “Do you want to get well?”

7 “Sir,” the invalid replied, “I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. While I am trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me.”

John 5:1-7

 

[aiki]

Description is not prescription. That there is, in the Gospel of John, a description of the Pool of Bethesda and the ill who waited superstitiously at it by no means serves as a prescription to Christians to search out "sacred places". To think that the description does serve a prescriptive purpose is to be guilty of the "Is-Ought Fallacy."

 

[James_Lai]

Description is not prescription. That there is, in the Gospel of John, a description of the Pool of Bethesda and the ill who waited superstitiously at it by no means serves as a prescription to Christians to search out "sacred places". To think that the description does serve a prescriptive purpose is to be guilty of the "Is-Ought Fallacy."

Jesus or the author of John don’t judge it at all the way you do. It says God’s angel was performing the healings. Sounds pretty legitimate to me. We have to accept the Bible, it’s wrong to judge the Word of God based on your preconceived biases.

Places of power are a proven fact of the Bible.

 

[aiki]

Jesus or the author of John don’t judge it at all the way you do. It says God’s angel was performing the healings. Sounds pretty legitimate to me. We have to accept the Bible, it’s wrong to judge the Word of God based on your preconceived biases.

Places of power are a proven fact of the Bible.

Well, hang on. Early manuscripts of the Gospel of John don't contain the end of verse 3 and verse 4 which is why many translations of the Bible such as the NASB, the ESV, the NIV, the NRSV, and the NET leave out this portion of the account entirely, and the rest, generally, make a notation to the effect that there is manuscript inconsistency concerning the bit about a "messenger" or "angel" stirring the water of the pool.

But this aside, again, there is no prescription in the account of Jesus healing the man at the Pool of Bethesda about seeking "sacred places" for healing. Nowhere in the account does it say, "And all people ought likewise to seek healing in holy places." Instead, the invalid man waiting at the pool was not healed by the "sacred place" but by the Person of Christ. If, then, there is any prescription one might form from the story it would be that Jesus is the "Great Physician," healing is found in him, not in superstitious hope in the power of a "sacred place."

 

[Tellyontellyon]

But this aside, again, there is no prescription in the account of Jesus

But it was clearly a thing in those ancient times... yes, Jesus could heal, but that doesn't mean that prayer and healing waters were denounced as superstition by him.... He didn't whip people with chords to keep them from a superstitious pagan practice... Rather, he enquired into why the man didn't use the well.. and when his issue was revealed, Jesus healed him himself.

 

[aiki]

But it was clearly a thing in those ancient times...

Yes, and? Many such practices were common. Again, description is not prescription.

but that doesn't mean that prayer and healing waters were denounced as superstition by him.... He didn't whip people with chords to keep them from a superstitious pagan practice...

Is this the only way we know Jesus disapproved of a particular thing?

The primary reason John gave this account of Jesus at the Pool of Bethesda was to establish Jesus' divinity, in this instance in contrast to the common, pagan reliance upon a sacred, healing place that had not helped the sick man one little bit.

 

[Tellyontellyon]

The primary reason John gave this account of Jesus at the Pool of Bethesda was to establish Jesus' divinity, in this instance in contrast to the common, pagan reliance upon a sacred, healing place that had not helped the sick man one little bit.

But the pool was used by Jews not pagans, and this was right outside the temple complex... Jesus never said that the man was doing wrong, neither did he say anything like that to anybody else... They are all your words, words that you are adding and putting in Jesus's mouth (I'm sure it says something in Revelations about adding words...?)

Jesus simply healed him, that's all.

 

[aiki]

But the pool was used by Jews not pagans, and this was right outside the temple complex...

Again, the description of the Pool of Bethesda in the story of Christ healing the invalid man does not constitute a prescription for behavior. Many things appear in Scripture that are wicked, and foolish, and pagan: homosexuality, human sacrifice, murder, rape, etc. The mere appearance of these things in Scripture does not mean they are approved and recommended by God any more than the account of a burglary or killing in a newspaper means the owner of the newspaper approves and recommends burglary and killing. Surely, this is obvious to you. Why, then, are you using the account of the Pool of Bethesda to suggest that superstitious belief in the healing power of a sacred place is biblical?

Jesus never said that the man was doing wrong, neither did he say anything like that to anybody else...

He didn't say the man was doing right, either. So, what's your point? We can both argue from what Jesus didn't say to the man.

They are all your words, words that you are adding and putting in Jesus's mouth (I'm sure it says something in Revelations about adding words...?)

What words have I put in Jesus's mouth?

Jesus simply healed him, that's all.

Which is what I've been saying all along. The account of the healing at the Pool of Bethesda offers nothing more to the reader of it. Certainly, holding out the account as approving of the "healing power of sacred places" is stretching the account well beyond its intended purpose.

 

[Tellyontellyon]

are wicked, and foolish, and pagan:

But they weren't pagans, they were Jews. So this was the practice of Jews in Jerusalem at that time. The man who was healed was Jewish. The people using the pool were Jewish, not pagans.

 

[aiki]

But they weren't pagans, they were Jews. So this was the practice of Jews in Jerusalem at that time. The man who was healed was Jewish. The people using the pool were Jewish, not pagans.

Are you assuming the Jews kept themselves from superstition and pagan practices? If so, you would do well to read the OT which recounts the Jews repeatedly descending into pagan practices.

 

[Tellyontellyon]

Jews repeatedly descending into pagan practices.

Right outside their most holy temple under the gaze of the Sanhedrin? Are you kiddin me buddy?