Why doesn't God heal amputees?

[monkeypsycho62]

Heya Monkeypsycho,

I think perhaps the confusion is coming about from not understanding God's character. The Bible is our sort of link with God, in that it tells us about Him and how He acts and what He values. In the Bible God comes to Earth for us, in the person of Jesus Christ. He did this to teach us His values and give us a way to salvation and to wash away all our past, present and future sins. During His time here, he performed miracles and healed people. He did not heal all people, or remove all suffering in the world.

Now your view of God is that He is omnibenevolent, that is a being of the purest good. This I believe is wholly true. The misunderstanding comes into it when we take purest good and give it a definite meaning with our limited mortal minds. For us purest good is someone who will help no matter what, who will set all wrongs right and God has done this too, in His sacrifice for us. Now before you question that, just recall that the Bible makes it very clear to us that God is different than we are.

Isaiah 55:9
"For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts."

With this in mind, we cannot assume to know what a being who is so different to us will do. In addition, we cannot know what a purest good being would do, as we are not beings that are purely good. God sees the entire picture, of creation to the end, whereas we see just the tiny window that we can with our fleeting lives and limited outlooks.

In addition we have free will. If God wanted to, He could indeed clean up all our mistakes for us. But what kind of God is that? A babysitter. We would still be as children, yet in adult bodies. Not knowing how to live, how to do right or wrong, or what the consequences are of wrong. If I commit adultery and it causes a great deal of harm and hurt, and God heals it and purifies me again, what have I learnt? Nothing. I would just blunder right into it again. Our free will is our most precious gift, yet we need to accept the choices that we make and the consequences of them. God has a plan for us, we are told He is interested in our character, our hearts and motives. Not in worldly things, big talk or success and fame. But in what makes us, us. In this regard, it would be logical to assume that God does not hold the same value over the things of this world as we do. Everything will return to dust one day, and all will be undone, except for our eternal souls which will house our character.

I cannot make the call as to whether someone who suffered an injury and required amputation has had good come from it, or not. It's easy to look at it and say, "That's horrible!" yet God works in mysterious ways, and by this I mean that God takes the bad and turns it into good. Always. The most unlikley people in the world become God's tools.

In an unusual comparison, I am a serious Farscape fan, and there is an episode where the crew gets sent back in time to a monastry. The monastry was essentially the grounds of a legendary turning point in a war, where sisters and nuns held out against a ravenous horder of attackers. Criton (the main character) goes back and they accidentally mess up the timeline, and in order to set things right they help defend the grounds and save a great deal of lines. Yet when they go back into the future, and look at the historical record, it shows that what actually happened is that all the sisters got killed because the attackers wanted to know who was using advanced weapons (Criton and co.) and the sisters couldn't provide an answer, so they were killed. In a nutshell, we cannot see what our actions will cause in a timeline, when that line of thinking and the scope of time is beyond us. It's easy in the moment to go, yes, heal that person as it will make everything better, but it may not always be that clear.

I hope that helped some.
Cheers!
Digit

Thanks for that response; it's good enough for me. It shows what a rational-minded Christian believes about such things.

Although I do still believe that a perfectly good being should try and stop suffering, but as you said, this would make God a "babysitter."

 

[MessianicJewishGuy]

If prayer can supposedly cure cancer and other incredibly horrific diseases, why can't God, supreme creator of everything, omnipotent, omnibenevolent, simply give an old, kind-hearted, devout Christian man who had to have his legs amputated, his limbs back? It seems logical for an omnibenevolent being.

What kind of healing are you talking about?

Spiritual and Mental healing are the most important. What Atheists are looking for is evidence in the Physical realm. That is why they get confused.

 

[Lisa0315]

Question to the OP:

How do you know that God has not healed amputees?

Lisa

 

[trustgod]

Why would an atheist care whether or not God did anything, given that he doesn't believe in God in the first place?

Perhaps the person isn't an atheist, but a seeker? A skeptic who wants to know more, know whether this "Christian" thing is all it's cracked up to be?

 

[Dorothea]

I don't take credit when God does heal people, and I certainly don't take the blame when He doesn't.

Your problem is that you want a clear case. One or the other, yet God as revealed to us in the Bible doesn't work like that. Jesus healed a blind man, but He didn't heal all blind men. Why not? Do you think that as a Christian I have a special God-phone that gives me direct insight into how God thinks? It's not quite like that. I have faith in God that He wants what is best for us, and through our free will to make decisions in our lives, we either follow His plan for our lives or we do not.

Digit

I agree, Digit. Things happen for a reason in our lives through the choices and paths we take. Regarding losing limbs, I think that is a mixture of the decisions we make in our lives and God's giving us a chance to grow spiritually stronger through our losses and to grow closer to Him through our struggles and hard times. JMO.

 

[Dorothea]

Heya Monkeypsycho,

I think perhaps the confusion is coming about from not understanding God's character. The Bible is our sort of link with God, in that it tells us about Him and how He acts and what He values. In the Bible God comes to Earth for us, in the person of Jesus Christ. He did this to teach us His values and give us a way to salvation and to wash away all our past, present and future sins. During His time here, he performed miracles and healed people. He did not heal all people, or remove all suffering in the world.

Now your view of God is that He is omnibenevolent, that is a being of the purest good. This I believe is wholly true. The misunderstanding comes into it when we take purest good and give it a definite meaning with our limited mortal minds. For us purest good is someone who will help no matter what, who will set all wrongs right and God has done this too, in His sacrifice for us. Now before you question that, just recall that the Bible makes it very clear to us that God is different than we are.

Isaiah 55:9
"For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts."

With this in mind, we cannot assume to know what a being who is so different to us will do. In addition, we cannot know what a purest good being would do, as we are not beings that are purely good. God sees the entire picture, of creation to the end, whereas we see just the tiny window that we can with our fleeting lives and limited outlooks.

In addition we have free will. If God wanted to, He could indeed clean up all our mistakes for us. But what kind of God is that? A babysitter. We would still be as children, yet in adult bodies. Not knowing how to live, how to do right or wrong, or what the consequences are of wrong. If I commit adultery and it causes a great deal of harm and hurt, and God heals it and purifies me again, what have I learnt? Nothing. I would just blunder right into it again. Our free will is our most precious gift, yet we need to accept the choices that we make and the consequences of them. God has a plan for us, we are told He is interested in our character, our hearts and motives. Not in worldly things, big talk or success and fame. But in what makes us, us. In this regard, it would be logical to assume that God does not hold the same value over the things of this world as we do. Everything will return to dust one day, and all will be undone, except for our eternal souls which will house our character.

I cannot make the call as to whether someone who suffered an injury and required amputation has had good come from it, or not. It's easy to look at it and say, "That's horrible!" yet God works in mysterious ways, and by this I mean that God takes the bad and turns it into good. Always. The most unlikley people in the world become God's tools.

In an unusual comparison, I am a serious Farscape fan, and there is an episode where the crew gets sent back in time to a monastry. The monastry was essentially the grounds of a legendary turning point in a war, where sisters and nuns held out against a ravenous horder of attackers. Criton (the main character) goes back and they accidentally mess up the timeline, and in order to set things right they help defend the grounds and save a great deal of lines. Yet when they go back into the future, and look at the historical record, it shows that what actually happened is that all the sisters got killed because the attackers wanted to know who was using advanced weapons (Criton and co.) and the sisters couldn't provide an answer, so they were killed. In a nutshell, we cannot see what our actions will cause in a timeline, when that line of thinking and the scope of time is beyond us. It's easy in the moment to go, yes, heal that person as it will make everything better, but it may not always be that clear.

I hope that helped some.
Cheers!
Digit

Great explanation...great post!

 

[heron]

Great explanation...great post!

Many people find that the passions that drive them to powerful social action, stemmed from seeing injustices earlier in life.

This might seem like a warped sense of values, but think about how Oprah might have spent her money if she hadn't seen lack when she was young... how cures are found after someone sees a loved one suffer with an illness. The drive to focus on fixing something wrong is impelled by seeing the actual need.

Most people have a strong desire to make their lives count, to do something remarkable. If a person is able to fulfill this, it can give more satisfaction than getting a physical injury repaired.

Most people by mid-life have some sort of physical impairment, whether it's back pain, bad eyesight, migraines, or old sports injuries. All physical injuries hinder us from a full life, and all should be cured... all should be sympathized over... all should be cared for.

 

[Catherineanne]

If prayer can supposedly cure cancer and other incredibly horrific diseases, why can't God, supreme creator of everything, omnipotent, omnibenevolent, simply give an old, kind-hearted, devout Christian man who had to have his legs amputated, his limbs back? It seems logical for an omnibenevolent being.

God does not carry out miracles which go against the laws of nature, and human beings cannot regrow limbs. This is not because God is subject to the laws of nature, but because we are.

If you look at what Christ did, he did not go around like Superman, flying and lifting huge weights and turning back time. He did what God does, only quicker. He turned water into wine, just as God does every year. He healed the sick, just as God does every day. He raised Lazarus from the dead, just as God will do for each one of us.

Amputees will stand whole and complete before God. But once a leg has been cut off, only a prosthesis is possible to replace it.

 

[Catherineanne]

God HAS healed amputees, or at least He probably did.

When Jesus was on Earth he healed thousands of people, from skin diseases, to paralysis, to even reversing death. It's reasonable to believe that in the thousands of people he healed, some of those were amputees.

I doubt it. The ancient Egyptian doctors had the medical skill to amputate limbs without killing the patient, but I very much doubt if anyone in ancient Judea could have done this.

Which means it is a safe bet there were precious few amputees around for the Lord to heal.

 

[Davis]

monkey---

God heals people and sometimes He doesn't. His long term goal is to help us to grow spiritually and get us ready for heaven. Yes, by His stripes we are healed spiritually.

Also, its all for Him and His Glory - sometimes this will entail not be healed. In not being healed and being a witness one can be more effective long term than if one was healed. God's ways are way above our ways.

Bingo thats it right there.
Its all for His Glory.

Just because we ask in faith that we will have a million dollars doesn't mean its going to happen. Will it bring Glory to God? Thats the question.

His Ways are not our Ways. He has the plan.

 

[heymikey80]

Thanks for that response; it's good enough for me. It shows what a rational-minded Christian believes about such things.

Although I do still believe that a perfectly good being should try and stop suffering, but as you said, this would make God a "babysitter."

You know, I agree very much with your point there. A perfectly good being puts a stop to unjust suffering, or suffering purely through ignorance. I think Creation itself is designed in some way to limit suffering out of ignorance as well as other causes, through physical death.

But I think God would be interested though in putting a stop not merely to suffering, but to the entire system that causes it, inside & out. He may be interested not only in our healing, but in leading us to hate the danger and the damage leading up to it, and leading out from it. Individual suffering can come from more than physical disability -- and it can affect our entire lives without ever showing in our bodies. Such a God would care about much more than physical suffering. He would care about internal suffering as well.

It seems to me individuals often suffer as a result of non-individual systems that hurt them, too. So there are plenty of systems which need addressing, and which Christians are actually commanded to redeem -- to fix. They appear in the system of healing that the western world has developed and championed, which advises compassion on the disabled instead of casting them out as burdens on society.

We've been doing this for years.

When Pasteur [himself a devout Catholic] was carrying on his investigations into the origins of certain diseases, most of the leading physicians and surgeons made light of his work: "How should this chemist, who cannot treat the simplest case of sickness nor perform the most trifling operation, have anything to contribute to medical science?" But Pasteur's discovery of the part played by bacilli not only altered profoundly the work of physicians and surgeons, but opened up the larger task of preventive medicine.

The Gospel of Christ, in its endeavor to make and keep men whole, faces a similarly double labor. It has its ministry of rescue and healing for sinning men and women; it has its plan of spiritual health for society. Coffin, "Some Christian Convictions"​

 

[xia123]

So do you mean that everyone that pray and not get her/his prayer answered have doubts when it`s about heeling.That I think are unfair.How can we tell people that.They maybe really believe.How can we judge them like this? Sorry about this but I always get so upset when I hear something like this
Remember the story about the male that was heeled but didn`t even know that was Jesus that was there = no faith.I tried to see if I could find it but I didn`t

!

 

[Jerrell]

One Day God will have a Kingdom in which there will be no need of Hospitals, no need of medicines, no need of casts, no need of wheelchairs, no need of doctors, because in that place, all will be whole, and there will be no more sorrow no more pain.

So why doesn't God fix it now? I could ask, why dont we stop casuing people to get sick, and become amputees, I could also ask why do we live in such a way that we cause ourselves to become amputees....but I won't...Because one day God will fix it all, he will end all sickness, and all wrong.

 

[pletho]

If prayer can supposedly cure cancer and other incredibly horrific diseases, why can't God, supreme creator of everything, omnipotent, omnibenevolent, simply give an old, kind-hearted, devout Christian man who had to have his legs amputated, his limbs back? It seems logical for an omnibenevolent being.

All healing hinges on believing, God can heal anything or restore anything, the problem is does the man with the missing limbs "BELIEVE" God could restore them??? Have you ever heard of the man with the withered hand in the bible, it was totally restored, but that man believed and obeyed the Word of God in order to get His healing.

What do you believe????

Do you believe, or are you desiring to believe, or know God???

Is this a sincere question and are you searching for true answers or are you trying to disprove God's Word??

 

[Lisa0315]

Again, I ask, what evidence is there that amputees have not been healed?

Lisa

 

[SNPete]

If prayer can supposedly cure cancer and other incredibly horrific diseases, why can't God, supreme creator of everything, omnipotent, omnibenevolent, simply give an old, kind-hearted, devout Christian man who had to have his legs amputated, his limbs back? It seems logical for an omnibenevolent being.

Quick point to make here. I don't see where it is written that God is omnibenevolent. Ever read the book of Isaiah?

 

[monkeypsycho62]

Again, I ask, what evidence is there that amputees have not been healed?

Lisa

Why do I have to prove that they haven't? That makes o sense. I could say that there's an invisible elf in the core of the Sun, deciding the outcome of baseball games by altering the wind. But I would have to prove this strange hypothesis, no? I wouldn't make you disprove it, because that makes no sense.

And there's no proof that they have been healed. If you have any, PLEASE post it.

 

[Lisa0315]

Why do I have to prove that they haven't? That makes o sense. I could say that there's an invisible elf in the core of the Sun, deciding the outcome of baseball games by altering the wind. But I would have to prove this strange hypothesis, no? I wouldn't make you disprove it, because that makes no sense.

And there's no proof that they have been healed. If you have any, PLEASE post it.

Well, I am just saying that if y'all think God is such a bad guy for ignoring amputees, how do you know that he hasn't healed at least one somewhere, sometime?

It is a false premise to begin with. You can no more prove that God hasn't healed amputees than I can prove that He has.

Lisa

 

[TimRout]

If prayer can supposedly cure cancer and other incredibly horrific diseases, why can't God, supreme creator of everything, omnipotent, omnibenevolent, simply give an old, kind-hearted, devout Christian man who had to have his legs amputated, his limbs back? It seems logical for an omnibenevolent being.

Who says God can't replace limbs? Just because some miracles are unusual and infrequent, doesn't mean they're off the menu. Take, for example, the man born with the deformed hand [Luke 6:6-11]. Does this sort of miracle happen today? It certainly could. Does it happen on the Benny Hinn television broadcast? Not that I've seen...but that proves nothing.

 

[NostalgicGranny]

Don't know if this has been brought up or not, but sometimes we go through trials and tribulations not for ourselves, but for others.

For instance say, a future doctor, or nurse, or EMS tech may become inspired by your situation. Or perhaps some stranger see's you struggling and is moved to dedicate their life to help amputee's or handicapped people.

There just is no viable way of knowing for sure if something like that is going to happen. Or if you are an amputee maybe God wants you not to wallow in self pity but to reach out in your suffering to help others in some way.