This is an article I wrote for Christianity Today over decade ago. Te editor sent me a lovely rejection notice saying that the only reason they were using it was because they weren't doing a magazine about sickness in the foreseeable future.
It ought to answer about Paul's thorn.
A Thorn in My Flesh
“You are in pain because you have unrepentant sin. You don’t trust God enough to be healed. God wants to heal everyone, so it is your fault you are in pain. Repent. Believe. You will be healed.”
Imagine my shock, after suddenly become disabled, hearing these words from people I considered friends. A believer for 33 years, I am no longer able to go to church because I cannot sit up straight for over an hour. My social life is, at best, limited, so I went online to chat rooms. I used to go to a Christian chat room all the time, but when hit with the words written above, I was too hurt and too exhausted to correct these lies from people I considered my family in Christ. In my new chat room of other disabled people, I met many Christians, who have heard the same words and have left the church because of them.
Now is the time to expose these lies and hopefully, to teach others to be more loving, because of the love God has given to us.
You are in pain because you have unrepentant sin.
If pain is from unrepentant sin, then why didn’t the Apostles tell their good friends to repent when they were sick? When Paul wrote to Timothy, he told him to use a little wine because of his stomach and frequent illnesses. (1 Tim 5:23) Paul didn’t tell Timothy to repent to get rid of his stomach problems. And Paul left Trophimus sick in Miletus. (2 Tim 4:20) Why didn’t he just tell him to repent?
If pain is from unrepentant sin, then why did the early Christians suffer from beatings, and imprisonment and loss of physical health? (Acts 14:21-22, Acts 20:23, 2 Cor.1:8, 2 Cor. 6:4-10, Rev. 2:3) Was this from God as a punishment?
If God has taught us that all diseases, disabilities and health problems are from unrepentant sin, then why would he curse people who let blind people go astray? (Deut 27:18) Shouldn’t he have told the people to tell the blind person to repent?
If pain, disease and illness are from unrepentant sin, then wasn’t God wrong for letting Satan afflict Job, “a righteous man”? (Job 2:2-7)
Yes, there is sickness, pain and disease because of sin. (Gen. 12:17, Duet. 28:15-29, 2 Chron. 21:13-15, Acts 12:23) It is quite possible that I have this pain because of sin, even though I ask forgiveness often. Then again, I also know that there are many healthy people, who have never repented. Now that is truly sad.
You don’t trust God enough to be healed.
This one makes me smile for a few reasons. First, would someone please make up his or her mind? Is this disorder I have caused by unrepentant sin, not trusting God enough, or because God is too weak to heal me without my say-so? Second, if trusting God to be healed is a requirement, then how did those dead people, including Lazarus, come back to life? (Matt. 9:23-24, Mark 5:36-42, Luke 7:12-15, John 11:11-45)
Jesus said, “I tell you the truth, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there' and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you." (Matt 17:20)
I admit to being a Doubting Thomas, believing little unless I see it for myself, but I have had 33 years with the Lord, not all of it following easily. I know for sure that Jesus is, he is who he said he is – God, and his words have not failed me. I can’t tell you how large my faith is, but I can assure you that it is, at least, the size of a mustard seed – God working in my life, despite me.
There is a debate going on that cannot be resolved until we meet Jesus face-to-face, about what Paul’s thorn in the flesh was. (2 Cor. 12:7-10) One of the theories is that it was a physical disability and if you read it carefully, there is nothing to say it couldn’t be. If you consider the amount of events in Paul’s life – beatings, imprisonment, shipwrecked, and living in the elements on long pilgrimages – it surely seems quite plausible. Then again, obviously I have a good chance of being extremely biased here, so I won’t say that it could not be something else. No matter what that thorn was, it obviously was a great weakness that Paul, a man of great faith, asked God to remove three times, before getting an answer that apparently was clear enough to him to know that God wanted him to live with it.
I have never met a Christian with a sickness or disability that has not only asked God for him or herself, but has asked friends, families and elders in the church, to pray to be healthy again. I read a sign at the place where I have my blood tests done most the time that said, “Health is a crown that only the unhealthy see.” I admit to taking my health for granted, back when I was relatively healthy. I use to thank God for being healthy, despite not really understanding how bad unhealthy can get. I have also seen God heal people of different deformities and diseases. I have had the experience of being healed by God from a reoccurring urinary tract infection that I had every other month for two years and never cleared up except with the use of antibiotics. After I was miraculously healed, I have only had it about five times in the last 23 years. I know the true and deep blessing of God healing me. I know the deep blessing of health. I had hundreds of people praying that I recover from what I have now and if he ever says, “Yes,” I will shout it from the rooftops. As it stands now, God has not healed me. I’m not saying he never will, but as of yet, his answer is, at least, “Not yet.”
I have never met a disabled Christian who does not believe like I believe. We trust God to heal, when he says, “be healed,” not by our will, but by his will.
God wants to heal everyone, so it is your fault you are in pain.
God is omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, and holy. These are not mere words. Think deeply on what those words mean. God can do anything he wants whenever he wants and neither Satan nor mere human beings can thwart him on his plan. God has but one goal and is working it out perfectly. God will have himself a people that worship him and love him. Whomever he calls to himself will come and be saved. (John 6:35-40) If God’s will is to heal me, even if I were stupid enough to say, “No,” he will heal me, even if he has to put me through much to get me to that point where I want to be healed. (Jonah)
I want to be healed. I tried everything available to me to be miraculously healed or to be medically healed. I still check in, occasionally, with a specialist to see if anything new is available to help me. Doctors have told me that the best they can do for me is to try to lessen my pain. They have lessened it already, but it has merely gone from unbearable, in tears, rocking back and forth pain to I can’t do very much, but I’m not crying pain.
There is something else I want, even if I’m never healed in this life. I want to not have to fight my brothers and sisters in Christ and to know that we are all accepted through Jesus Christ’s blood. I want people to understand that I do still sin, but God is working on me. I want to be loved in Christ even with this weak body that can’t seem to get out of my way, to walk side by side with my brothers and sisters in Christ, to learn all the things God has to show us of his glory and his beauty. And I don’t want to have to constantly feel as if I am the only sinner in the group. We are saved by faith, Jesus’ faith. It is God’s doing that we are saved, loved and brought to where we are right now. Sometimes he takes me where I don’t want to go, but, in the end, like my favorite prophet in the Bible, Jonah, he gets me where he wants me to be, even if I go the hard way.
“For he that in these things serveth Christ is acceptable to God, and approved of men. Let us therefore follow after the things which make for peace, and things wherewith one may edify another.” Rom 14:18-19
