I just had a dose of what I call reductionist thinking today. We were sitting around after church as the priest gave us a talk about healing prayer. He said that he personally does not accept the findings of studies that have been made that find that a control group of heart patients were not as likely to recover who were not being prayed for as those who were prayed for. To our priest this suggested that God might care more about the people who were prayed for than those who were not, and therefore he probably had nothing to do with the results of the study.
I'm not entirely sure. In a way it's like saying that when I was homeless and God gave me housing that it couldn't have come from God given that there were still a lot of other people left homeless even though I had a place to live. Well, sorry, but I don't do survivor guilt and to this day I thank God for providing me with housing. Does this mean that God loves me more than those who are still homeless, given that I now have a home and many of them don't. No. Could this imply that for a while that God probably didn't love me at all, or loved me less, or was angry with me so he punished me by making me homeless? Uh-uh. Or that maybe he liked some of my friends better because they had nice places to live? Absurd proposal.
The fact of the matter is very simple. Being corrupt, fallen and imperfect beings, we humans have created a corrupt, fallen and imperfect world by defaulting on our responsibility of responding to God's call of love. Throughout the ages, epoch after epoch. When Jesus healed others he healed only those whom he somehow touched in person. He did not love any less or despise the millions of others who were not healed by him. The many He healed through His Apostles and through many of His servants down through the ages were people whom he loved no less than He loved others. Still, some were healed, others were not.
We have no way of judging or determining how God is going to do things, or whom he is going to bless. His reasons are his reasons for He is, after all, God. This however doesn't let us off the hook for doing everything we can to see that the blessings of God (especially those on the receiving end) are justly and appropriately redistributed so that no one should have to do without.
We are God's agents and through our relationship with Him we also facilitate His presence in the world. Yes, He is already present in the world, but He has chosen weak frail human beings to work with him, to as it will, ground His presence in a way that He is accessible to others. That some are healed in a test and others are not to me does not at all suggest that God is playing favourites. What it tells me is that there are not more of us doing our job to facilitate His presence and healing love for others that they might also taste and see and that they might also become His instruments of peace.
Even though there are no limits to God's love, because he gifted us with free will there are limits to what He can do in the world and it is our duty to avail ourselves to His spirit, love and presence to further the incarnational work of redemption that Jesus began.
When my mother died from cancer many years ago I was praying for her every day, not so much to be healed, but that Jesus would be present for her and bring something good out of this terrible experience she was suffering. I saw my mother have a good death, at peace and anticipating a new life in God. The way she sometimes described it was that death was a huge door that was going to open for her.
I say, continue to pray for others, to become the Lord's presence to others and to let others become His presence to us. They need not be Christians. I am often reminded of when St. Paul and his companions were shipwrecked on Malta and the local people, none of them Christians, showed them every single kindness, care and consideration. Some will be healed, maybe as a result of our prayers. This does happen. Others not. Christ will still bless them and be present with him. This is what matters. Not the outcome, but that God is present and His will is vindicated and fulfilled.
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