Do you wish to get well? (from John 5:6)

Why would Jesus ask such an obvious question? Do not all sick people wish to get well? Do not all captives wish to be free?

Not necessarily. Law enforcement dealing with abuse, hostage, and kidnap cases know that a victim can adapt to their enslavement and bond with their captor. It is called Stockholm Syndrome. Like proverbial frogs in a kettle, we can settle for environments—and ideas, which are lethal as long as they are introduced to us in manageable increments. Even after discovering we are in dangerously hot water, we may opt to stay there just because things have become familiar. Think old wineskins.

In our passage Jesus was confronting a victim of Jerusalem Syndrome, a common RTD (Religiously Transmitted Disease). To rescue the man, Jesus had to derail his familiar thinking with a question. He asks the man, “Do you wish to get well or would you prefer to remain here in all this familiarity as a disabled victim?” After the man describes his hopeless circumstances, Jesus says to him, “Arise, take up your pallet, and walk. With a question and a command Jesus enables this man to trade in the familiar for the impossible.

The scriptures answer the questions we should be asking. Hopefully, as aliens and strangers in this earth, we are at least asking ourselves, “Where am I?” The Bible will tell us we are in a battle and that our hearts are both the battleground and the prize. If this awareness is absent from our consciousness, we are already in very hot water. We are central in this battle between God and Satan. Scripture describes our battle as a conflict between light and darkness. In our battle, the enemy has taken many captives by way of many dark philosophies and theologies. Tragically, wrong ideas can become familiar to us. We will even zealously protect them. I know this first hand.

Ironically, my own prison was constructed from legitimate truths I embraced with a damaged heart. Insecurity in God’s love led me to embrace depravity as my core identity: “What a wretch am I.” Depravity led me to embrace God’s sovereignty as fatalism. Fatalism led to passivity and hopelessness in all things except an after-life, when I would finally be free of me. When Jesus would come to me and ask, “Son. Do you wish to get well?” I would respond, “Oh, Lord, if only that were possible. My sin is ever before me. You know I would like to be free, but things, being fixed as they are, make this impossible. Oh Lord, please do not take Your Holy Spirit from me. I am just a sinner saved by grace and this fate of mine is to be expected, here in this fallen world. Oh, Lord, I’m a lost cause, but Ill be all right. I know You’re busy. Why don’t You spend your valuable time on someone who can receive You?” I’m sure His response was, “Oh, Lord.”

In my prison, I spent a great deal of time in dark introspection. My thoughts and deeds reinforced my self-image as one with a desperately sick heart, beyond understanding and beyond help. Not surprisingly, I was also struggling to receive and enjoy God’s love. I reasoned, as I sulked in my depravity, that discipline and even judgment should be my due from a holy God. I was experiencing chronic Jerusalem Syndrome. I had grown comfortable with ideas about God and myself based on half-truths, also known as lies. I was getting cooked alive.

In my story, events transpired which led me to reconsider my essential identity. Eventually, after God did an especially gracious thing in my heart, I was able to see that I was more than just a sinner saved by grace. I was a saint. On top of that, I was also a son and a friend of God’s. From this place it became easier to acknowledge and receive God’s love. That is a BIG DEAL! Since then, a great deal of shame and guilt has been edited out of my thought process. I feel as though God plucked this frog out of the pan that he might live, and do so abundantly.

It was as if Jesus had come to me and said, “Rob, do you wish to get well, or do you prefer to remain a prisoner to your precious half-truths?” This derailing question was necessary because God knew I was entrapped by toxic and familiar ideas. My theology explained my reality. That reality was the foundation of all my reasoning. Having our cosmology (why things go as they do) altered is the equivalent of a psychic earthquake. The question became, “Rob, will you trade the familiar for the impossible? Give me your incomplete identity as a sinner saved by grace and, in exchange, I will give you a fuller identity as my son and friend.” The Holy Spirit was breaking down all my syndromes and renewing the place of Jesus in my heart.

The enemy delights in any theology that discounts how we see ourselves or distorts how we see God. One of Satan’s strategies is to limit our involvement in the battle by trapping us in our insecurity with bad theology.

One day, when all the enemy’s half-truths have been exposed, I see the Church becoming an agent of healing. Through a liberated Body of Christ, who has grasped her identity and assumed her destiny, captives will be set free. That is what it will look like when God’s will is being done on earth as it is in heaven.

Father, strengthen our hearts. Help us to be bold and courageous in our faith. Lead us to that place where we anticipate, in all arenas of the battle, to see You doing good, exceedingly above and beyond our understanding and expectation. Please show us where we are constricted by half-truths, however comfortable we have become with them. May our beliefs be in sync with Yours. Nothing is impossible for You. Amen.

 

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