Leading with a Limp

Former President Harry Truman, the man who oversaw the post-World War II era in the United States, was the one who is famous for saying, "The buck stops here."  A mountain of strength, nobody ever questioned his ability to lead.

Yet he walked with a limp, and needed a cane.

I get a little leery when I hear people talking about their addictions, their hangups and/or the hurts of their past and then they say that they are "healed."  

Perhaps it's a matter of semantics, but I prefer to think of  myself as "healing."  That means I am still in the process, that it is never done, that there is always more, that I can always go deeper in God than I am right now, and that I have not arrived.  People who think they've arrived  -  well, frankly they scare me.  There's a mindset of exclusivity that sets in, an element of I'm-better-than-you fanaticism that repels rather than attracts.  

Don't get me wrong.  God has healed me of a lot of the wounds of the past.  But my basic tendency to fix situations and to manipulate and control people is still there!  I am never cured of this addiction.  What I have is a daily reprieve that is contingent (in other words, that vitally depends) on the maintenance of my spiritual condition. 

I might be tempted to be an elitist at best (and a supercilious religious prig, truth be told) if I were to claim total healing, to claim that there is an end to the question of (to use a Christian term) the sin problem.  John the apostle wrote to Christians when he said, "If we say that we haven't sinned, we lie, and the truth is not in us."  And then he talked about Jesus being our Advocate with the Father for WHEN we sin.  Not IF.

God can use us when we are broken.  

Just consider Joni Eareckson Tada, paralyzed from the neck down in a diving accident when she was a teenager.  Today, she is a well-known evangelical Christian painter, singer, and accomplished speaker who is a voice for disability rights.  Yet every day she has to ask for help to do the most basic of personal care tasks.  And she is not resentful in the least of that fact.  She believes that internal beauty trumps external beauty, and models that in how she lives.

Could God heal her?  yes - He could.  But she would be the first to tell you that her external healing would not accomplish even a fraction of what God has done in and through her in spite of - perhaps because of - her physical limitations.  She has been able to reach more people, and not just Christians, by her indomitable spirit shining through a wheelchair-bound body.  Which brings me to something else that kind of bothers me about the idea that there can and should be total healing from things that plague us.

It's that elitism I mentioned earlier. Those of us who believe that there is a cure for addiction - or for sin - can very quickly look down on those who struggle daily with those issues, and worse, lead to an isolation away from the very people that need our help the most. "Us four and no more" or in more colorful language, "Ah don't smoke an' ah don't chew an' ah don't 'ssociate with them what do..." can hold at arm's length those who don't feel welcomed by our particular brand of faith. OR recovery.

I believe that it's one reason why so many institutionalized churches are dying a slow death, and frankly, why too many 12-step groups are going the same way.  Too much navel-gazing and not enough outreach... Outreach means we risk someone not agreeing with us, questioning our theology or our opinion.  As uncomfortable as that kind of confrontation is for me, I know that by rubbing shoulders with people who are honestly hurting, and sharing my experience anyway, I have the opportunity to help those un-churched in 12-step groups who might never attend a church service, as much as they might need it.  AND by the same token, I have the opportunity to help those Christians who wouldn't be caught dead going to a 12-step group, as much as they might need it.

Food for thought.