Day 36

 

It Is Not Your Fault

 

His disciples asked him, "Rabbi who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?"

 

John 9:2

 

 

I was in a big hospital room that had 4 beds, though only 3 were occupied. It was a cancer hospital and it was the floor that had teenagers as patients. Some of the kids were there for weeks at a time and their parents might live out of town or for some other reason not be able to be there with their child all the time. My wife, who had been a patient on that floor, was now a nurse on that floor and had asked me to come to the hospital to spend some time with a boy, barely in his teens, who was lonely.

 

So, I was there in the room playing video games with the boy when a group came in to visit another boy in the room. As the boy was explaining to me how to get free lives on Mario Brothers there was a much different conversation going on across the room.

 

The other boy was having surgery the next day. He was telling his visitors there was a good possibility he would lose his leg. That would have been bad enough for a young boy to face but what these people told him could only make it worse.

 

"If you have enough faith," they told him, "you will be well."

 

I don't care what your theology is, how can you say that to a kid? He was being told that the success of his surgery was up to him. If he didn't beat cancer it was now his fault. I was sick and I was furious.

 

What I wanted to do was walk over there and grab one of them by the ankles and dangle them out the 6th story window and say, "If you have enough faith the fall won't  kill ya."

 

I wanted to but I didn't. I know they meant well and they were visiting folks in the hospital and not many people do that. Still, any good intentions they had paled in comparison  to the harmful thing they had said.

 

What they had told the boy was nothing new; people were saying that sort of thing in Bible times. The Jews in New Testament days though if you were sick it was because you had sinned. Sometimes that is true. If you are an alcoholic and your liver goes skunky then there is a good chance it is your fault. But for most of the time if you are sick it is not your fault.

 

Jesus was asked by his disciples why a man was born blind. They wanted to know if it was some sin the blind man had committed or perhaps something his parents had done. The answer, Jesus told them, was that neither one of them was to blame. The man's blindness was an opportunity  for God's power to be displayed as Jesus healed the  man.

 

Sickness and tragedies can happen to anyone, the good, the bad, the ugly, the faithless and the faithful. The majority of the time it is not your fault and you are not being punished. It is not God's fault either. Sin and wickedness entered the world through mankind's actions not God's design. God does allow things to happen and what he wants to do is use your difficulty to work something good in your life.

 

Upon Further Review:

 

Read John 9:1-27

• Who did the former blind man first tell about how he was cured?
• What were the former blind man's parents afraid of?
• What was the "one thing" the cured blind man knew?
• What offer did the cured blind man make to the Pharisees?