LETTERS: BROKEN BODY, NOT HEALING, IS BEST SYMBOL

To the editor:

I am writing in response to the March 13 letter on the Great Physician. While I rejoice with Ron Farrow over his divine deliverance from the sniffles, I find his theology both simplistic and dangerous. Such thinking has been used for centuries in western culture to oppress people with disabilities. That Christ did not always choose to heal becomes evident simply by looking at his nail-scarred hands.

The healing miracles we find in the Gospels were not primarily acts of mercy but signs of power (Luke 7:22), signs of power that were, and are, consistently misunderstood. Indeed it was the scars of Calvary that Jesus appealed to as the basis of faith, not healing (John 20:27).

In this Lenten season we must remember that it is not the miraculous healings but the broken body of Christ to which Christianity turns as the means of salvation. As for me, I will stand (as best I can) with the disabled Christ rather than with able-bodied triumphalism.

KERRY H. WYNN

Learning Enrichment Center

Southeast Missouri State

University

Cape Girardeau