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Previous | Next Hospital hypocrisy
Bill D. Halstead
“You have a really great hospital here, Doctor.”
“Thank you.”
“There are some things I don’t understand, though.”
The doctor’s eyebrows raised. “Oh? What?”
The visiting reporter frowned. “Well, for example, that last woman who came in. When you asked her what her problem was, she was very insistent she had no problem.”
The doctor nodded. “Have you talked to the other patients?”
“Yes. They all told me the same thing.”
“Did you ask them why they’re here?”
“Of course. Some said they were here because they loved the architecture, or the decor. Some said they loved to listen to your lectures. Some said they liked the music on the intercom. Some said they really appreciated the nurses and the aides. Some said it was a convenient location. Not one of them said anything about being sick, wanting help or believing they could be healed here.”
The doctor’s smile was rueful. “Which is exactly what you saw in the woman you asked about.”
“Exactly! Why, she wouldn’t even tell you where she hurt. It was obvious she was in pain, but when you asked about it, she said, ‘Oh, I’m doing so well. I feel wonderful. It’s so great to be here!’ Then you had to push and prod to find her sore spots and figure out what her problem was.”
The doctor nodded. “She didn’t really appreciate my finding them either, did she?”
“Wow! I guess not! The things she said about you for daring to say something was wrong with her! She threatened to go to a different hospital, to have your license revoked – she even threatened to sue you. I would have thought she would have wanted her problem diagnosed. Isn’t that why she came here?”
The doctor frowned. “Well, yes. They really do come here for healing. But they want the healing to be given by just sort of putting it out there – you know, just filling the air with it. Then they can come in, never admit they are sick, absorb the healing out of the air and leave again without anyone ever knowing they were sick in the first place.”
“That’s insane! I’ve never heard of such a thing. Why would they do that? Why is it so bad to admit to being sick?”
“Well, sometimes they have a point. Unfortunately, since the other patients here all play the same, nothing-wrong-with-me game, they can be pretty cruel to those who admit sickness. A few may admit to some general sickness, but they viciously attack any specific sickness as being much worse than anything they’ve ever had. Some of them even become afraid that another’s sickness may bring a contagion into the hospital that will affect everyone. I’ve heard some of them say that we have a really fine hospital and we don’t want any sick people here.”
“So you just have to blunder along, trying to figure out their needs without ever telling them they’re sick, and trying to heal them without their actually seeking the healing?”
“Yes.”
Sound crazy? Of course it is. No hospital would ever try to function under that kind of handicap.
But the church often does! The church, among other things, is designed by God to be a spiritual hospital – a place where spiritual ills can be healed. But healing requires diagnosis and treatment, and few in the church ever want to admit they have a spiritual problem.
To avoid admitting a problem, we wear our “church face” on Sunday. We tell everyone how wonderfully we are doing. We admire the decor, the music, the staff – we use all those reasons to explain our presence there.
What would happen if we said things like, “Please pray for me, that I can overcome my lust” or “I need help to stop being such a back-stabber” or “How can I stop being a gossip?” or “I have a problem. I am a liar”?
I know what I would like to think would happen. I would like to believe the church would rally around that person, that the church would pray for, encourage, teach, admonish and nurse that person back to spiritual health and strength, and never breathe a word beyond the church’s walls of what was said or done.
Is that what would happen? Or would the person seeking healing and help receive instead ridicule and rejection?
In reality, because the church is a spiritual hospital, not all who are there are spiritually healthy or spiritually mature. There will always be those within any congregation whose sickness is a critical spirit, spiritual pride, gossip or a condemning heart – just as there are those who struggle with other very real moral problems and lapses, those whose lifestyles require drastic change.
There is a profound need for a church to be a place where it is safe to disclose spiritual problems, in order to seek God’s cure, but the reluctance to “parade” those problems before the whole congregation is well placed. That’s why the leaders (elders, pastors, teachers, etc.) of a congregation are carefully chosen from the spiritually mature. These are the ones to whom spiritual illnesses can safely be taken for prayer and healing. Their compassion, their godliness and their spiritual maturity qualify them to deal with spiritual problems. They are the “medical staff” of this spiritual hospital. Spiritual healing requires that you let them diagnose and treat those problems, and that you be willing to follow their prescriptions and instructions. Then the church truly will be a healing place for illnesses of the soul.
Remember this as well when you see those within your church who are struggling. The fact that they are struggling does not make them hypocrites. It only means they have not yet attained to that to which God has called us. The fact that they remain in the church indicates they are seeking God’s help in working on it.
The greater hypocrisy in the spiritual hospital of the church may well be those who refuse to acknowledge their own need. God’s Word says, “Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, that He may lift you up in due time. Cast all your anxiety on Him, because He cares for you” (1 Peter 5:6-7).
Bill D. Hallsted is a writer from Griffith, Ind.
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Last modified July 16, 2000.
© 2000 Mennonite Brethren Herald.
Published by the Canadian Conference of MB Churches.
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