Panic clamped its talons on my skull, and I was waiting for my brain to burst out like yolk in an egg.
The room was framed in a fuzzy blur.
College, 2003.
I thought the world was going to end—no, not the world, but me. I thought I was going to end. I thought my soul was going to be squeezed until it detonated like a grenade.
I shouldn’t have gone to class.
I knew now that I shouldn’t have gone to class, but it was too late.
I’d been upset in the commute over, of course, but I told myself I’d be all right. It’d be okay. So what that my father was going to see a faith healer? So what that he had been waiting, longing for the day when this man of “god” would come to town? So what that his dementia had made him nuts and he was a totally different person and he now watched junk “religious” shows on TV? So what that he was going to find out he wouldn’t be healed by this con artist? So what? He wouldn’t listen to me. So what?
I’d walked down the long sidewalk to class, and I told myself I was going to be all right. I was going to be okay. So what that my father had begged people to take him (since he couldn’t drive) to see this “faith healer” after my mother refused? So what that my father didn’t know what he was doing? So what that, had he only been in his right mind, he would have stopped this “healing trip” in an instant? So what that he’d told me my whole life how health-and-wealth teachers were a fraud, and now, in his weakest and desperately pitiful longing . . . in his confusion and dementia brought on by this illness . . . he’d been tricked by some wealthy, healthy “preacher” who made a living off of broken and dying?
So what?
Yeah, so what?
I’d sat down in class all right. I’d felt a little funny, but surely it would be okay. I opened my laptop. I wasn’t going to tell anybody. How could I? How could I tell people that my father, devout to the Word of God, had been trapped in one of the most vile heresies that has ever haunted the Christian church?
And as I sat there, classmates started coming in. People were talking. People were laughing. The laughing sliced through me like claws. Why did they have to be laughing? Why did I have to be in this room?
I was dizzy, disoriented, lost. I knew I was too sick to excuse myself, too sick to stand up, too sick to make my way out of that horrible room.
And then the professor started the lesson. Casually. She was looking at me a little funny, but then she looked away, thinking I guess I was lost in thought.
And it was suddenly too much.
I didn’t hear anything.
And I started screaming. Hysterically. Hysterically screaming.
I woke up on the floor.
I woke up to two college professors huddled over me. One had her hand on my head. They were praying for me. I had tears streaming down my face, and snot stringing from my nose, and I remember one of them hugging me, and me thinking, How could she do that? How could she do that, when I’m so gross?
And they took me into an office, and I cried. And cried. And I told them my father was going today to see a faith healer.
And he wasn’t going to be healed.
I went home that day like shattered glass set together with the wrong kind of paste, fashioned in the wrong kind of way. I felt so fragile that a mere touch would crumble me into fragments too small to see. And yet I felt ferociously angry, ready to tear the health-and-wealth movement apart brick by brick. And yet I was so wounded I felt as if I could not last much longer unless I hated God with as much hate as I could secretly store away.
God had done this to me, hadn’t He? He had done this to my father! What was this, anyway? Cruelty? Vengeance? Wicked humor? God had taken away my father’s good mind and given him this messed-up, wrecked-up one. God had given my father Lou Gehrig’s Disease, hadn’t He? What for, to prove He could do whatever He wanted? To show how much He hated me?
Why is it, God, you would let wicked, awful, filthy rich people stab the frail hearts of the sick and dying? How could You let that happen? What kind of a God are You?
I can’t write this without tears running down my face. Not because I still believe this. But because the hurt, the injustice, and the absolute abuse that health-and-wealth man dealt to my father and my family . . . wounds me still.
I found out that my mother had secretly gone to the church to watch over my father (who had gone with a kind friend—my father could not drive and he was in a terrible position—how could he refuse when, to my father, it was a rejection of all hope for his healing?).
My mother sat in the balcony, tears streaming down her face. She watched as my father, who had stood in line for hours at the door, had been rejected for the “healing platform”, slowly staggered up from his seat, walked down the long aisle, and tapped the security guard to try to get through to go down for healing.
The security guard brusquely told him he could not pass.
And my father staggered back to his seat.
And then this health-and-wealth pastor preached about money and healing.
And my father staggered up from his seat, hobble down the long aisle, and tap the security guard on the arm to try to get through to go down to healing.
And the security guard told him, no remorse, No.
And my father stumbled back to his seat as the chosen people waited on the front rows for their “healing”.
And then the health-and-wealth pastor kept preaching about money and healing.
And, yes, my father got up again. And again. He got up every time he had an “opportunity”, and every time he was rejected, and that security guard sent him back to his seat with not one touch of compassion.
And my father put money in the offering plate.
And then the service was over, and my father realized the horror of what had happened. He sat there, tired from the long standing, wear from the effort he had made and the appeals . . .
And in my father’s eyes, he had missed his chance.
My father came home from that.
He wasn’t healed.
My heart breaks even now to think about my father stumbling down that aisle. My heart breaks to think that this fraudulent movement has associated itself to Christianity to feast on naïve victims.
For a long time after that, I was far, far away from God. My stance was, if God approved of such practices, He could just leave me alone. And if He allowed such practices, He could count on my lack of endorsement.
My father died in 2004.
I’ve talked in other blogs about God’s hand stretched towards me, always waiting, and how God has called me to nest in His love, how He has spread His grace around me like wings.
God had to tutor me, one-on-one, in His love. I was way behind the class. But He did a masterful job of catching me up. And when I realized how God is love as 1 John 4:16 says, God very graciously began to give me answers to the hard accusations I had made about Him, until they dissolved into only wonder that He had been so good and so patient with me.
God hadn’t made that health-and-wealth “preacher” do that to my father. God hadn’t even wanted him to. God’s desire is for us to pursue Him and, as we follow, to learn love, justice, honesty, mercy, kindness, patience, and grace from His path.
But then why had God allowed this man to hurt my father so? To hurt me so?
I don’t know God’s total plan. But I do know that every second He delays before Jesus returns, He is waiting for more people to come to Him because He is love. At the moment Jesus returns there will no more chances. God has been waiting for people . . . people like that health-and-wealth teacher . . . and people like me. If God had ended the world before my father had gone to that meeting . . . I wouldn’t have been saved. The very thing I wished for would have condemned me eternally.
Really, of course, I didn’t want for the world to end, just for that preacher to be “stopped”. But what if this experience hadn’t happened? Would I have ever come to the point where I finally saw how much I needed God? Could God allow this to happen so I could have time to come to Him? And, if so, how could I complain about that?
And what about the people I have compassion for because of my experience? What if one person, even one person, comes to Christ because of the empathy God taught me through that experience (that experience which Satan and our choice to sin, not God, instigated)?
I can’t play “God”. I can’t decide which things to stop and which things not to. I don’t know what will lead to what. Certainly if God stopped all evil, the world would come to an end!
I believe, “All things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” (from Romans 8:28, NIV)
I forgive the health-and-wealth man and the security guard who did this to my father. I pray God will draw them near, by His grace, and they, too, will see the love of God, which makes all wealth look as dirt on the ground.
The hardest thing for me was knowing my father had struggled to get out of his seat, staggered down the aisle, and again and again pleaded to be allowed past to walk up to the platform for healing.
But let me tell you something. Something I know with all my heart.
On September 22, 2004, my father walked up to the gates of Heaven, and the Lord Jesus Christ let him in and nobody, not nobody, will ever again block my father from the altar of healing, because he is with the Healer.
And he didn’t pay a dime for the privilege.
Rather, his Healer gave His body, His blood, for my father.
And I know how God could allow my father not to be healed.
Because God Himself healed my father.
Forever.
And now, dear brothers and sisters, we want you to know what will happen to the believers who have died so you will not grieve like people who have no hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and was raised to life again, we also believe that when Jesus returns, God will bring back with him the believers who have died.
(1 Thessalonians 4:13-14, NLT)
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