It is common for people who are going through hard times to blame their problems on God. Regardless of what the problem is, some people reason that God must be at fault in some way. After all, God is all powerful, so He could easily take care of their problem; and since He is loving, He would want to, right?
But is that fair? Where does it say that God is responsible to take care of all our problems? Where is love defined as not allowing us to face them? Perhaps our understanding is a bit at fault, expecting things of God, which we have no right to expect and even which may exist for our benefit in some way.
There are problems which teach us valuable lessons. Financial lack, for example, can teach us how to handle our money better and not waste it. Working with that difficult co-worker can teach us how to communicate better. A lot of things can help to teach us patience, which we all need RIGHT NOW! If God were to solve these problems for us, then we wouldn’t learn the valuable lessons that they can teach us.
This is not to say that God has necessarily created all these problems for us or that they are His will for our lives. Many things happen in our lives just because they are part of life. Others happen as a consequence of our own actions. A parent who never disciplines their child, when that child is small, may complain to God about them, when they grow to be teens; but the problems they are having are a result of their own actions. Likewise, someone who doesn’t invest time and effort in their own marriage, can expect to have marriage problems later.
Would it be fair to blame those consequences on God? I think not. Yet people do blame Him for such things all the time; not understanding that those things haven’t come from Him.
Life’s problems all seem to leave us with the question: Is this from God or is it from the devil? That’s a good question and one which people have struggled with throughout the centuries. Yet Jesus gave us some great insight into this question, defining the difference between the things that He brings into our lives and the things the devil does.
The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly. – John 10:10
The key for us is to look at the results of whatever is happening in our lives. Does it bring death, destruction and steal something from us? Then it is clearly from the devil. On the other hand, if it brings life and life more abundantly, then the Lord has brought it into our lives.
Please note that this is not only talking about material or financial things; but also spiritual things. Satan can attack us, intending to bring about destruction in our lives. But when God gets ahold of that thing, He can turn it around, bringing about a good spiritual result in our lives. We may lose something materially, while we gain something much greater spiritually.
Yes, this may sound strange, but it is true; both can happen at once. It is true because the power and knowledge of God is so much greater than that of the devil. He is therefore able to use those things that the devil does for His own purpose; which is always for our benefit. As many of us are wont to quote:
And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose. – Romans 8:28
Please note the requirements in this verse. First, we must love God for Him to use it for good and secondly, we must be called according to His purpose. That doesn’t necessarily refer to a ministry calling; but it does indicate that what we are doing is in agreement with God’s purposes in our lives. If we are intentionally walking in habitual sin, expecting God to bring about good from that sin, we are fooling ourselves.
So, what is this purpose that the verse is referring to at the end? The following verse tells us.
For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren. – Romans 8:29
God’s ultimate desire in our lives, after our salvation, is that we be remade into the image of Jesus Christ. This obviously isn’t talking about his physical image, but the image of His character. God wants us to be like Christ in the way that we say and do things, so that we might have a character as perfect and excellent as He does. In fact, I’d say that He’s willing to do just about anything in our lives to bring that about.
How Does this Apply to Disease?
There are those who have said that God gave them one disease or another, in order to teach them something; but there is no scriptural basis for this claim. We don’t see one single example of this in the gospels, although we do see other reasons why people had diseases that Jesus healed.
Most disease is a natural process, either brought about by bacteria and viruses of by the breaking down of the body, as we age. Since bacteria and viruses are part of God’s creation, it is easy to say that God created disease, at least on the surface. But we need to dig a little deeper to find out the truth.
One thing we need to consider here is that there are many types of bacteria which are beneficial. We house more bacteria in and on our bodies, many of which have beneficial purposes. Bacteria do everything from eating dead skin cells, thereby eliminating them, help us digest our food, and neutralize some toxins that can be found in the body. They even produce some vitamins. There are things that the human body cannot digest on its own, which bacteria break up for us, making the nutrients useful.
But some of those bacteria can be very harmful, when they are removed from the environment they belong in and put in another. E. coli for example, are essential in our gut, helping to aid digestion and protecting us from other harmful microbes. But if we ingest those bacteria, they can cause severe stomach cramps, bloody diarrhea and vomiting. Diarrhea and vomiting can lead to dehydration, which if not properly treated, can be fatal.
The SARS-CoV-2 virus, which causes COVID-19, apparently came originally from bats. No evidence has been released, showing that this virus has any negative effect on the bats that it lives in. Yet, that same virus caused a worldwide pandemic, which killed over 6.5 million people, worldwide. It was that virus getting out of the bat population and into the human one which caused the pandemic, regardless of how that happened. Had that virus stayed in the bat population, most of us would never have heard of it.
In ancient times, diseases were often passed from person to person through the water supply. People would defecate in chamber pots, which would be emptied out on the street. Rains would wash that into the streams and rivers, where the bacteria would continue to survive and even thrive. Other people, living downstream, would use that water for drinking, cooking and cleaning, not suspecting there was anything wrong with it, as they had no concept of germs. Yet the germs (bacteria) in the water would cause them to become ill.
This can still happen today. Campers might use rivers and streams as their personal toilet, not realizing that they are contaminating the water by doing so. Those downstream can then ingest those pathogens, thinking they are drinking clear, clean mountain stream water. But it’s not; and once the stream has become contaminated, it stays contaminated. For this reason, we must treat all water as suspect, purifying it, before we can drink it.
So, we live in a situation where disease can pass easily from person to person or from animal to person, spreading disease constantly. Respiratory diseases spread more easily through droplets of spittle, which are expelled when we cough or sneeze, while gastrointestinal diseases spread more easily through our water and food. In either case, we are receiving microorganisms we shouldn’t be.
The Impact of Sin on Disease
While the bacteria that cause disease can be said to have existed since the creation account in Genesis, chapter one, that doesn’t mean that they always caused the problems that they do today. One thing we know for sure, is that those bacteria could not cause death, as it is sin that gave way for death to enter into the world.
For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. – Romans 6:23
Theologians have long held that death didn’t exist before sin. This puts the first recorded death in history as being the animals which God killed, so that He could make clothes for Adam and Eve, in Genesis, chapter 3.
As time has gone on, sin has increased in the world as well. By the time of Noah, it became so bad that God decided He needed to cleanse the Earth of life and start over. He directed Noah to build an ark, into which he, his family and two of every type of animal would retreat, while the world was destroyed in a flood (Genesis, chapters 6-8).
Yet sin did not stop with the destruction of the “evil people.” Rather, sin has abounded throughout history. If anything, sin is a greater problem today, than it was in the time of Noah. Since sin corrupts, one form of this corruption is the increase of disease we see in the world today.
Granted, there are natural causes for much of the disease we see; but spiritual things manifest themselves in the natural as well. Medical science keeps encountering new diseases which were unknown before. While some of that could be their increase in being able to detect those diseases, where they couldn’t before; not all of it can be attributed to that. Some of those diseases are new to this world, which explains why doctors have never seen them before.
Non-Bacterial Disease
Before talking about cancer, we must mention that not all disease is caused by bacteria and viruses though. Infectious diseases are; but there are a lot of diseases that don’t fall into this category. Rather, they are problems caused by the way we live our lives. Diabetes, for example, isn’t caused by bacteria, but rather by our diets. Both diabetes and heart disease have been tied to obesity, which is the result of eating more than we need to.
There are limits to what our bodies can endure and anytime we move outside those limits, it causes harm to our bodies. That may be direct harm, such as breaking a bone or it might be something that shows up slowly, over time. In either case, the disease we suffer is a direct result of our own actions and can be traced to them.
Blaming God for a broken bone that we receive from a skiing accident really doesn’t make any sense. There’s nothing wrong with skiing, but we must realize that it can be dangerous. While anyone can have an accident skiing, it’s much easier to have an accident when we try to ski trails that are above our experience and ability. That’s a recipe for disaster, as many people have discovered through the years. To complain that God didn’t trust you would be tantamount to accusing God for giving you the free will to do what you want.
So, Where Does Cancer Come From?
Cancer is rather unique as a disease; in that it is a result of a natural process going wrong. Cells in our body divide, creating new cells. This is both a part of growth and a means for the body to replace old cells with new ones. For the average adult, this process happens roughly 330 billion times per day. Those cells align in an ordered manner, producing the various types of tissue which make up the body’s organs, completing a host of different tasks.
Sometimes, that process goes wrong, producing abnormal cells, both in their lack of unity and their organization. These cells continue dividing, producing a useless mass of tissue, or cancer tumor. Given time, the tumor can grow faster than healthy tissue and can spread to other parts of the body.
God does not cause cancer. This process is very clearly a corruption of how the body is intended to function. As such, it is easy to blame it on sin, something that many have done. In some cases, such as lung cancer, smoking can be the culprit. While there is nothing in the Bible which specifically states that smoking is a sin; it introduces substances into the body, specifically into the lungs, which can disrupt the normal process of cellular reproduction, causing cancer.
Smoking isn’t the only such thing that can cause cancer, as there are many other carcinogens that have been discovered by medical science. More probably exist, which we are unaware of. It is quite possible that in our modern world we are all doing perfectly normal things, which introduce carcinogens into our body, making it possible for us to end up with cancer.
The lives we lie today are filled with chemicals, not all of which we fully understand. Just look at the ingredients label on almost any food you buy and try to read what’s in it. If you can’t read something, it’s a chemical and chances are that nobody is absolutely sure what it does inside your body. It’s only being used because nobody has been able to prove that it causes us harm. The same can be said for anything from shampoo, to household cleaners.
It has been theorized that the increased cancer rate in society has been caused by the chemicals in our lives. This includes pollutants in the air, as well as chemicals in the products we use. The EPA has created restrictions on the pollutants that industry is allowed to put into the atmosphere and into our water supplies, in an attempt to reduce their impact on our lives, as well as their impact on nature. While they have had some success, we really don’t know how much more is needed to eliminate problems like cancer.
God has made it clear in the Bible that this world will wear out and come to an end. The entire book of Revelations speaks about how this end will come. But Jesus also speaks about a time called “the beginning of sorrows” which apparently will happen before the events in Revelations.
Take heed that no one deceives you. 5 For many will come in My name, saying, “I am the Chrost,” and will deceive many. 6 And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not troubled, for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet. 7 For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. And there will be famines, pestilences, and earthquakes in various places. 8 All these are the beginning of sorrows. – Matthew 24:4-8
Is cancer included in that passage? We can say that it is included in the word “pestilence.” While that word is normally reserved for plagues and epidemics, it can also refer to the rising tide of cancer in the world today. We could very well be living in that time and not even know it.
Does God Heal Cancer?
The good news is that God can heal cancer. There have been thousands of recorded cases of people with cancer who have been healed. Not everyone who is prayed for ends up healed; but enough to show that this is a very real option that God provides.
When God heals people, it brings Him glory. That glory belongs to Him alone; not to the minister or believer who prayed for healing; only to God. He doesn’t share His glory with anyone. He might loan us His power, so that we can do His will; but the glory still belongs to Him.
The question of why not everyone who is prayed for receives a healing is one that has baffled pastors, ministers and theologians for years. While some may point to one possible cause or another, the truth is that there are many things that can hinder our prayers, from lacking faith to disobeying God. One may seem to pray in faith, but not have that faith in their heart. Another may pray in faith, but be praying for a cancer patient who has given up and is therefore unable to muster their own faith for healing. Still another may be praying in faith for a cancer patient who truly wants healing, but the person praying has not dealt with some area of sin in their own life, which is hindering their prayer.
We cannot know the true reason why some are not healed of cancer and attempting to point the finger in one direction or other may do no more than prevent us from looking at our own lives to see if we are at fault in some way. It is better to continue praying in faith, while also asking the Holy Spirit to examine our own hearts, showing us where we might be wrong.
Of this we can be sure; if we pray for someone to be healed, so that we might receive some accolade of man, then we are not praying in accordance with God’s will. Rather than giving Him the glory for bringing about healing in their life, we are trying to steal God’s glory. He doesn’t share that with anyone.
At the same time, being confronted with cancer can serve as a very real wake-up call, telling us that we need to examine our life. As a cancer patient, family member, or minister praying for someone who has cancer, we must each do whatever we can to ensure that nothing in our lives is hindering our prayers. We should also take the opportunity that cancer offers us to minister to the patient’s heart and spirit, making sure that they have a solid relationship with God, through the redemptive work of His Son on the cross. That way, if they are not healed, we can know that they have gone to a better place and that we will see them again someday.