I’m a believer in holistic medicine. We can no more expect to have a healthy body without addressing the areas of our existence that effect our physical health. Choices that cause anxiety of mind will eventually elicit responses from our bodies. Behaviors that contradict our moral sense of right and wrong, violate our commitments to each other, and destroy trust in community will inevitably rob us and others of the peace and joy of mind and erode spiritual, emotional, and physical wholeness.
No wonder to get to the source of issues, Jesus asked such disturbing questions and gave what seemed to be unrelated advice.
“Where is your husband?”
“Who is my mother and my brothers?”
“Sell all that you have and give it to the poor.”
“You need to be born again.”
“Who touched me?”
“Unless you become like this little child, you’ll have no Kingdom status.”
“Whose name is on this coin?”
“Let me tell you a story....”
“Do you want to be well?”
“But who do you say that I am?”
It is so human of us to segment, compartmentalize, detach, escape, divert. When confronted with one issue, how easy it is to focus on someone else, change the subject, divert attention from our problem to some other problem. It is so like Jesus to go to the heart of the issue.
I passionately believe that serving Jesus is the best holistic medicine for an injured and malfunctioning life. Over time and practiced consistently, the gospel of Jesus will heal us from our innermost parts outward—nourish us and make us well. Jesus is not a quick-fix hit that will make us feel instantly better, then, like most other medicines, leave us with not only the disease we started with but several more serious side effects.
No, He came to make us friends with God who made us perfect in the first place. His deep “passion” is to remake us from the inside out in the model and mold of Himself. His objective is to make a creature enough like himself that both He and we will be filled with joy in relationship together. He wanted a friend with whom he had something in common; He called it fellowship.
Satan’s objective and only power is to destroy and distort, but God creates and recreates. As we relinquish control of our lives to God, we will become creative, too, and go about the joyful work of leaving behind us a trail of beauty and joy!
But here is God’s lovely secret plan: He does this not by making us autonomous “little gods”, but by making us body parts infused and made alive by the life-force that is flowing through us. We become completely a part of Christ himself, yet we can only be that as we function in active (exercised) parts of each other, responding to the brain and soul of God. That way we are never alone, always fully alive, and knowing that no matter where we are, we are right where we need to be.
