Can You imagine Healing?
We talk about healing all the time but we don’t really know what it is
We talk about healing all the time but we don’t really know what it is, in spite of all the sophisticated medical technology available in the today’s world or that we imagine we might encounter before we go the way of all flesh. That’s part of the transhumanist hope, currently popular with the wealthiest among us.
Most, who have not given it much serious consideration, think healing has something to do with returning to a time they have experienced in the past, but that really can’t be it. Even if we are fitted with fantastic prosthetics or obtain new organs through surgical transplantation, we already understand that these sorts of fixes are temporary.
Returning to an earlier normal is perhaps a taste of what healing really is, but true complete healing must be something we have never experienced even at the highest level of health any may have achieved, like when someone wins gold medals at the Olympics. True healing is even more.
Many teach and some believe there is a state of complete health if we choose to live the right way. For example, health will be ours by eating right and avoiding eating unhealthy things; exercising; meditating; seeking nature; breathing deeply; drinking or drugging to a healthy level of relaxation without going too far; or avoiding all of this and trusting one’s genetics. These paths toward health indeed attract many, especially the young, who are permitted, due to their, thus far, limited life experience.
No, complete healing is a promise that can only be realized in another place than the one we occupy in this life because mortality is, by definition, time limited.
So what might complete healing look like? The answer is that it will be beyond our experience and therefore unimaginable.
But let’s try to imagine it anyway.
Complete healing is a new and better body. It is new and better relationships, without conflict and without the limitations of aging and death itself. It will be endless.
This is the way it is described in the second to last chapter of the Bible.
And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”
And he who was seated on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.” Also he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.” And he said to me, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give from the spring of the water of life without payment.
Revelation 21:3-6 (ESV)
The healing promised comes when death is no more and after every tear of suffering and sadness has been wiped away. Until then we live by choice, either with the hope that it is still ahead and has to do with a connection with one good and powerful enough to pull this off, or in despair that it is just a silly dream that has no basis in reality. Those are the only two options I can see available to any of us alive right now.