Does God Cause Illness?

I was asked this question recently - Does God cause or allow illness? If so, why do we pray for healing? I thought I'd share my answer here.

Sickness is part of the human condition. We are incredibly fragile. We bruise and bleed fairly easily. But here's the thing, we also heal proportionately, fairly easily. We break bones and even contract diseases like cancer or multiple sclerosis and with the help of others and the gift of medicine or treatment, our bodies find ways to live through and often with illness.

When I hear someone asking does God cause sickness and if so, why should I pray, I hear the question more about a cognitive change of what we think God is supposed to do or be.

Make sense? We think God is supposed to do something or be something. And then God doesn't do what we thought or isn't acting as we thought. We think God has changed – but perhaps maybe it's us who needs to adjust who or what we thought God is. If God isn't what you thought God was, then go find out what God is. And most importantly, just because God isn't what you thought God was, that doesn't mean that there is no God or that God doesn't care. It just means we need a better definition.

So how do we find the better definition? Prayer.

Prayer is our way of being with God. If you needed to understand your friend better, what would you do? You would spend more time – listening, exploring, watching.

The frailty of our human condition continually pushes us to adjust our definition of God. That's good. Don't walk away from faith, lean into it.

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