Medicated?

Ever get a headache? I'm sure you have. I don't like taking medicine if I don't have to. Something about it just doesn't sit well with me. Every once in a while though I get a killer headache that calls for something more than just waiting for it to go away. It's then that I reach for the pain meds. Sounds simple doesn't it? Just pop a couple pills and magically the pain is gone, right? Not exactly. The physical symptom that is causing the pain remains. Pills don't stop the headache, they simple slow the production of certain chemicals that cause pain. In the short term that's ok I guess. It's basically giving your body a good 6-8 hours to figure out how to fix the problem and get rid of the pain permanently. If the pain meds wear off the pain returns because the root cause hasn't been dealt with.

It seems that "church" can sometimes be like those pain meds. People come, get medicated, and go home feeling "ok". The headache is dulled enough to get through the week until another fix is needed. I know too many people who spend years in church "medicated" and supressing their symptoms without getting truly healed. Many of these people have left church and upon leaving their "symptoms" explode resulting in major moral failure, sinful patterns developoing, and failure of marriages and relationship. Some might say that this is the reason for staying in church. That way all of these symptoms are suppressed and everyone is ok, right?

My question is this... What's better, to suppress symptoms or to be healed and whole? We know the answer don't we? I'm not saying that healing cannot happen in church, it most definitley can. But what if it doesn't? What if given pastors and leaders best efforts people aren't getting healed but are postponing the inevitable? What if we didn't have church to medicate the masses? Would it be like emptying the hospitals and telling all the sick people to try to cope with their syptoms without medication? Some surely would be able to, others would be unable to cope with life given their malaties, yet others would likely die without their meds. If our church experience is postponing healing and trading it for medication is it working?

Can we follow Christ and not got to "church"? Can we be healed outside of church? Our reliance must be in Jesus and his Kingdom not a system, not a person, not an institution even if it is the church. The church can never and will never supercede Christ and his Kingdom. This is not an indictment, just an observation. Let's get healed so we don't have to worry about getting our next fix. I'd rather be whole than reliant on meds to get me through the day, wouldn't you?