Death and Life in America, Second Edition: Biomedicine and Biblical Healing PDF
Preview Death and Life in America, Second Edition: Biomedicine and Biblical Healing
Death and Life in America Death and Life in America Biomedicine and Biblical Healing Second Edition Raymond Downing foreword by Farr Curlin !! CASCADE Books • Eugene, Oregon DEATH AND LIFE IN AMERICA Biomedicine and Biblical Healing. Second edition. Copyright © 2021 Raymond Downing. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401. Cascade Books An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3 Eugene, OR 97401 www.wipfandstock.com paperback isbn: 978-1-7252-5968-3 hardcover isbn: 978-1-7252-5969-0 ebook isbn: 978-1-7252-5970-6 Cataloguing-in-Publication data: Names: Downing, Raymond, author. | Curlin, Farr, foreword. Title: Death and life in America : biomedincine and biblical healing. Second edition / Raymond Downing ; foreword by Farr Curlin. Description: Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2021. | Includes bibliographical references. Identifiers: isbn 978-1-7252-5969-0 (paperback). | isbn 978-1-7252-5969-0 (hardcover). | isbn 978-1-7252-5970-6 (ebook). Subjects: Religion and Medicine—United States. | Pastoral theology. | Health—Religious aspects—Christianity. Classification: LCSH: bt732.5 d69 2021 (print). | bt732.5 (ebook). Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are taken from The Jerusalem Bible © 1966 by Darton, Longman & Todd Ltd and Doubleday and Company Ltd. Scripture quotations marked (RSV) are taken from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright © 1946, 1952, and 1971 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. Scripture quotations marked (NIV) are taken from the Holy Bible, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. Scripture quotations marked (NASB) are taken from the New American Standard Bible® (NASB), Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. www.Lockman.org” To my Mother and to Emmanuel Contents Foreword / Farr Curlin ix Preface xii Acknowledgments xxi PART I—INTRODUCTION 1 Two Kingdoms 3 2 Death and Life 15 PART II—POLITICAL: Power over death 3 Demons: The Power of Medicine and the Power of God 25 4 “Tell No One”: The Power of Medicine vs. the Power of God 34 5 The Beast that was Healed: The Power of Medicine Imitates the Power of God 43 PART III—CLINICAL: Healing of life 6 “Your Sins are Forgiven” / “Your Faith Has Made You Whole”: The Roots of Healing 59 7 Healing on the Sabbath: The Essence of Healing 70 8 “He Carried our Diseases”: The Way of Healing 81 PART IV—CONCLUSION 9 Metaphors 95 10 Resurrection and Renunciation 109 11 Back to Biomedicine 115 Afterword 125 Bibliography 133 vii Foreword Ray Downing had the gift of prophecy, and like many of the prophets of old, Ray wandered in the “wilderness,” practicing medicine in East Africa, outside the centers of power. From that vantage Ray could see what we in the West have not had eyes to see. I met Ray in 2004, when he introduced himself after I, as a newly minted clinical investigator from the University of Chicago, presented data from a study I had done of Christian clinicians working in underserved communities in the United States. Those clinicians saw themselves as called by God to their work, but many were discouraged and even bewildered. They found themselves wondering whether they should go on in their work. Why would that be? One might think that these clinicians struggled with the sacrifices they had made—earning less money, enjoying less social prestige, working longer hours, living in less resourced neighbor- hoods, being associated with “the poor.” But as I listened, I heard something else: as these Christians labored to bring the best of today’s medicine—what Ray here calls biomedicine—to those who lacked access to it, they lived with a gnawing sense that they were not doing their patients much good. Could it be, I asked the audience, that Christian clinicians should stop taking it for granted that faithful practices of medicine involve delivering evidence-based medicine to those who lack access to it? Must they instead work to discern which practices ix Foreword offered by biomedicine are actually good?—which align with the truth about who God is and what we are as human beings? Ray, it turns out, had been thinking about this for years, and so began a friendship of letters in which I have been his student. From his vantage as a Western physician practicing medicine in East Africa, Ray observed the cultural power of biomedicine to tell people what is going on, what they need, and how the imperial biomedicine will save them from illness and death. In the contexts in which he worked, he also saw that the emperor’s clothes often were threadbare, if not entirely transparent. Moreover, as a man who spent his life dwelling with God, immersed in the Scriptures, Ray saw that biomedicine was among the powers and principalities that the apostle Paul spoke about, powers that govern our world, sharing in God’s creative goodness but fallen and corrupted by sin. As a corrupted power, biomedi- cine claims powers over life and death that it does not have, and it claims authority to govern our lives that we should reject. When the biblical prophets spoke, sometimes they told the future, but more often they spoke the truth that the people had forgotten. They exposed the pretenses and lies of the powers and principalities of their time, and they called out God’s people for their infidelity and idolatry—their patterns of going along with and being corrupted by the practices of those who do not fear or know God. Ray likewise calls Christians today to remember what we have forgotten and to open our eyes to the way we are treating biomedicine and bio-life with a reverence and fear that belongs to God alone. In his life, death, and resurrection, Jesus unmasked and ex- posed the powers and principalities for what they are—empty ways of attempting to control our worlds and to avoid suffering and death. In this book Ray takes us back to a number of Jesus’ healing encounters to help us see the stark differences between the healing that Christ brings and what biomedicine offers. If you are like me, you may experience scales falling from your eyes as Ray leads you through these stories and points to their cosmic significance. x
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