My Cancer and the Good Health Gospel

Coming out of the anesthesia, I first saw the smiling faces of my wife, Patty, and daughter, Emily. “Did they get it all?” I asked. Patty gripped my hand. “Yes.”

“Was it malignant?” I asked.

Emily nodded. “Yes, Daddy—it was cancer. But they got it all, and you’re going to be okay.”

Cancer.

I had always wondered, in secret fear, what it would be like to be told I had a malignant cancer. I thought I would be shattered. But I had prayed for the grace to withstand whatever the doctors found. And, as many have discovered before me, I saw in my confrontation with fear and suffering that there is nothing for which God does not pour out his grace abundantly. I felt total peace—and great thankfulness that a merciful God had brought me to that recovery room.

My stomach problems began last November during a ministry trip to the Philippines. I flew home. My doctor told me that I was badly run down, that I had a bleeding ulcer, and to stay away from airports for awhile. With rest and proper diet, the problem was soon cured.

Just when my stomach seemed fine, I talked with a dear Christian brother, Dr. Joe Bailey of Austin, Texas. Joe urged me, as my own internist had already done, to have a gastroscopy. The idea of inhaling a tube so doctors could view the scenery inside my stomach was not particularly inviting. Besides, the ulcer had already healed. But Joe kept insisting.

So I submitted to the horrors of the gastroscope. The doctor told me, as I had expected, that the ulcer was gone. Then came the unexpected: he had discovered a tumor in my stomach lining.

After weeks of additional tests, experts concluded the growth was benign. There was no reason to hurry to have it removed. Once again Joe Bailey called. “Chuck,” he said in his Texas drawl, “get that thing out, and get it out as quick as you can.”

“I can’t,” I told Joe. “I’m writing a new book. I have ministry commitments, speaking obligations.” But Joe would not be moved. And, since by then I suspected that God was speaking through him, I scheduled the operation for early January.

To everyone’s surprise, the tumor was a low-grade malignancy. Because it was caught early, however, doctors have assured me my prognosis is excellent. If it had gone undetected, the outcome could have been far different. Last fall’s nagging ulcer served as a warning by which God got my attention—and then he used Joe Bailey’s stubborn concern to get me into the hospital.

God’s grace provided not only peace and protection, but new purpose. I had, as some friends know, begun to burn out from too many writing, speaking, and ministry commitments.

But as I lay in my hospital bed, I thought through my real priorities. Had I unconsciously boarded the evangelical treadmill? Trying to do all those worthy things that everybody wanted me to do, had I become beholden to a tyrannical schedule rather than to God’s will? Several weeks tied to hospital tubes is a good time to reflect on the larger perspective of God’s design in our lives.

My suffering provided some fresh insights as well into the health-and-wealth gospel. If God really delivers his people from all pain and illness, as is so often claimed, why was I so sick? Had my faith become weak? Had I fallen from favor?

No, I had always recognized such teaching as false theology. But after four weeks in a maximum-care unit, I came to see it as something else: a presumptuous stumbling block to real evangelism.

During my nightly walks through the hospital corridors, dragging an IV pole behind me, I often met an Indian man whose two-year-old son had had two failed kidney transplants, a brain aneurysm, and was now blind for life.

When the father, a Hindu, discovered I was a Christian, he asked if God would heal his son if he, too, was born again. He said he had heard things like that on television.

As I listened, I realized how arrogant health-and-wealth religion sounds to suffering families: Christians can all be spared suffering, but little Hindu children go blind. One couldn’t blame a Hindu or Muslim or agnostic for resenting, even hating, such a God.

I told my Hindu friend about Jesus. Yes, he may miraculously intervene in our lives. But we come to God not because of what he may do to spare us suffering, but because Christ is truth. What he does promise us is much more—the forgiveness of sin and eternal life. I left the hospital with my friend studying Christian literature, the Bible, and my own account in Born Again. If he becomes a Christian, it won’t be on false pretenses.

I thought often in the hospital of the words of Florida pastor Steve Brown. Steve says that every time a non-Christian gets cancer, God allows a Christian to get cancer as well—so the world can see the difference. I prayed I might be so filled with God’s grace that the world might see the difference.

Steve’s words represent a powerful truth. God does not witness to the world by taking his people out of suffering, but rather by demonstrating his grace through them in the midst of pain.

He allows such weakness to reveal his strength in adversity. His own Son experienced brokenness—and died—that we might be freed from the power of death. But we are promised no freedom from suffering until we are beyond the grave.

Thus, I can only believe that God allowed my cancer for a purpose—just as he allows far more horrific and deadly cancers in fellow Christians every day. We don’t begin to know all the reasons why. But we do know that our suffering and weakness can be an opportunity to witness to the world the amazing grace of God at work through us.

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