I’m not a big fan of televangelism. It comes across as flashy or melodramatic at times and lacks a certain grit of authenticity. So when Ricky Gervais published this tweet about faith healers, I don’t know if he was addressing the Hollywood version of people who pray for healing or all people who pray for healing in general.
Regardless of his intention, if you believe God still heals people, consider the gauntlet thrown down.
While I know that God still heals, it irks me to hear this challenge. Ironically, there are some psychics who actually hear accurate details too, but that’s not my focus here. The point is that Gervais is lumping the two groups together, pointing out that they don’t do these things because he thinks they are frauds. After all, if faith healers could really heal people, they’d work or at least hang out in hospitals and empty them out. If psychics really could see the future, they’d win the lottery all the time and avoid losing their businesses and avoid their own future health problems. Wouldn’t they?
I could chime in and argue that I know people who do visit hospitals regularly and pray for the sick they encounter. Not all of them are healed, true. But some of them have been. I could argue the exceptions to the rule, but what does that solve?
What right do I have to be offended? Gervais might be hitting a nerve that needs to be hit after all. Are all the people I know who pray for healing hanging out or working in hospitals? No. I know I’m not. Are any of them? Yes, at least a few. But not the majority of them/us.
I acknowledge that faith healers do not work in hospitals, even though they contain an endless supply of people who need healing. And we haven’t heard about any hospitals where everyone walks out of the building fully healed and restored. I’m pretty sure even the corporate news channels would mention that if it happened.
You don’t see faith healers working in hospitals for the same reason that you don’t see psychics winning the lottery every week. – @rickygervais
And while I don’t appreciate having my friends and I lumped into the category of frauds, I must concur that we have room to grow when it comes to living our beliefs. We pray for people in parking lots and grocery stores and Starbucks, which is real and not the least bit inauthentic. We pray for people where we encounter them in our lives. But why aren’t more of us working in hospitals and healing everyone in the building?