Contagion: Things we catch from one another

Go home to your friends, and tell them what great things the Lord has done for you, and how He has had compassion on you.  –Mark 5:19

I suspect this piece will be weeks in the writing.  I plan to return to it from time to time.

In Elmer Gantry, Sinclair Lewis has a disaffected preacher of some sort giving reasons he is leaving the ministry and turning away from God.  “If there is a God of love, why didn’t He make good health contagious instead of disease?”

An interesting question.

It is certainly true that diseases–many of them at any rate–are contagious, meaning they are spread by human proximity or physical contact, direct or indirect.

In his book None of These Diseases, missionary doctor S. I. McMillen tells how the Black Plague was eventually ended in Europe.   After exhausting all the known remedies and researching everything they knew, medical people asked the priests if the Holy Scriptures had anything on the subject of the transmission of disease.  “Quarantine,” they answered.  And they showed scriptures such as…

Now the leper… his clothes shall be torn and his head bare, and he shall…cry, ‘Unclean! Unclean!’ and he shall be unclean.  All the days he has the sore he shall be unclean.  He is unclean, and he shall dwell alone; his dwelling shall be outside the camp.  –Leviticus 13:45-46

Whoever touches anything made unclean by a corpse, or a man who has had an emission of semen, or whoever touches any creeping thing by which he would be made unclean, or any person by whom he would be made unclean, whatever his uncleanness may be–the person who has touched any such thing shall be unclean until evening, and shall not eat the holy offerings unless he washes his body with water.  –Leviticus 22:4-6

So many things are passed on from one human to another.  Germs, bacteria, viruses, hope, faith, encouragement, and the Christian faith.

“Go home to your friends and tell them,” said Jesus to the man formerly known as the Gadarene demoniac (Mark 5:1-20).  After Jesus changed him, shortly thereafter the man is seen sitting, clothed, and in his right mind (v.15).  As the Lord was entering the boat to cross the Galilee, the man begged to be allowed to accompany this wonderful Person.  But no, Jesus had other plans for this one who had been separated from his family and community for so long (see v.5).  His family needed him and his community needed to know what had caused the change.  He departed and began to proclaim in Decapolis all that Jesus had done for him, and all marveled (v.20).

When John Pake came to know the Lord Jesus in a hotel room in North Carolina, shortly thereafter he told his wife Gloria, “The Lord wants us to move back to Mississippi.”  As he explained to me his pastor, “I need to go back to those who knew me before and let them see the change that Jesus can make.” One day John asked me to accompany him to a businessmen’s luncheon in Indianola, MS, where he had been asked to speak on the current market trends for some agricultural area that was his specialty.  “But I have other plans,” he told me.

That day, John did not mention the poultry market.  He told everyone about Jesus, and gave his personal testimony.

Bertha Smith (1888-1988), Southern Baptist missionary, played a huge part in the celebrated Shantung Revival in China of the 1920s-1930s.  Her account of God’s great moving in that country she titled Go Home and Tell. 

(to be continued)

 

 

 

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