The Unhealing Wound
"What if I don't get better?": Part I
In her book, The Evangelical Imagination,
challenges the reader: “Look for the images, metaphors, and stories that fill your own imagination, your community’s social imaginary, and your own cultural experience.”1“And Asa in the thirty and ninth year of his reign was diseased in his feet, until his disease was exceeding great: yet in his disease he sought not to the LORD, but to the physicians.” (II Chronicles 16:12, KJV)
When I was eight, in the early 1990s, the adults I knew were fearful for the next generation. It seemed as if more teens were victims and perpetrators in highly publicized violent crimes, teen pregnancy rates were rising, and teen culture idols encouraged substance abuse, suicide, etc.2 The church worship music wars were in full swing and traditional music advocates attributed teenage ‘rebellion’ to the ‘Satanic’ influence of ‘rock’ music.3 In this social climate, my parents interpreted what was, in retrospect, the normal, if emotionally immature, assertion of independence by my adolescent eldest sibling as a potential disaster.
We were already a homeschooling family. My mother, a retired public school teacher, had decided to give us a better basic foundation than the current public school curriculum.4 But my eldest sibling was approaching secondary school. Friends introduced my parents to a conservative Christian homeschooling program that claimed great things, both academic and spiritual, for adolescents.5 Entry into the Program required my parents and eldest sibling to attend a series of seminars. After the second seminar, my eldest sibling apologized to my parents and my parents thought they had found the key to raising their children through our perilous ‘teen years.
The same year we joined the Program, I was hospitalized with pneumonia and diagnosed with asthma. It was my second hospitalization with breathing problems – my first was as an infant – and, I think, my eighth annual bout of pneumonia. After my diagnosis, multiple adults in our surrounding Christian circle reassured my parents and I that my approaching adolescence would see me outgrow the asthma, citing anecdotes of other children who stopped experiencing asthmatic symptoms after puberty.
I was an avid reader, having what is called a photographic memory. I probably read more of the Program’s materials than the rest of my family, certainly more than my busy parents could. The Program drew moral lessons from Bible stories. The moral drawn from King Asa of Judah’s diseased feet was that lack of trust in God leads to chronic health problems. Linking health problems, both physical and mental, to a failure to please God was a recurring theme of Program material.6
I did not outgrow my asthma.
Prevailing Wounds
In my profession, I have treated hundreds of chronic wounds of the feet and lower legs. I have wrapped compression dressings around large and small venous wounds, seen and smelled the gangrene of arterial wounds, sponged weeping wounds caused by heart failure and lymphedema, padded diabetic foot ulcers and pressure injuries, and tended wounds so complex that they defied classification and baffled treatment. I have seen these wounds in people from all socio-economic categories.
When I first studied my profession, I took classes at the community college, sharing transportation with my father. My classes usually ended before my father finished his work, so I would wait for him in the college library. If I had no assignments to work on, I read, usually from the literature aisle full of cloth bound classics. Among the books I read was C. S. Lewis’s Space Trilogy. I loved the first book, Out of the Silent Planet, but an image from the last book, That Hideous Strength, stayed with me.
Ransom, the reluctant protagonist from the first two books, is a secondary character in the third. He is first mentioned by another secondary character:
“He is a great traveller but now an invalid. He got a wound in his foot on his last journey which won’t heal.”7
Later, Ransom is seen “with one foot bandaged, as if he had a wound” and he has a habit of mentioning his hurt foot when he meets people for the first time. Lewis, of course, wrote Christian meaning into his Trilogy, and Ransom’s unhealing foot wound is symbolic. But it is not symbolic of failure. Ransom received the wound in the second book, Perelandra, aka Voyage to Venus, during his final fight against the Un-Man who tried to poison Edenic Venus with the same sin that cursed the Earth.8
While caring for wounds, I have observed that chronic wounds often begin at the site of an old wound. It might have been an animal bite or scratch, an accidental injury, a former infection, perhaps an old surgical scar, maybe even a battle wound. It heals up for months, years, decades. Then, as body tissues age and the ability to heal slows, the scar weakens, reopens, and ulcerates. Other times, the first wound never quite heals, flaring up and festering whenever the person is weakened. In Lewis’s story, Ransom’s wound can never be healed on Earth.
Jacob’s Limp
Lewis’ image of a man maimed in spiritual struggle has Biblical precedent, in the account of how Jacob became Israel.9 But Jacob’s struggle wasn’t against evil. In the account, Jacob, hitherto deceitful and cowardly, is about to encounter his fraternal enemy, and has sent his family and fortune on ahead of him. That night, Jacob gets into a fight with a mysterious man. Jacob is unable to overpower the man, but neither will he let the man go. Even when the man damages the muscle of Jacob’s inner leg, Jacob still won’t let go, demanding a blessing from the man. As morning approaches, the man renames Jacob Israel, telling him he has power with both God and man. The stranger remains anonymous, but, after he leaves, Jacob realizes he has spoken to God. Jacob, now Israel, is left with a limping gait as he continues on his journey.
Christian scholarship, beginning with 2nd century apologist Justin Martyr, believes that the unnamed stranger of the account is a pre-Incarnate appearance of God the Son, Jesus Christ.10 In 1742, the evangelical poet Charles Wesley published a lyric poem, ‘Wrestling Jacob’.11 The poem depicts the darkness of the human soul wrestling with the unseen God as Christ’s love gradually dawns. It concludes12:
Contented now upon my thigh I halt, till life's short journey end; All helplessness, all weakness I, On Thee alone for strength depend, Nor have I power, from Thee, to move; Thy nature, and thy name is LOVE. Lame as I am, I take the prey, Hell, earth, and sin with ease o'ercome; I leap for joy, pursue my way, And as a bounding hart fly home, Thro' all eternity to prove Thy nature, and thy name is LOVE.
Strength in Weakness
Wesley’s conclusion alludes to another Biblical account of God-given weakness, from the New Testament. The Apostle Paul, known as the apostle to the Gentiles, is forced to defend himself in his second letter to the troubled church of Corinth.13 Paul reluctantly relates that he has had unique revelatory visions from God. Then he reveals that he suffers from a “thorn in the flesh”, sent by God to prevent him from becoming proud about his special revelations. He does not clearly state what the problem is, but it is bad enough that he begged God to remove it. He relates the answer he received:
‘And he said unto me, “My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness.”’ (II Corinthians 12:9, KJV)
Paul rejoices that when he is weak, then he is strong. His exclamation echoes the beginning of his first letter to the Corinthians, where he marvels that in Jesus Christ, God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.14 Jesus Christ, the Son of God, was born as a human baby, suffered, died, and then, reversing Earth’s order, rose again. As Mary, the mother of Jesus, sang, the powerful of Earth have become powerless, and the powerless are empowered by God.15 For Christians, God’s strength works in human weakness.
I chose my profession to serve the weak and wounded. I have traveled North, South, East, and West. In each place, difficulty breathing eventually curtailed my ability to help. In one instance, death came close. I still suffer the effects of having reached extreme exhaustion while fighting to breathe. Even now, back in my place of origin, there are limits to how much and where I can work. I have good medical care, which eases the symptoms but cannot cure. I ache with knowing I can never return to people and places I love. Well-meaning Christians have offered everything from natural remedies to supernatural healing.16 Like Paul, I have begged to have the asthma removed.
Did I get the same answer?
Karen Swallow Prior, The Evangelical Imagination: How Stories, Images & Metaphors Created a Culture in Crisis (Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2023), 6
a) Among the national and international media stories that I recall featuring teens during the 1990s were [Graphic and disturbing content warning for all three links]: the serial killings of three young teen women; the murder of a teen by bully peers; and murder committed by members of a teen cult. b) The teen pregnancy rate really was rising. c) A frequently given example was Nirvana’s lead singer.
Such arguments reached mainstream attention in the aftermath of the 1999 Columbine High School massacre.
She did. Her foundation, which included such old-fashioned concepts as phonics, memorization of the multiplication table, spelling lists, cursive writing, and typing, served us well when the Program failed to deliver on its academic promises.
There were several homeschooling programs at the time with similar messaging. I have not included the specific program name to keep the focus on the overall point. That said, IYKYK.
The Program was not alone in correlating health to faith, as it is a common trope in cults and prosperity gospel teachings. But the non-denominational Program claimed orthodoxy, with target customers generally being conservative evangelicals and/or fundamentalists.
C. S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength (London: The Bodley Head, 1945)
C. S. Lewis, Perelandra (London: The Bodley Head, 1943)
Justin Martyr, Chapter 58, Dialogue with Trypho. From: Ante-Nicene Christian Library: Translations of the Christian Fathers Down to A.D. 325, Vol. II., Translated by M. Dods, G. Reith, & B. P. Pratten, Edited by A. Roberts & J. Donaldson (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1870)
Charles Wesley, ‘Wrestling Jacob’, Hymns & Sacred Poems, (1742). Abbreviated versions have been set to music. Perhaps the best is to the tune Vernon by Lucius Chapin, performed by Maddy Prior & The Carnival Band here:
The Magnificat, Luke 1:46-55.
a) Been there, done that, it didn’t work. My mother was deeply into alternative health, so we tried everything from herbal remedies to special diets - I spent most of my teen years avoiding refined sugar and flour. b) It is very disconcerting to be cornered by random strangers claiming a supernatural gift of healing, especially when one doesn’t frequent charismatic spaces.
You may not be able to travel as before, to minister to physical ailments, but the two examples your writing that I have read here lead me to think that your many gifts will not go unused, but will continue to nourish souls and apply a healing salve to their wounds.