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Overview
How do Christians understand health and wholeness?
We need to start from what a person is. The Christian understanding of humanity includes:
* God created men and women in his image, that they might have a purpose and a relationship with him.
* We are physical and spiritual in nature.
* Our relationships with one another and with God affects our well-being.
In the Bible, the Old Testament's view of health comprises:
* A state of wholeness and fulfilment.
* Obedience to God's laws.
* Being in a right relationship with God.
* The strength to live a long life.
* Living in a community where people are free to benefit from what their own hands have produced.
The New Testament speaks of health in terms of fulness of life, blessedness, holiness, maturity and living 'in Christ'.
These aspects of health and wholeness guide Christian health workers as they treat individual patients. But what might be a Christian approach to community health and development?
Some writers suggest that Christian development is different from secular development because Christian workers operate with Christian motives, in a Christian manner consistent with Christian ethics. They suggest that it is not what Christians do that is different, but the way they do it. Christian and non-Christian development workers can share the same development goals and undertake the same activities. A ‘Christian’ drinking water project would look the same as a ‘secular’ one. This rings true. Certainly the skills required to fit taps, pipes and tanks don’t depend on faith.
Other writers say that Christian and secular work are different because their underlying assumptions about development are different. Christians believe that personal and corporate submission to Jesus Christ is essential for wholeness.
Most post-modern secular thinkers affirm that humans are spiritual beings, but place religion as a matter for personal choice. I imagine that they perceive a ‘supermarket’ of faiths in which different faiths brands are equally effective in satisfying people’s spiritual needs. Lacking any spiritual conviction, secular development cannot ground itself in any one faith. In practice, this neutral attitude to religions leads secular players to sideline spiritual aspects of the health of an individual or a community. Instead they focus on physical, social and environmental health.
Historically, the protestant church has debated the relationship between social action and evangelism. There has been a divide in the way that churches have approached the poor. Some promote social action, but ignore evangelism. Others seem to believe that bringing people to faith in Christ is all that God requires of them.
Jesus preached the coming of the kingdom of God in a fuller sense, but each wing of the church has emphasised one part of his message to the detriment of the other.
In other settings, ‘wholistic’ missions have attempted both to serve people’s physical and social needs, and proclaim Jesus as Lord. Some projects manage to hold these facets in balance, but many projects only ‘paste together’ physical and spiritual interventions – they double the number of activities they have to do, but fail to achieve integration.
There is a richer way to understand Christian community health and development. The ‘ultimate goal’ of Christian development is the total transformation of the worldview of communities to a biblical worldview. Worldview may be defined as the way a community views the world around it – including beliefs about physical and spiritual reality and humanity’s place in that reality.
In the biblical worldview all people are made in the image of God; all have value and dignity. The Bible recognises corruption in people’s hearts but affirms God’s love for us. Healing and forgiveness are available because of the death of Jesus on the cross. These basic tenets of a biblical world-view are clear, but no one can claim a full understanding of how God intends the world to be. I perceive that God deals with communities of people in unique ways. I cannot assert that my culture has found God’s definitive view and justify imposing it on anyone else. Indeed there are many salutary examples from mission history of cultural imperialism to warn us against this. However Christians believe that the Old and New Testament scriptures reveal God and can correct and refine our worldview.
Jesus told parables to anyone who would listen. They are radical stories that challenge our worldview. Bible stories are pertinent for all people, whatever their creed. God-ordained patterns for living, which we find in the Bible, can be the basis for development work that seeks to transform communities, even if people never hear of Jesus. Of course there is more to the Christian gospel than this, and no believer in Jesus will be fully satisfied while his or her friends remain outside a commitment to him. But the gospel is not only about spiritual conversion.
Secular development is based on the secular assumptions that prevail in the West. Biblical development challenges these assumptions. For example, Christians pray and look to God for supernatural intervention, for healing or guidance. Secular workers do not. Jesus’ radical teaching about right conduct is a foundation for the Christian worker but would not be even considered by secular thinkers.
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Practices members have applied in their own situations
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This topic is convened by: |
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Dr Nick Henwood
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