Pain and Disease, Corrective and Curative
By W. S. Sadler
THE MISSION OF PAIN AND THE LANGUAGE OF DISEASE. NO. 7.
Pain and Disease, Corrective and Curative.
“Thine own wickedness shall correct thee, and thy backslidings shall reprove thee. Know therefore and see that it is an evil thing and bitter, that thou hast forsaken the Lord thy God, and that My fear is not in thee, saith the Lord God of hosts.” Jer. 2:19. God has arranged the penalty of every physical or spiritual sin, so that its influence shall tend to correct the transgressor of his wrong-doing. The very results of our wickedness will show us the folly of fighting against God. Our backsliding is in itself a constant reproof of our lukewarm condition. “Remove thy stroke away from me; I am consumed by the blow of Thine hand. When Thou with rebukes dost correct man for iniquity, Thou makest his beauty to consume away like a moth; surely every man is vanity.” Ps. 39: 10, 11. When man’s beauty—his flesh—is made to consume away, it should be regarded as a divine correction, as God seeking to point out to the sufferer that at some point his practises are out of harmony with the laws of his being. The stroke of affliction is the correcting hand of God. The blow of the divine hand is administered in love and mercy to arouse the wrong-doer to a sense of the peril of continuing in transgression. God first seeks to correct the sinner by long-suffering and mercy, but when these have failed, His last and only resort is judgment and justice. “My son, despise not the chastening of the Lord; neither be weary of His correction; for whom the Lord loveth He correcteth, even as a father the son in whom he delighteth.” Prov. 3: 11, 12. Solomon tells us that God corrects us in love, as a father corrects his son. Paul speaks of this correction as chastisement: “My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou art rebuked of Him; for whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom He receiveth.” Heb. 12: 5, 6. The purpose of all chastisement, affliction, and suffering is corrective; that is, to point out the error of wrong-doing, and admonish the wrong-doer to repent, and turn, and live. “As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten; be zealous therefore, and repent.” Rev. 3: 19. Chastisement contains a divine rebuke, and its purpose is to lead us to “be zealous,” and “repent.” It is not God’s object to destroy His creatures when He permits the harvest of their transgression to overtake them. “The Lord hath chastened me sore; but He hath not given me over unto death.” Ps. 118: 18. Altho we may be sore afflicted, it is not His purpose to give us over to death. On the other hand, it was the divine plan to warn us that the way of our own sin was the way of death, and our affliction was the last call of our Father’s love, saying, “Turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways; for why will ye die?” “Blessed is the man whom Thou chastenest, O Lord, and teachest him out of Thy law.” Ps. 94: 12. The judgments of God, the consequences of sin, are an effort on the part of God to teach us out of His law. Sickness is, in general, a result of the violation of natural law, and so pain and disease are in reality but an attempt on the part of God to show us wherein we have departed from the way of life and health,—the way of harmony with, and obedience to, His statutes. If you should place your hand on a hot stove, the pain that you would immediately experience would cause you quickly to remove it. The intense pain you are thus caused to experience is the kindest feeling God could send you under the circumstances. The existence of your hand is jeopardized; and pain is a warning voice, calling you to take immediate action to save the threatened member. So pain is kind in that it warns us of danger. It heralds to us the fact that the laws of health are being ignored, and warns us to cease our hurtful practises. Were it not for pain, thousands of selfish mortals would quickly plunge themselves into all manner of sinful indulgences and soul-and-body-destroying practises, which would speedily end their existence. Pain and other symptoms which attend disease speak to man in the loudest possible tones of the sure consequences of wrong-doing. It was the pain that led you so quickly to remove your hand from its contact with the hot stove. You were prevented from carrying out a purpose that meant destruction to the hand; and the blister that was immediately raised over the injured surface was in itself a curative process; an instantaneous response of the divine Healer, showing His willingness to grant physical forgiveness and heal the effects of physical transgression the very moment you had been corrected of your purpose to jeopardize the well-being of your hand. Pain corrected you of the evil purpose, and the blister is the evidence that God willingly and instantly began the work of repairing the injury wrought by your rash or ignorant act. God’s attitude toward man is changeless. It is man who, by obedience or disobedience, alters his attitude toward God. And thus it sometimes appears to those who are out of harmony with God, traveling the broad road to ruin, that God has left them or is forsaking them, even as to a person on a rapidly-moving train fixed objects on either side appear to be traveling in the opposite direction. So to the wrong-doer—to the one whose feet are swift to do evil—it appears that God is leaving him, when in reality he is leaving God. Within every transgression of the right and every compromise of the truth, there is concealed the consequences of disobedience. God has said, “Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.” The reaping is contained in the sowing, and the wisdom of the divine law of sowing and reaping is made manifest when we learn that the sickness and suffering consequent upon transgression are in themselves at first corrective and curative measures. It does not seem to be a part of God’s plan to afflict His people unless, first, there is some great good to come out of it; and second, that He knows this good can not be secured in any other way, every other resource having been exhausted in His effort to correct man of his wrong-doing. Sickness is not a part of God’s eternal purpose for the human race; but when man refuses to walk in the way that God has chosen, refuses to co-operate with the conditions of His eternal purpose, refuses to walk in the pathway of obedience to physical and spiritual law; and begins to transgress the principles of truth and righteousness,—it is then that he is torn by the enemy as a straying sheep; and yet in all this experience the Spirit of God within pleads with the erring soul, saying, “Return, and I will heal you.” “I have wounded thee with the wound of an enemy, with the chastisement of a cruel one, for the multitude of thine iniquity; because thy sins were increased.” Jer. 30: 14. All the while God is doing the best He can for man, consistent with His own righteous character and man’s waywardness and disobedience. Frequently, however, we find instances where the afflicted ones it would seem have been thoroughly corrected, where all disposition to transgress physical or spiritual law had been removed, and it would seem that the affliction had actually accomplished its purpose of correction; and yet the earnest soul lingers in suffering and pain. Why is this?—God is working out an eternal purpose which is infinite in all its bearings, and we should not be surprised if we come face to face with many problems which we can neither explain nor understand. And again, it may be that the repentance was not sufficiently deep-rooted. It may be that the purpose to do right is not as firm as Heaven knows it must be to assure success; so the correcting penalty is permitted to linger with us a little longer. How many times have frail human beings made grand resolutions, and broken them within a day. But God is not deceived; He is not mocked. He does not remove the hand of correction until He knows that the wise purpose of love and mercy which necessitated its presence has been accomplished. In several instances disease has been alluded to as both a corrective and a curative process. This is not true of chronic disease. It is only acute disease that is curative in its influence. While disease is in its earlier stages, it is, in general, an effort of nature to cure; but if the habits of life are not corrected, and if unfavorable surroundings are not removed, then in later stages disease becomes a process of destruction. In the acute stage, nature ordinarily cures disease when the cause is removed; while in chronic disease, even after the cause has been removed, health is usually only secured by a process of persistent cultivation, or the disease may even have taken on the form of apparently incurable malady.