GOD QUIZ
DOCTOR (BENEVOLENT)
DR. JIM DIXON
1 JOHN 4:7-12
JANUARY 20, 2013
Two hundred years before Christ, at the ancient library at Alexandria, Egyptian scrolls were found. Scrolls that have been called the Hippocratic Collection, sometimes called the Hippocratic Corpus—scrolls written and attributed to Hippocrates who lived in the fifth century before Christ. Hippocrates has been called the father of western medicine. Amongst the scrolls was found the Hippocratic Oath. Throughout the centuries, doctors have recited the Hippocratic Oath. They have vowed through the words of the Hippocratic Oath as they have entered into their field of medicine.
Today many historians believe that Hippocrates did write the Hippocratic Oath. Others believe that a student of his wrote the Hippocratic Oath. Some historians believe that Pythagoras actually wrote the Hippocratic Oath, although there is little evidence of a Pythagorean school of medicine. The fact is that today, 98 per cent of the medical school graduates in the United States of America recite some kind of an oath, most of them a form or a part of the Hippocratic Oath. Only three of the 126 medical schools in the United States have their students recite the original, entire Hippocratic Oath. Part of the reason for that is that the oath is vowed before four ancient Gods. The oath is given in the name four ancient Gods in the Greek and Roman worlds: Apollos, Asclepius, Hygieia, and Panacea. In modern day medical schools, not a lot of schools or faculty would want to swear an oath in the name of ancient gods. Another problem for many medical schools today is that the Hippocratic Oath actually requires the doctor to vow that he will never participate in an abortion or in any act of euthanasia.
I read for you the words from the original Hippocratic Oath as written, perhaps, in the fifth century BC: “I will never give a deadly drug to anybody if asked for it. Nor will I suggest anything to this effect. Similarly, I will not give to a woman an abortive remedy. In purity and holiness, I will guide my life and my art.”
Fascinating that those words were written so very long ago. The idea of the Hippocratic Oath is that doctors would pledge to perform their service with morality and in an ethical nature, that doctors would vow and promise always to seek the good of their patients, that doctors would be loving, that doctors would be kind, that they would always seek what is good. This matches the word benevolent, which is one of the test words in the God Quiz. The word benevolent comes from bene, which means good, and vene, which means to seek. Benevolent means to seek the good. That is what doctors do. Every one of us, when we go to the doctor, assumes that they are going to seek the good. We go to them because we believe they will seek the good. How true is this of God, that we believe he seeks our good? We have this benevolent view of God, this view as God the doctor.
I think as we approach this subject today, there are two primary reasons that people hold this view of God. Perhaps many of you hold this view of God. In our God Quiz, over 500 of you hold this view of God. I think the first reason many hold this view is because the Bible tells us that God is love. In our passage of scripture for today we read those words. “Beloved let us love one another for love is of God. He who loves is born of God and knows God. He who does not love does not know God for God is love.” Those are powerful words. Those are beautiful words. You might be thinking, “Well, when it comes to doctors, I am not sure they are all loving.” Maybe you have had a visit to the doctor where the doctor didn’t seem that loving. I have had a visit like that some years ago.
Barb and I had just come to Colorado. This was almost forty years ago. I was new in the ministry. I was developing a kind of twitch under my right eye. I didn’t think it was any big deal, but it did bother me once in a while. I could even look in the mirror and see the nerve or muscle kind of twitching right under my eye. I thought, “It is probably nothing. But maybe it is something neurological.” I wondered if people, when they talked to me, were noticing the twitch. It did bother me a little bit when I was reading. So, I decided to check it out. We didn’t have a doctor here in Colorado yet. We kind of did this arbitrarily and even capriciously. We found a doctor who lived near us and made an appointment. When I went in, the receptionist told me I would have to wait. I waited, and waited. It was a long wait, as it oftentimes seems to be when you go to the doctor.
Finally, the receptionist came out and said, “The doctor will see you now.” I said, “That is great.” I went through the door into the back region where the offices and rooms were. I said, “Where do I go?” She said, “The doctor is in that room right there.” There were many doors. They were all closed. So, I went up to the door and knocked on it and I heard a voice saying, “What is it?” I said, “My name is Jim Dixon. I am here for my appointment.” The voice said, “Come on in.” I walked in and it was literally an office. The doctor was sitting at a desk and he had his back to me. He was sitting at a big wooden desk and had his back to me. I walked into the office and he said, “What do you want?” He didn’t even turn around. He just said, “What do you want?”
I said, “I have this twitch under my right eye. It kind of bothers me. I have had it for five or six weeks. I don’t know whether it is anything or not.” He said, “What are you coming to me for? Go see a psychologist. Go see a counselor.” He didn’t even turn around. That was it. I turned around and walked out of the office. That was it. I never saw him again. He didn’t seem that loving.
Years later, that doctor actually joined our church. He became a member of our church. He ultimately entered the mission field. He is halfway around the world. He is probably going to listen to this sermon today. We all have different experiences with doctors. I think most doctors at least seek to be loving. When we go to most doctors, we assume they care about us and that they have some feelings for us, that they wish for our health and have some willingness to serve us.
Our son is a doctor. He got his medical degree and did his residency here at the University of Colorado. He did his fellowship at the University of Wisconsin. He is serving as an ophthalmologist and a retina surgeon in Dubuque, Iowa today. We talk to our son Drew a lot. I know he seems to be a loving doctor. He has told us many times of the joy it gives him to help people and how great it feels to know that people are happy and pleased, and that they can see better than they could before, and that what scared them so much has been taken care of. He gets a lot of joy out of that.
I don’t know if you are aware of this, but in Dubuque, Iowa there are a lot of Catholic institutions, a lot of Catholic schools of higher learning, and special retreat centers for Catholics. In Dubuque, Iowa there is a place called the Mother House. The Mother House is where nuns go when they retire. Have you ever wondered, “Where do nuns go?” When they retire they go to Dubuque, Iowa. There is a huge, beautiful facility called the Mother House. There may be thousands of nuns there. Because Drew deals in retina surgery, he deals with a lot of elderly people. So, a lot of the nuns who are retired come to him. Drew has gotten to know them. He told us that he loves some of them so much. Some of them have said, “We will pray for you.” He tells them that he will pray for them. I can see his love for people. I think most doctors are like that. I think most doctors love people.
Certainly God, the doctor, loves us. Love is described so beautifully by the Apostle Paul in the 13th chapter of 1 Corinthians. He writes,
“If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and I understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have to the poor, and if I deliver my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing. For love is patient and kind; it is not jealous or boastful; it is not arrogant or rude. Love does not seek its own way; love is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrong, but love rejoices in the right. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things. Love never ends.”
What a beautiful passage. What a beautiful statement. Is it not true that God’s love never ends? What an amazing thought that God loves me and he always will love me. I marvel at that. He not only loves me, but his love for me will never end. He not only loves you, but his love for you will never end. This is divine love. It is why we have this benevolent view of God, this view of God as doctor.
I think we see something of these qualities of love even in the human world. I read a few years ago about a man named Robert Hasty. Robert Hasty and his wife Frances lived in Texas. They lived in Spring, Texas, which is north of Houston. They loved each other so much. In 1995, Frances died. They had been married for 52 years. Robert felt, when Frances died, that a big part of him, maybe the biggest part of him died with her because he loved her so much. They were soul mates and best friends, and now she was gone. It was devastating for him. Frances was buried in a family plot up near Dallas/Ft. Worth. That is 240 miles away from where Robert lived, and where Robert and Frances had lived in Spring, Texas. He went all the time to see the grave where Frances was buried. He went again and again because he loved his wife so much. The pain was hard. He would make that 240-mile drive every year. He would go up on her birthday and Valentine’s Day on their anniversary date, on Christmas Day and Easter Sunday. He would put flowers there on Frances’s grave. Then he would always kneel and have a time of prayer and pray. After he was done praying, he would sometimes talk to her although he knew she was not there. He knew that her soul and spirit had gone to be with the Lord. These were just her physical remains. But somehow it gave him some comfort and gave him some peace to just talk.
He did that time and again each year, many times a year. Just a couple of years ago on Easter Sunday, they found Robert Hasty’s body there by the grave in Fort Worth, Texas, by the grave of Frances. He had placed the flowers, he had knelt to pray, and then he had passed away right by his wife’s grave. I was thinking, “There is love like that in this world.” I think that love exists because we were created in the image and the likeness of God. There is a little bit of God’s love in all of us. That capacity to love until death do us part is there because of God and because of his nature and because of the imago def, the image of God that is in us. God’s love never ends. Even on the human level we can see some of this.
I say to you, if you have this view of God, this benevolent view, this view of God as the doctor, there are some dangers. As we have said before, each of these views of God contain truths, and we find these views of God in the scriptures. But none of these views are full explanations of God. As summations of God, none of these individual views of God are adequate. When we look at the authoritative God, God the umpire, there is truth in that, but it is not an adequate summation of God. The same thing is true when we say the benevolent God, God the doctor is true, but it is not an adequate summation of God. There are some dangers to this. What I have seen through the years is that many who hold this view have kind of drifted into Universalism. Theologically that is apostate. The view that there is no hell, the view that everybody is going to wind up in heaven is based on this benevolent view of God, this God the doctor, but it doesn’t reflect the truth of Holy Scripture. Something is inadequate there. Something is misunderstood there.
I know some of you have heard of Karl Barth, one of the most famous Christian theologians in Christian history. He died in 1968 at the age of 82. He was a German-Swiss scholar and theologian. It took him thirty years to write his theological masterpiece, Church Dogmatics. It is a massive multi-volume set and an incredibly brilliant work. It has taken some people thirty years to read it. Karl Barth was an amazing man. When he was asked to describe what he thought was the greatest truth in Christianity he paused for a second, then he smiled, and softly began to sing, “Jesus Loves Me, this I know.” You have got to love a theologian like that. That is pretty cool. That is the greatest truth. That truth led Karl Barth into universalism and the belief that hell will be emptied and ultimately everybody will be saved. The love of God will triumph. That is a beautiful thought in some ways, and yet, it is contrary to Biblical truth because if you just have this view of God you might misunderstand some things.
The Bible tells us that God gave us this precious gift (we said this last week, and over the years we have said it before) called freedom. It is an amazing gift. It is a precious gift. I hope you understand that God gave it in love. God gave us the gift of freedom because he loves us. God could have chosen not to create us. He certainly had that right, but love compelled him to create us. God could have not given us freedom. He could have created us, but not given us this dangerous gift of freedom. He could have made us automatons, a robotic race. He could have crafted us in such a way that we had no choice but to submit and to obey his word and will. He could have done that, but it was more loving in his sight to give us this great gift called freedom. God in his omniscience knew and foreknew what would happen. The gift and the giving of this gift was still worth it. If we were not free, we would not be in his image. He created us in his image and in his likeness. He gave us this great gift of freedom. In the book of Genesis, you have the Eden story and the great account of the tree of the knowledge of Good and evil. It is about freedom, the abuse of freedom, and it is about moral autonomy, and moral culpability, and moral accountability. All of these things are woven into the story. God loves us. In love he gave us freedom, but that freedom has consequences.
There are people in this world who don’t want to hang out with God for eternity. Has that thought ever occurred to you? We are all sinners. We are all in desperate need of grace, but there are some people who have hidden from God for so long, and who have grown to hate him, and really want nothing to do with him. Heaven is a place where God reigns. We sang that today. Jesus is King of kings. He reigns in heaven. He has all authority in heaven and on earth. He reigns in heaven. He will one day reign on earth. There are some people who don’t want to be anywhere where Christ reigns. They don’t want to live for him. They don’t want to submit to him. They don’t want to obey him. Some people just want to be large and in charge. They want to live it their way. They would rather, like the devil, reign in hell then submit in heaven. God in his love will love everybody. I believe God is going to love everybody who is in hell, but he is not going to force them into heaven. God loves everybody, but at the dawn of eternity, at the final judgment, he is going to place some people where he is not. It says in II Thessalonians chapter one, that hell is a place of exclusion from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might. God will simply not be there. People will be left to their own devices. They will have a place prepared for them where they can live for themselves, where they can worship themselves, where they can serve themselves. Ultimately that is vacuous at the core. That is hell. But it doesn’t make God less loving.
I hope you understand that God is also just. He is not just loving, but he is also just. There must be consequences when we abuse our freedoms. We said that where there is moral autonomy and we abuse it there is moral culpability. There must be moral accountability. God is just. Because God is love as well as just, God has offered mercy. In his love he has offered to absorb the consequences. He sent his son into the world to die for us, to die for our sins, to pay to take our penalty upon himself, to die in substitutionary atonement, and God, through the gospel, invites us to embrace this mercy. There are people who reject it all over the world. There are people who hear and reject. If you have this benevolent view of God, that is fine. If you have the view of God as the doctor, that is fine. But be careful that it doesn’t lead you into any theological apostasy or theological error.
There is a second reason that I think a lot of people have this view. It is not just that God is love, but I think a lot of people have this view of God as doctor because Jesus is the Great Physician. I think a lot of people have this view of God as doctor because Jesus, his Son, is the Great Physician. It is true in the Bible that every physician word is applied to Jesus. The Greek word therapeia, from which we get the word therapy, is a medicinal word, a word associated with the world of physicians. This word is applied to Christ. The word iama, which is the Greek word for physician, is applied many times to Christ. Christ is the physician, iama. He used this word even to describe himself.
The word sozo, which is applied to Christ so many times, means to save, but it also means to heal. It is a word used in the world of medicine and in the world of physicians. Soza means to heal. Diasozo, which is another word that is tied to sozo and the concept of salvation, means to heal as well. In Luke’s gospel, the seventh chapter, the centurion in the village of Capernaum came and said, “My servant is ill. My servant is dying. Please say the word even now and you will heal him.” The word is diasozo, built on this word sozo. Instead of meaning to save, it means to heal. This is a healing word. Out of the word sozo comes the word Soter, which is the title of Christ used so often. Jesus is Curio Soter, the Lord Soter. Soter means savior. He is the Savior, but soter also means healer – Savior, healer, and one who makes us whole. The reason that the early church was so mad at the Greek and Roman world and their whole view of Asclepius was that Asclepius is the Greek god of healing. In the Greek and Roman world Asclepius was worshiped.
You can go today to Bergama, which is in modern day Turkey, but in Biblical Asia Minor. In Bergama, which is ancient Pergamum, you can see the ruins of the great temple of Asclepius. It is the largest Asclepiad temple in the world. There were temples built to Asclepius in all the major Greek and Roman cities. This was the god of healing. What did they call him? They called him Asclepius Soter. Asclepius the savior, Asclepius the healer, Asclepius the one who makes us whole. The early church considered it blasphemy, which it was. Jesus alone is soter. Jesus alone is savior. Jesus alone is healer. Jesus alone makes us whole. What I am saying is that all of the words in the Greek that relate to doctors, all the words in the Greek that relate to physicians and the medical profession, are applied to Christ. He is indeed the Great Physician.
Another word associated with the world of physicians is the word “life.” Doctors are to be life protectors, life givers, life bringers, etc. All the words for life are applied to Christ. The word zoe, from which we get the word zoo or zoology. The word bios, from which we get the word biology. The word psyche, which refers to soul life more narrowly, but more broadly refers to all of life. All of these words—zoe, psyche, bios—are applied to Christ. He is the giver of life. In every sense Jesus is the giver of life. He gives life. Only Christ can give life. No doctor can give life, or protect life like Christ can.
There is an old joke. It is kind of dumb, but I like dumb jokes. This is about four dads that are in a hospital waiting room in the maternity ward. They are in the hospital waiting room and their wives are giving birth. This was some years ago when dads were normally in the waiting room. The nurse comes in to the first dad and says, “Congratulations. Your wife just gave birth to twins.” He said, “How amazing! I work for the Minnesota Twins.” Then a few minutes later the nurse comes in the room and says to the second dad, “Congratulations! You are not going to believe this, but your wife just gave birth to triplets.” He said, “That is amazing! I work for 3M Company.”
A few minutes later the nurse comes into the waiting room and says to the third dad, “Congratulations! Your wife just gave birth to quadruplets.” He said, “That is amazing. I work for Four Seasons Hotels.” The fourth dad passed out and fell over on the floor. The nurse said, “What is going on there?” They said, “He works for 7UP!”
We live in a world where doctors, with regard to life, are doing and have done amazing things. When you hear about triplets or quadruplets, you kind of suspect that maybe a doctor who is involved in fertility medicine, maybe in vitro is involved. Medical doctors are doing many things. It is all done in an effort to try and give life. I think some of these areas are very controversial and there are a lot of ethical and moral issues about whether certain boundaries should be crossed. I think it is generally true, and I think we would all agree, doctors try to preserve life. Doctors try to provide life to the extent that it possible for them to help us produce life. But, nobody is like Jesus. Jesus gives life like nobody can. Doctors are limited in what they can offer us.
In Colonial America, in the time when our nation was first born, after the War of Independence, there was a doctor named Dr. Benjamin Rush. You might have heard of him. He was the most famous doctor in America when our nation was born. He was a member of the Continental Congress. He signed the Declaration of Independence. Dr. Benjamin Rush was famous throughout Colonial America and early United States of America. He graduated from Harvard, a brilliant man, at the age of fifteen. He went to Edinburgh and received his medical training in Edinburgh, Scotland. He founded the Anti-Slavery Society in America, almost 100 years before slavery was abolished in America. This was a man before his times.
In the year 1790 Dr. Rush conducted the study of longevity in the city of Philadelphia. It is an alarming study. Historians and medical experts know it is true. What Dr. Benjamin Rush discovered in the city of Philadelphia in 1790 was that 34 out of every 100 people died before the age of six and only 24 out of every 100 would live beyond age 26. Kind of a scary deal. You can’t imagine what life was like and how dangerous life was. It wasn’t just Philadelphia; it was Early America. So, we know that when George Washington was elected as the President of the United States in 1789, the average male in America lived 34.5 years and the average female in America lived 36.5 years. If you were alive when George Washington was elected in 1789 and you were 35 years old, you already outlived the average male life span in the United States. This affected everything. It was kind of scary to bring a child into the world. It was a different world, a different worldview, and a different theology. I think people felt far more dependent on God. Today we are so blessed. Many people don’t think they need God.
This affects everything. You could ask the question, when you look at a world like that where the average male only lived 34.5 years, what were doctors doing wrong? The answer is nothing. They sought to help people. They sought to do good. They wanted to benefit people, bless people, give people life, but they did not have the power, and medicine was relatively primitive then. They did not know how to deal with viruses. They could not give viral injections. You couldn’t just go down to a drug store and get a flu shot. They didn’t know how to deal with bacteriological infections. They didn’t have penicillin because it hadn’t been discovered yet. They didn’t have antibiotics because they hadn’t been discovered yet. It was a scary world. Doctors, even today, sometimes feel so impotent. They wish they could do something to help and they don’t have the power.
Doctors wish they could do more than they can do. How about Jesus? Does he have the power? Yes, he has the power. Jesus has said, “All power in heaven and on earth has been given to me.” The Greek word is exousia, an amazing word. All authority and power is mine, in heaven and on earth. In heaven right now all power is his. He is love. Why isn’t he always healing – particularly his people? Why can’t we just name it and claim it like so many believe? Why aren’t Christians or anyone who prays to God always healed if God is benevolent, if God is the doctor, if he has all power? This is another issue with regard to these views of God and how we try to sum God up with just a partial picture. What Jesus offers to do in this fallen world, where we have abused our freedom, what Jesus has chosen to do is to offer to save and to heal everybody’s soul. He offers, through the gospel, to heal every person’s soul. Not just to heal it, but to seal it and secure it for eternity and one day clothe it with a new resurrection body. That is pretty cool if you believe it. At the heart of the gospel, he will offer to heal your soul, to save it, to secure it, and one day clothe it with a new resurrection, eternal body. That is what he offers to every person in this world. With regard to these bodies in this fallen world, sometimes he intervenes and sometimes he doesn’t.
There is a mystery there. He has a whole different perspective. Sometimes he allows natural consequences, sometimes he uses suffering for loving purposes. Remember, he has a whole different perspective. He has an eternal perspective, not a finite perspective. When we sing “Amazing Grace,” we sing, “When we have been there 10,000 years bright shining as the sun, we’ll have no less days to sing God’s praise than when we first begun.” Think about it, when we have been there 10,000 years, when we have been there 10 million years, when we have been there 10 trillion years, I think we can look back on our little bit of time here in this world with a little different perspective. Some of the things that seem so huge to us now will seem very different then. The promise is given, in the midst of this life, that you must trust him—Romans 8:28, one of my favorite verses, “We know that in everything God works together for good for those who love him and are called according to his purpose.” If you are a Christian and you have received Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, his promise is given, not only that he has saved and secured your soul and will clothe it with a new body in heaven, but he has promised that in everything in this life, in everything in this physical world he is working for good. Trust him. He is always working for good. Sometimes he does heal. We have laid hands on people and prayed for people and seen miracles.
We have seen God cure people of so-called incurable cancers because he is the doctor. He is benevolent. Sometimes he asks us to trust him. Sometimes he takes us through stuff, but he is promising that he is always working for good. Someday when we get to heaven he will explain the incredible ways that he has used this. The Bible says in that day that every lip and every tongue will be stilled and God will be justified. I believe that with all my heart.
We have this view of God, not just the umpire and authoritative view, but also the doctor, the benevolent view. There is truth in both, but also caution in terms of understanding God more holistically and the complexity and mystery of his dealings in this world. Look at Luke chapter 4 where Jesus shows up in Nazareth. He grew up there, but as an adult he rarely went back there. The Bible says he didn’t do any healings there. People there didn’t even believe in him. They said, “Isn’t this the carpenter’s boy? Isn’t this Joseph’s kid?” They didn’t believe in him. He chose not to do any miracles there. He chose not to do any healings there.
One day he DID go into the synagogue in Nazareth. He opened the Isaiah scrolls and read the words of the prophets, and he said, “I have been sent to set the captives free, to release the oppressed, to heal the sick, to lift the poor.” He said to them, “I know what you are thinking. You are thinking, ‘Physician, heal thyself.”‘ Remember that passage? But what Jesus meant by that, and what the people thought, was not for Jesus to heal Jesus, but for Jesus to heal them. “Do some healings in this area where you grew up. Just don’t heal the world, do some healing here.” They really didn’t believe he could. Jesus then said something that really got them mad. He implied that he hadn’t been sent to them. He said, “I tell you that in the days of Elijah there were many widows in the world, but Elijah was sent only to Zarephath, a town in Sidon. In the days of Elisha there were many lepers in the world, but Elisha was sent only to Na’aman, the leper, the Syrian.” The crowd became angry and they drove them up to the brow of the hill. They were going to push him off headlong that he might die. By his power, it says, he just passed through them without being touched. What an amazing story. Think about it. It is pretty complex: the mystery of why God does what he does here in there.
In John chapter 5, Jesus goes to the pool of Bethesda where there are so many people that are sick and lame and paralyzed and diseased. They are all around the pool of Bethesda, the House of Mercy, Bethesda. We are told that Jesus went up to one, just one, a man that had been paralyzed for 38 years. Jesus said, “Do want to be healed?” Strange question? Not really. Jesus understood that a lot of people loved to freeload. A lot of people just didn’t want the responsibilities of health. A lot of people like lying around, and like having people with compassion support them and care for them. So, “Do you want to be healed?” He said, ‘Yes, Lord.” Jesus released his power. “Take up your bed and walk.”
What about the other people? How about the other people around the pool of Bethesda—there must have been dozens and dozens? Is there a mystery to that? We live by faith, yet I tell you this, if you are a Christian you need not worry. I have seen him heal so many. I also believe that for those he does not heal in this life, he has special reasons for it. He uses it for divine purposes. One day he will bless us all. He will bless us all who believe in him. We will have eternal blessings from Christ. Let’s look to the Lord with a word of prayer.