Several years ago, I was invited to be a guest lecturer at a small college in the midwest. It was one of those schools that had been founded by religious people but had lost its religious mooring. While the school had become secularized, there were a few remaining signs of its previous religious affiliation. One of them was an annual religious emphasis week.
Most religious colleges have such weeks in which an effort is made to religiously “psych up” the student body. Usually these efforts produce little change. This particular student body thought that I could do the job for them and brought me in to resurrect their dead. My assignment was to interest an apathetic student body that was forced to attend my lectures about how Christianity was supposedly exciting and intellectually tenable.
The college had scheduled the lectures for evenings. At the end of my presentation on the second night a woman came down the aisle of the auditorium carrying her child in her arms. The child was crippled and in braces, and the woman was obviously not a member of the student body. Furthermore, she had a strange look in her eyes.
“What do you want?” I asked.
She answered, “God told me to come.”
I didn’t know how to handle that. It seemed to me that if God had told her to come, the least He could have done was to tell me that she was coming. I asked, “Well, is there something you think I can do for you?”
She said, “You’re supposed to heal my child.”
I responded, “Dear lady, I don’t have the gift of healing. There are a variety of gifts according to the Bible. Some people are given the gift of tongues, some the gift of prophesy, some the gift of healing and some the gift of teaching. Teaching is my gift.”
I had the strong inclination to simply point to my bald head and say, “If I could heal would I look like this?” I told her that healing was just not my thing, but she wouldn’t back off.
“God told me to come,” she said even more emphatically.
The students quickly picked up what was happening, and I could hear whispers and titters of laughter spread over the audience. There was no question that they were delighted to see my discomfort. The chaplain of the college recognized that I was in an embarrassing situation. He was the typical college chaplain. I’m sure you know the type. They wear turtleneck sweaters, and chains with big crosses around their necks. They smoke pipes and they try to look very relevant.
He came over to us and he asked, “What’s the problem, Doctor?”
I said, “This lady wants me to heal her kid.”
He asked, “Do you want some help?”
“Please!”, I shot back.
The chaplain spoke to the audience and said, “Those who do not believe that this child is going to be healed this evening, please leave the auditorium. If you are not absolutely convinced that this child will have his legs straightened out through prayer, I want you to get out of here. Not even Jesus could perform miracles or mighty works when He was surrounded by people who were filled with unbelief.”
Hey, I thought to myself, that’s not bad for a theologically liberal college chaplain. That’s really a smart move. It was a smart move, because once he said that, almost everyone in the auditorium got up and left. With one statement he had cleared the place. All that were left were five Pentecostal kids, and they were already into their thing, lifting hands into the air and praying in tongues. I figured the guy had gotten me off the hook, that I was safe and clear.
I asked, “What do we do now?”
He answered, “Were taking the kid out back into the kitchen.”
“What are you going to do in the kitchen?” was my response.
He said, “We’re going to anoint the child’s head with oil.”
“Oil? What kind of oil?”
“Del Monte!” he answered with a smile on his face.
Somehow that answer lacked the kind of spirituality that I was expecting. I thought he might have something like Holy water from Israel or some special ointment that had been blessed by the pope. I asked, “Are you kidding?”
He said, “Look, Campolo; it says in the Book of James that if somebody needs healing, the elders of the church are to anoint the person’s head with oil, lay hands on him, and pray for healing. So, unless you have a better idea, you had better do what the book tells you.”
Now that is not bad advice, no matter what the source. So we went into the back room and did what we were supposed to do. We followed the instructions in the Book of James like it was a cookbook. First we applied the oil, then we laid on our hands, and then we prayed. I had invited the five Pentecostal kids to join us, so they had their hands on the kid’s head too. I figured that if anybody had anything going for them, I wanted them in on this.
I started to pray. It was one of those phoney prayers that are all too common when we pray in the presence of others. I think you know what I mean. So often when others are present, we have a tendency to utter pat religious phrases that are high-sounding and that communicate an image of spirituality rather than concentrating on God. I can still hear myself praying: “O God, the great Creator of the Universe; O thou who in the days of old has healed the blind, made the lame to walk and raised up the dead, we beseech the in this hour to be present among us-”
And I stopped dead. In the midst of my prayer my Pentecostal friends stopped their praying in tongues. We all felt it. We all felt a strange and awesome presence break loose in our midst. The Holy Spirit had descended into our midst. His presence was overpowering and disturbing and shattered my pretended religiosity. The experience must have been something similar to what Isaiah described in the sixth chapter of his book. There he said,
“In the year that King Ussiah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; His train filled the temple. Above Him stood a seraphim; each had six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. And one called to another and said: “Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of His glory.” And the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who called, and the house was filled with smoke. And I said: “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!”"
(Isaiah 6:1-5)
It is an awesome thing to stand in the presence of the Almighty. I didn’t know how to react. Instinctively, I removed my hand and I felt terribly ashamed. My Pentecostal friends withdrew their hands too. I must admit that I fully expected the child to be healed. The power of the Spirit was so overwhelming that a miraculous healing would not have surprised me. But the child was not healed. After some awkward excuses and explanations we all got out of the room and I quickly left the building.
The rest of the lectures in the series unfolded in a very uneventful way. I was glad when the week was over and I could get back to my home, away from that strange and mysterious situation.
Three years after that I was a guest speaker in a church in St. Louis. When the worship service was over a lady came up to me and asked, “Do you remember me?”
“Yes!” I answered. “It was three years ago that I met you. You brought your little boy for healing. We prayed for him. How is your little boy?”
She said, “I came here today because I wanted you to see him. Here he is.” There beside her, with no braces on his legs, her little boy was standing as straight and as whole as any boy could be. His legs weren’t twisted anymore.
“How did this happen?” I asked.
She answered, “We prayed! Don’t you remember? We prayed! The next morning he woke up crying. I noticed that his braces were a little tight. I loosened them and his legs straightened just a little. It happened again the next morning, and then it happened again and again and again. It kept happening until his legs were made straight.”
I didn’t know how to handle any of that. The situation was beyond me. A few days later I was back in my hometown, Philadelphia, having lunch with two academic colleagues. One was a professor of religion from the University of Pennsylvania. I explained to my friends what had happened, and one of them said, “Well, Tony, I have to be honest with you. My theology does not allow for that sort of thing to happen.”
Isn’t that wild!?! I mean you’ve got to smile at that response.
His theology did not allow for that to happen!
I said, “Chuck, I don’t want to upset you, but maybe — just maybe —God is able to do abundantly more than your theology could ever hope or think.”
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My name is David Young, I run Inspirational Journal in my spare time because I enjoy the content, and I think it should be shared. Enjoy!
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