die Schönheit des Simplexen

Was ist leichter, zu sagen: Deine Sünden sind dir vergeben!, oder zu sagen: Steh auf und geh umher? (Matthäus 9,5 nach der Einheitsübersetzung)

Eine provozierende Frage, die Jesus hier stellt. Die meisten würden sagen: „es ist leichter zu sagen, ‚deine Sünden sind dir vergeben.'“ Dennoch macht der Zusammenhang deutlich, dass es für Jesus leichter schien, die Heilung zu vollbringen. Die Heilung war das Zeichen, die Sündenvergebung war das Eigentliche. Wieso erscheint es uns heute oft andersherum einfacher?
Bill Johnson gibt in seinem Buch „the supernatural power of a transformed mind“ eine einleuchtende Antwort, die uns zugleich in eine Lehrverantwortung hineinstellt:

During the days of the Roman Empire, much of what was then called the Church had little understanding or assurance of salvation. While the experience of salvation by faith has always been a part of the true Church, this revelation was put on the back burner:“(From cooking. almost all stoves have front and back burners. The things you need to pay careful attention to (don’t stop stirring the risotto!) should be up front, under your nose. Things that can simmer away without immediate attention (soup stock, for example)can be pushed to the back burners where they can be looked into from time to time, but don’t need to be attended to just now. The metaphor has been extended to all kinds of activities: on your To Do list of life, some things need to be done Now (get out of the burning building) while less urgent things (should I write bob a nice thank you note?) can be pushed to the back burner…. aus:http://www.phrases.org.uk/bulletin_board/6/messages/582.html)“: for most. But a few hundred years ago, it was moved to the forefront, and the church began to proclaim again that salvation is only by faith. Even so, it was more of a prolonged process than it is today. Many would seek God in prayer and search the Scriptures, sometimes for weeks or even months, before having assurance that they had been born again. Many died not knowing the assurance of their salvation. But because the Church embraced this revelation wholeheartedly, teaching it, practicing it, building up people´s faith in it, today we consider it to be the simplest thing in the world. We pry for a sinner to receive Jesus, and we have absolutely no doubt that he or she will be instantly converted. Many of us don´t realize that it´s only „easy“ now because previous generations labored in planting and watering this revelation by putting it into practice. For two centuries the Church in this nation has not lost sight of the power of conversion. It has taught it, preached it, gone into the streets with it, written books about it. Today we are riding the wave of a heritage of faith that has increased for many generation.
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Healing is a part of the normal christian life. God put it in his book; He illustrated it in the life of Jesus. He told us to emulate what Jesus did. So why is it so easy for us to be fully convinced when we pray for someone to be saved thatour prayer will work, and yet when we pray for healing we find it difficult to believe they will be healed? Because salvation, as it pertains to a born-again experience, has been embraced and taught continuously by the Church for centuries, while the revelation of healing has not been widely embraced, and has even been fought.
(…)
What would have happened if centuries ago Christians had embraced the power of the gospel to bring healing to the physical body, to the emotions and to the mind? What if the Church had plowed through that soil for generation after generation? Instead of a few „heroes of healing“ marking the trail of history, the entire Body of Christ would recognize healing as an essential part of the Great Commission. Normal Christians would see deformities and say, „No problem.“ Cancer, „No problem.“ Missing limbs, „No problem.“ We would pray in power without one iota of doubt.

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