However, there's a serious problem among some churches. It's especially severe among fundamentalists and fringe Pentecostals, but the problem can be found in members of just about any church. The problem starts with a simple idea: that unconfessed sin can cause illness. The Bible teaches that (Psalm 107:17; Micah 6:13). Life experience teaches that. I myself have gone through serious physical distress because of what an unconfessed sin did to me from inside, twisting me into such knots that I developed itchings and sores and headaches and bodily weakness. I knew it, too. I confessed it, then started doing something about it, and indeed, it went away.
The problem is that many Christian churches teach this in reverse: if you're ill and it doesn't go away with prayer, then it must be caused by unconfessed sin or the absence of faith. Baloney! It usually isn't caused by unconfessed sin. Illness is made possible by the sinfulness which comes with being a part of this created world -- the sort of sin which Christians mean when saying that all human beings are 'fallen'. This 'fallenness' (having to do with 'original sin') has put us all out of kilter and made us un-whole. Our state of sin is what makes it possible for us to become ill, and guarantees that we will die. But all the confession in the world has never once gotten rid of that state of sin. It's with us till the Kingdom comes. Specific sins are usually not what gives a specific person their specific illness at a particular time. You may make the causal connection that sin A led to illness B, but the logic does not hold in reverse - illness B can also be caused by germ C, or gene D, or accident E, or someone else's sin F, or other things G through Z.
Yet I can tell you of dozens of people I have met (and hundreds I have heard about) who were scolded, berated, shunned, shamed, and labeled as a grave sinner just because they happened to be ill and it didn't go away when they were prayed over. I've seen this happen with my own eyes more times than I care to recount. Most Pentecostalists I know of are aware of this, and say that they don't believe that the failure to be healed is always from unrepented sin. Yet, even for those people, old habits die hard. Often, the first thing that even those believers will do when someone isn't healed is to start interrogating the unhealed person about the parts of their life that personal sins are most expected to be found - usually involving sex. Tens of thousands of people every year are driven away from the church by this belief. They flee because instead of being loving people who gave grace to someone in need, the church was an angry, superstitious, bitter, legalistic, elite clique which showed no love at all, and indeed showed exactly the opposite of such love. This is not the way of Christ: Christ made contact with the ill, Christ treated them personally, Christ healed them, Christ showed them love. If your church doesn't do that, either change churches, or if possible, cause the church to change. It is a matter of the Gospel.
http://www.spirithome.com/healings.html
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