Causes of Sickness and Disease
I am by no means an expert on this subject, and others have done plenty of work on it. I’m not going to look at healing or how to have faith, or anything like that. Today I’m just interested in looking at some of the Biblical causes of problems in our bodies.
What happens a lot is that people will latch onto a particular root cause when it comes to sickness and disease. Many think it comes from having sin in your life, for instance. Some blame demons. Some make it a faith issue with the easy to say but hard to hear sentence: “If you only had more faith…” What I’ve found is that there are multiple possibilities for our root causes, and different people are going to have different factors in their lives. So here are some of the reasons I have found so far:
Sin
Yes, your sin can lead to sickness; we do see evidence of this in the Bible:
“A sound heart is the life of the
flesh: but envy the rottenness of the bones.” Proverbs
I think there are other little tidbits in Proverbs about things like this, but I was able to find this one easily. Envy can only hurt your body, so it’s something to look out for. In this case rotting bones is simply a symptom of the real problem, which is a heart issue.
Direct Punishment for
Sin
This takes it a little bit further. Naaman had leprosy and was healed. Elisha refused to take any payment, but his servant Gehazi went and asked for possessions from Naaman afterward. For his efforts he wound up being a leper himself:
“25: But he went in, and stood
before his master. And Elisha said unto him, Whence comest thou, Gehazi? And he said, Thy servant
went no whither.
26: And he said unto him, Went not mine heart with thee, when the man
turned again from his chariot to meet thee? Is it a time to receive money, and
to receive garments, and oliveyards, and vineyards,
and sheep, and oxen, and menservants, and maidservants?
27: The leprosy therefore of Naaman shall
cleave unto thee, and unto thy seed for ever. And he
went out from his presence a leper as white as snow.” Second Kings 5:25-27 KJV
The difference was that Gehazi was told directly that he was getting this malady because of what he did. He couldn’t do anything to fix it afterward, whereas you can recognize envy and deal with the root, so at the very least the problem is dealt with.
Demons
Yes, it must not be avoided. Demons are an interesting subject because a lot of people try to just ignore it altogether. Others have seen enough and believe, but go too far the other way, finding and blaming demons everywhere. Reality is that demons should show up and be recognized about as often as they do in the Bible: Sometimes, but not all the time.
“As they went out, behold, they brought
to him a dumb man possessed with a devil. And when the devil was cast out, the
dumb spake: and the multitudes marvelled, saying, It was never so seen in
Here we see a demon able to keep a man from speaking. Matthew 12 has a man both blind and dumb with the same cause: a demon. When we look at all the works that Jesus did, there was some of everything. There were demons, but also regular sicknesses, so we don’t want to go too far in either direction.
To Give God Glory
In John 9, we have a clear cut case of a problem not being sin, but a more frustrating reason:
“1: And as Jesus passed by, he
saw a man which was blind from his birth.
2: And his disciples asked him, saying, Master, who did sin, this man,
or his parents, that he was born blind?
3: Jesus answered, Neither hath this man
sinned, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in
him.” John 9:1-3 KJV
For the man born blind, there’s no way he could have understood previously that it was no one’s fault. He was blind so that God could get credit for the healing. The disciples were quickly throwing around condemnation though. Who gets the blame? His parents? Him? Before Jesus came along it must have been pretty frustrating for the man. Not only the blindness, but probably other people had said equally mean things to and about him. But as frustrating as that is, it can be worse. He started blind and didn’t have anything to look back on, unlike another guy…
To Show up Satan
Your name is Job, and you’ve had a pretty nice life. Everything has gone well, you’ve got a wife and kids, lots of land and animals, and you can’t think of any sin in your life. All of a sudden you lose almost everything, and soon after get boils all over your body. Why did this happen? In some ways it’s the same reason as the last: to give God glory, but also to make Satan look bad.
“4: And Satan answered the LORD,
and said, Skin for skin, yea, all that a man hath will he give for his life.
5: But put forth thine hand now, and touch his bone and his flesh, and
he will curse thee to thy face.
6: And the LORD said unto Satan, Behold, he is in thine hand; but save
his life.
7: So went Satan forth from the presence of the LORD, and smote Job with
sore boils from the sole of his foot unto his crown.” Job 2:4-7 KJV
It was quite the test for Job to deal with all of this and he did very well until he justified himself. But in the end who got to look bad? That would be Satan, who was certain that Job would curse God for his misfortune. Guess he was wrong.
Again it was not sin that caused the trouble. Job’s three friends spent a lot of time explaining how it had to be Job’s fault, and yet they were wrong. Job spent a lot of time explaining how it wasn’t his fault and wound up over-justifying himself, being “righteous in his own eyes” (32:1). We get to see the whole thing from the beginning and understand that it came from a couple conversations between God and Satan, but Job didn’t get to see that. It’s so much easier when you’re on the outside looking in.
So I’m sure there are more possibilities, but these are a few to think about. The fun begins if you have a malady and are trying to figure out where it came from, because you can’t just blame any one thing for it.