Evangelicals Now
<< December 2001 >>

Health, Healing and God's Kingdom

African remedy

HEALTH, HEALING AND GOD'S KINGDOM
By W. Meredith Long
Paternoster Press. 288 pages. £9.99
ISBN 1 870345 36 3

This book is subtitled New Pathways to Christian Health Ministry in Africa and would interest anyone involved in Christian work in Africa, not just medics. The American author has worked in international health care for 20 years, with the last seven spent in Africa, but writes in an accessible style.

The first few chapters draw parallels between biblical Hebrew/Christian culture and African world-views that reveal the image of God, but which sin has distorted. The author cites, for example, that whereas the fear of God under the Old Covenant disappeared as grace came with the New, much African spirituality is still based on fear. Or again, while Africans strongly share the Hebrew concept of belonging to a family community, God's community is characterised by healing whereas the African concept is weakened by jealousy and mistrust.

The author goes on to examine biblical healing practices, and in another echo finds that the key concept behind healing in Africa is the power to restore right relationship. He mentions a tree in Cameroon whose leaves and bark have physical soothing properties and which is a metaphor for peace and life. The parallel is drawn with Jesus, the only One who can fulfil the longing for health and healing found throughout the continent.

The author criticises much Christian health work in Africa however for pointing people away from God and towards medical science. He calls for Christian health work in Africa to integrate the 'three-legged stool' of revelation, African tradition and science under scriptural authority and the centrality of God as the only Healer. Ways for health and healing ministries in Africa to become biblically holistic expressions of the Church's mission are explored but only briefly in the last of the 13 chapters.

Several themes are suggested, including the role of indigenous Christians in proclaiming Jesus the Healer in their mother tongue, the ministry of reconciliation and the biblical transformation of traditional healing practice.
The weakest point of the book is the analysis of the 'three-legged stool of fatalism' which the author supposes accounts for much of African poverty. Although he quotes one or two African writers the question of whether fatalism actually causes poverty, or is merely its consequence, is ignored.

In summary, since the issue of health is so bound up with culture, this book would suit any Christian working or about to work in Africa, from gap-year students onwards.

Martin Paisley