Soup kitchen religion

There are well-meaning Christians who think the only prayers we should offer for someone with a life-threatening condition are prayers for healing. Their perspective is entirely one-sided.

To begin with, there are different kinds of prayers for healing. Not all medical conditions are life-threatening. Some conditions are painful. Some conditions are enervating. Some conditions are debilitating. Some conditions are disfiguring. 

However, a life-threatening condition is different inasmuch as death is ultimately unavoidable. Sooner or later, everybody dies. Medical science can sometimes postpone the inevitable, but it's a question of timing. Death catches up with everyone. From the moment of birth, each of us is tending towards the grave.

When we pray for the dying, when we pray for the terminally ill, we need to take that into consideration. Religion is essentially about death and the afterlife. 

There are theologians and atheists who make fun of soup kitchen religion. Getting people saved and ready to die. Sometimes that's a truncated view of the Gospel. Yet in the end, that's what religion comes down to–because that's crunch time. That's when the promises comes due. 

Christians need to strike a balance between prayers for healing and heavenly-mindedness. Christians should cultivate a deathbed perspective on life. When you're on your deathbed, looking over your life, were you a good steward of the opportunities God gave you? And when you're facing the grave, that's the acid test of faith. I don't mean a Christian has to be fearless. But that's when theological abstractions need to be real. When everything is on the line. Not just comforting ideas at a safe distance.  

We shouldn't wait until we're dying to cultivate a death-bed perspective. We're not taking the Christian faith seriously if we mentally keep death at arm's length. Rather, we should adopt a deathbed perspective early in life, as if we're dying, as if we're looking back on life, and asking ourselves what's important. That's a good way to prioritize. We should be doing that before it's too late to redeem the time. 

If someone has a life-threatening condition, it's appropriate to pray for miraculous healing, but that's different from medical conditions in general–which concern the quality of life or the ability to provide for ourselves or others. Compared to eternity, this life is just a blink of the eye. And this life is supposed to be a preparation for the afterlife–especially for Christians. As best we can, we should be mentally prepared to die at anytime–because, in fact, we can die at any time. Many people die in accidents. They die without warning. No time to pray. 

Having read many formulaic prayers for healing, I wonder if there's not an element of spiritual ostentation. Signaling to others your belief in miracles, and what boundless faith you have. On a related note is an element of spiritual conceit. Have they been influenced by name-it-and-claim-it theology? As if we can take "authority" over terminal illness by intoning the talismanic name of Jesus.