A FAITH TURNING POINT

By Rolando Suffos MD. 
Havana, Cuba.

    Most us of have experienced the deleterious effects of that old and widely employed, satanic tactic of using God’s word against God’s purposes. The passage about the epileptic boy miraculously healed by Christ seems particularly suitable to fit this plan of Satan. In my case, there was a time when it completely succeeded.

    Born in Cuba, where I still work as a physician, and after years of atheist education, my fading Christian beliefs were confronted with a seemingly unsolvable contradiction between science and the Bible embodied in a medical axiom: Epilepsy is always a disease due to natural causes; just an electrical brainstorm, and nothing else. For me; –at that time, and for a long time afterwards–, and as for most people now, the boy's clinical picture described in Mathew 17:14-21 Mark 9:14-29 and Luke 9:37-43 corresponded to a common epileptic crisis then considered a sign of demoniac activity.

Accordingly, disappearance of the crisis at Jesus’ rebuke was the result of a coincidence. To support this, it could be argued that most of these episodes are self-limited. So, knowing it –or without knowing it– Christ’s intervention took place when the attack was about to conclude by itself. Therefore, no supernatural power and no casting out of any demon were involved. To reinforce this, any atheistic professor could have told me how a common man, Christopher Columbus did something similar. This something happened in Jamaica where, desperately in need of natives’ help, the Great Admiral threatened them with turning off the Sun if not provided with the food he was requesting. An eclipse that he had calculated would be seen at the appointed deadline, took place as foretold.

    After such display of power, the Indians started to think of Columbus as a god. Of course, they gave him all the help he asked for. Facing these facts, the miraculous healing of that epileptic boy seemed, to me and to almost all medical students exposed to those teachings, a fake.

    I would have continued thinking this way all my life; however, a relative of mine, recounted me how a homosexual man, suffered a convulsive fit. According to its description, I could easily diagnose it as another common epileptic attack. However, in this case, there was a particular feature that convinced me that some so called epileptic crisis do not always have natural causes.

    Once the fit concluded, the patient said to my relative, “One of your neighbors, –and he described him and his house– has stolen one of your hens, killing it. When you finish your shift at work, go to such and such place and you will find your hen’s still fresh remains and plumage.” Doing as he was told, my relative could verify everything.

    The capability of the person who suffered this fit to give information about events and persons he did not know made me think that something beyond natural causes was responsible for that man’s crisis. I started to suspect a spiritual agent behind this event when I realized how the purpose of such a revelation was to precipitate a dispute between neighbors. From that, moment on my mind became opened to the plausibility of the gospels accounts regarding the epileptic boy.

NO LOGIC

    Notwithstanding one doubt remained. It was about Matthew 17:15 where the boy’s father says: “for he often falls into the fire and often into the water.” How could that be possible? During an epileptic attack, patients cannot swim to avoid drowning or run to escape from fire. Despite this, there we had a boy who had fallen into the fire and into the water in the middle of epileptic attacks and was still alive.

    No one would suspect the answer to this question was waiting for me in Africa, thousands of miles away from that slaughtered hen. I found it just at the border of the Ethiopian Ogaden desert. Serving there as a medical doctor, I saw people living under conditions quite similar to those of poor people during Christ’s times in Palestine. There, you can see typical multipurpose single room huts with no kitchen. A small hole dug in the center of those “houses” functions as cooking place. With wood being very scarce, fuel to cook is provided by dried manure. At night; when those huts become bedrooms without beds, an almost imperceptible fire is kept barely alive in that central place under layers of ashes. That is why an epileptic could and can, fall “into the fire” with minimal or no damage at all.

    As to water, the small amount brought home on foot from a distant source, has to be kept inside such a lonely room. Therefore, an epileptic could and can, “fall into the water” without being drowned. Judging from what I witnessed, only after sunset would the boy of this often maliciously quoted biblical story stay any considerable time inside his “house” where fire and water were so close but in such limited amounts that Matthew, Mark, and Luke were all perfectly correct. None of them was a naive fellow or a cunning journalist trying to manipulate their readers. They were men of God telling the truth. When that truth shone upon me, those old Satan forged chains of unbelief melted away. I now know what faith and spiritual freedom mean in everyday life: no more torturing doubts, no more paralyzing fears, no more impossible things. I am not that aimless biological accident the atheist taught me I was. I am God’s son and God and the Bible are trustworthy.

Suffos21@yahoo.es    "Dr. Suffos will gladly answer any email directed to him."

"This article does not deny that epilepsy as we know it nowadays is a disease with natural causes that should be medically treated".