Believers Health

"Lord, Have Mercy On My Son"
By Rolando Suffos MD

After 35 years of medical practice I feel sure that the love of a mother was behind this petition.

These words of a father heading this amazing story, were probably first in the lips of a wife, suggesting her husband to approach the Lord with a request. that has been, or could be, mine and yours. Secretly or publicly we repeat it today or would repeat it tomorrow. But, to tell these words with sincere faith, we need to be convinced that they are not part of a tale but of a true, intelligible and historical event.

Born in Cuba, and taught to believe the Bible was pure fabrication, this passage about the epileptic boy, seemed perfect to demonstrate that, the Scriptures were a literary reflection of contrary to facts legends. But reason and evidences showed me its reliability in a process that took a time during which my undernourished Christian beliefs were confronted with a robust medical axiom: “Epilepsy is ALWAYS a disease due to natural causes; just an electrical brain storm and nothing else”. This being certain; the boy's clinical picture described in Matthew 17:14-21 Mark 9:14-29 and Luke 9:37-43 had nothing to do with demoniac possession. Accordingly, disappearance of the fit at Jesus’ rebuke was, I thought, just coincidental with the end of a self limited epileptic attack.

That was my opinion until I knew about a particular “epileptic” homosexual man. After a typical fit, and miles away from the scenery, this patient described the author, circumstances and evidences of a theft taking place, at that very moment, in my uncle’s backyard. Such a revelation had the disguised purpose of provoking a strife on something worthless. From that moment on my mind became opened to the plausibility of the gospels accounts regarding the apparently epileptic boy.

NO LOGIC

Notwithstanding one formidable doubt remained. In Matthew 17:15 the boy’s father says: “for he often falls into the fire and often into the water.” How could that be possible? During an attack as the one described in Mark 9:14-29 and Luke 9:37-43 patients can not swim to avoid drowning or run to escape from fire. Despite this, there we had a boy who had fallen into the flames and into the water in the middle of those fits and was still alive.

The answer to this question was waiting for me just at the border of the Ethiopian Ogaden desert. Serving there as a medical doctor, I saw people living under conditions similar to those of poor persons during Christ’s times in Palestine. In their single room huts, with no kitchen, a hole in the center of those “houses” functions as a cooking place weakly fueled by dried manure. At night; when the hut becomes a beadles bedroom an imperceptible fire in the cooking place remains barely alive under layers of ashes.

As to water, a small amount, hardly enough to drink, brought home on foot from a distant source, is also kept under the same shelter. To the place where that “kitchen” functions they call “the fire” while that where water is kept gets the name of “the water”

That is why during a convulsive seizure that boy could fall “into the fire” with minimal or no damage at all, or “into the water” without getting drowned. So we can confidently go to our Father in prayer faithfully repeating that very words: “LORD, HAVE MERCY ON MY SON”

Note: Dr. Suffos states that all convulsive episodes or epilepsy must be medically evaluated and treated. He will gladly answer any email directed to him (suffos21@yahoo.es).