How Great Men Allocate Their Time
One of my favorite articles for Mises.org was, “Superman Needs an Agent.” I reached the surprising conclusion–even to myself–that Superman should focus on public exhibitions of his powers (rather than amazing one-off things), if his goal is to help humanity in a nuts-and-bolts manner.
In a perhaps related vein, recently I was musing on how Jesus spends some of His time in the gospel accounts going around and engaging in mass healing. Like, a town would bring up their sick and He would heal everybody.
But that’s not all that Jesus did. And so it occurred to me to ask, “Why not?”
And the answer, of course, is that Jesus had such important things to teach people, that at a certain point “on the margin” it was much more valuable for Him to take an hour to deliver the Sermon on the Mount, rather than go track down another group of people with diseases.
Finally, I want to mention that Jesus frequently took time to step away from everybody and pray. One might think that as busy and as connected to His Father as Jesus was, He could “skip leg day” but oh no.
“But that’s not all that Jesus did. And so it occurred to me to ask, “Why not?””
If Jesus is God, he had the power to heal everybody, anytime. He did not need to track them down. That would presumably subvert the purpose of sickness, whatever that is.
No Harold, Jesus had *become man*. Whatever else that mysterious process might mean, he clearly took on many human limitations. For instance, he *walked around*, rather than being ubiquituous. (God does not need to *travel* to Jerusalem — he’s already there!)
Now maybe the idea of Christ’s dual nature makes no sense — and it is certainly a tricky notion! But your criticism is nonsense.
I didn’t take Harold’s reply as criticism; just a comment. Let’s see what else he says.
It does seem an arbitrary limitation. Did he not heal someone remotely that a Roman soldier told him about? Go home and he will be cured or something similar?
I don’t think we know the limits of his power, but presumably God could have made them sufficient for healing everyone if he had wished.
The purposes was several.
Many of the miracles (of healing and others) were signposts that point to who he was.
They were in fulfillment of prophecies.
It was a challenge to the Jewish leaders who had encrusted and obscured the point of the OT with their traditions.
Since the lame and blind etc were disallowed from accessing God through the temple, his healing was a foreshadowing of his own work of breaking down all mans access to God.
To show that he had authority to forgive sins.
Finally, as Bob alluded, healing their physical ailments was not as important as healing their spiritual death. So much so that at his own hour of death, the physician refused to heal himself.