Does 2 Chronicles 16:12 discourage seeing medical providers?
A young woman sat in my office, distraught by a particular Bible verse. For the last 3 months, she’d struggled with an episode of major depression, her second such experience in her short life. She’d been seeing a Biblical counselor and made good progress but presented to me, in psychiatry, at the recommendation of her counselor to see if medications might help their work in therapy. We had begun working together about a month ago, and after a full evaluation, I recommended we begin a low dose of an antidepressant. She’d responded well; her thoughts were clearer, she was no longer ruminating throughout the day, and her mood had begun to lift.
This morning, however, a common symptom of her depression returned with a vengeance: guilt. Guilty feelings are common in depressive disorders; they can be focused on something in particular such as "I’m a bad mom" or "I’m so self-centered"; other times they can be generalized, like "I’m no good", "I’m a failure", or "God could never be pleased with me". To be sure, we live in a fallen world, and the fall has impacted our spiritual, physical, and mental state such that our hearts are inclined toward sin. We wouldn’t argue that guilt has no role in the lives of believers. When we sin, guilt is a gift of the Holy Spirit which calls us to repentance and obedience toward God’s word. Guilt in depression, however, mimics the guilt we may feel before we come to know Christ as our Savior. We feel wretched, without hope, dead in our sin. Yet, in Christ, we are new creations (2 Corinthians 5:17) and there is no past remembrance of sin anymore (Hebrews 8:12).
Grasping these truths of scripture is difficult in depression. Other times, as my patient had, we are presented with a verse from scripture that causes us to question whether our attempts at being faithful weren’t, in fact, further evidences of our sin. In conversation with a friend, my patient had expressed her success in therapy and the response she had in medication. In response, her friend quoted from 2 Chronicles 16:12, “In the thirty-ninth year of his reign Asa was diseased in his feet, and his disease became severe. Yet even in his disease he did not seek the LORD, but sought help from physicians.”
I wish I could say this story is fictional, but my belief is that, perhaps in your own suffering, you have experienced the icy consolation of a well-intentioned friend. There is much to be said about how to be a Christian brother or sister to another in suffering; there are other resources for that (see Zack Eswine’s exploration of Spurgeon’s suffering and advice to those who wish to offer counsel here).
This article, however, is more focused. We want to understand the context and wisdom this verse from 2 Chronicles offers us in suffering. To understand this verse, we must step back a bit.
The unified Kingdom of Israel remained, though not without some initial conflict, unified under his son and successor King Solomon. Solomon’s reign was marked by material wealth, wise leadership, and notably peace. It was during his lifetime that Solomon constructed the Temple, an act of faithfulness that only amplified God’s blessing on the nation.
Solomon’s obedience began to falter in his later years. His many wives and concubines (an estimated 1,000 total) pulled his heart toward other gods and in order to appease his wives he built altars to their foreign deities. This disobedience leads to God’s promise to divide his kingdom. Yet, because of his great love for David, God promises to do this, not in Solomon’s lifetime, but during the reign of his son. The schism that separated Israel from Judah occurred, as God promised, while Solomon’s son Rehoboam ruled as King. The once great and unified nation marked by peace with surrounding nations found itself facing civil war and external conflicts.
As various kings of both Israel and Judah came and went, each failed to various degrees to honor God by removing the foreign gods from the land. Each failed to see that the rest and prosperity under Solomon was due to the faithfulness of David and early obedience of Solomon and that destruction follows disobedience. That is, until the reign of Abijah ended and his son Asa became king of Judah, of which it is said,
“And Asa did what was good and right in the eyes of the Lord his God. He took away the foreign altars and the high places and broke down the pillars and cut down the Asherim and commanded Judah to seek the Lord, the God of their fathers, and to keep the law and the commandment. He also took out of all the cities of Judah the high places and the incense altars. And the kingdom had rest under him. He built fortified cities in Judah, for the land had rest. He had no war in those years, for the Lord gave him peace.”
This remarkable return to obedience led to incredible success in a war against the Ethiopian and Libyan outsiders. Despite these victories, after 36 years of his reign, Asa found himself at war with Baasha king of Israel. In a brilliant strategy, Baasha built the fortress at Ramah, effectively cutting off entrance or exit from Judah. Asa’s father, Abijah had found himself in a similar position when at war with Jeroboam of Israel. Jeroboam had sent troops to the rear of Judah so they were surrounded, yet Abijah turns to God and is victorious over their enemies. We read of the account in 1 Chronicles 13-18:
“And when Judah looked, behold, the battle was in front of and behind them. And they cried to the Lord, and the priests blew the trumpets. Then the men of Judah raised the battle shout. And when the men of Judah shouted, God defeated Jeroboam and all Israel before Abijah and Judah. The men of Israel fled before Judah, and God gave them into their hand. Abijah and his people struck them with great force, so there fell slain of Israel 500,000 chosen men. Thus the men of Israel were subdued at that time, and the men of Judah prevailed because they relied on the Lord, the God of their fathers.
Asa would have known about this event, yet when he found himself cut off by Israel he turns not to God, but to Ben-hadad of Damascus, King of Syria for assistance. He pays him to make a covenant with Judah to defend against Israel’s invasion. This produces military victory, but its consequences spiritually are disastrous:
At that time Hanani the seer came to Asa king of Judah and said to him, “Because you relied on the king of Syria, and did not rely on the Lord your God, the army of the king of Syria has escaped you. Were not the Ethiopians and the Libyans a huge army with very many chariots and horsemen? Yet because you relied on the Lord, he gave them into your hand. For the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to give strong support to those whose heart is blameless toward him. You have done foolishly in this, for from now on you will have wars” (1 Chronicles 16:7-9).
Hanani comes to point out Asa’s lack of faith, and not in the absence of similar if not more astounding victories. Asa saw how God was faithful to his people against the Ethiopians and Libyans, yet failed to turn to God for help in this situation.
Further evidencing his guilt before God, Asa becomes enraged at Hanani and punishes him by putting him in prison. The chronicler wants us to see that Asa, despite his religious reform, failed to trust God in his actions. To add to this picture, he adds what feels like a brief aside, but is the origins of this article, “In the thirty-ninth year of his reign Asa was diseased in his feet, and his disease became severe. Yet even in his disease he did not seek the Lord, but sought help from physicians.”
Now, with this context in mind, we may examine the passage. What is it trying to say?
Asa was disobedient before God by trusting an outside army, making a covenant with them, for protection.
Asa was disobedient in his reaction toward the prophet who confronted him, punishing the messenger of God.
Asa faced similar health problems and sought care from physicians, to the exclusion of seeking the Lord.
Within this context, we have not a prohibition against seeking medical care (which would go against the counsel of other scripture, see Matthew 9:12, Luke 10:34, Colossians 4:14) but an exhortation to trust God for healing, and in the means he chooses to bring about that healing.
Instead of guilt, I discussed with my patient, might we use this as an opportunity to reassess where her faith and trust ultimately were placed while she pursued healing? We recounted how she had prayed for healing from depression and that the doors opened effortlessly for her to meet with her counselor. Then, after much progress, they had prayed in therapy that an answer to the wall they had seemed to come against might be made clear. It was around this time that I had given a presentation to a counseling group her therapist had attended. This is how my name got into the hands of my patient.
I’m not the replacement for the hope of God in my patient's life. I’m honored to be a part of her healing and to point her (and myself) toward the one who promises to protect and provide for his people even when they seem surrounded on all sides. Whether we are overcome with depression or a metaphorical hoard of invaders, the right response is to turn to God in faith. He may bring instantaneous support, he may provide a path (though difficult) he asks you to walk, he may call you to be still (often the hardest path of all), or he may bring resources, people, and yes, physicians, into your life to care for you. Each of those physicians is merely an extension of the healing hand of our ultimate Great Physician, to whom we eternally trust and worship.
Adam O’Neill, PA-C is a Psychiatric Physician Assistant and owner of Adam O’Neill & Associates, author of The Mind after Eden: Psychiatry in a Post-Fall World, The Patience of Hope: Encouragement for the Sufferer through the life and ministry of George Matheson, and The Mind for His Glory: A Theory of Applied Christian Psychiatry (forthcoming), and serves as executive director for the Faith and Medicine Foundation. He is a member of Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington, D.C.
