Go in Peace

That Which Can't Be Earned

A Terminal Case

Now Naaman was commander of the army of the king of Aram. He was a great man in the sight of his master and highly regarded, because through him the Lord had given victory to Aram. He was a valiant soldier, but he had leprosy. 

Now bands of raiders from Aram had gone out and had taken captive a young girl from Israel, and she served Naaman’s wife. She said to her mistress, “If only my master would see the prophet who is in Samaria! He would cure him of his leprosy.”

Naaman went to his master and told him what the girl from Israel had said. “By all means, go,” the king of Aram replied. “I will send a letter to the king of Israel.” So Naaman left, taking with him ten talents of silver, six thousand shekels of gold and ten sets of clothing. The letter that he took to the king of Israel read: “With this letter I am sending my servant Naaman to you so that you may cure him of his leprosy.”

As soon as the king of Israel read the letter, he tore his robes and said, “Am I God? Can I kill and bring back to life? Why does this fellow send someone to me to be cured of his leprosy? See how he is trying to pick a quarrel with me!”

When Elisha the man of God heard that the king of Israel had torn his robes, he sent him this message: “Why have you torn your robes? Have the man come to me and he will know that there is a prophet in Israel.” So Naaman went with his horses and chariots and stopped at the door of Elisha’s house. Elisha sent a messenger to say to him, “Go, wash yourself seven times in the Jordan, and your flesh will be restored and you will be cleansed.”

But Naaman went away angry and said, “I thought that he would surely come out to me and stand and call on the name of the Lord his God, wave his hand over the spot and cure me of my leprosy. Are not Abana and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? Couldn’t I wash in them and be cleansed?” So he turned and went off in a rage.

Naaman’s servants went to him and said, “My father, if the prophet had told you to do some great thing, would you not have done it? How much more, then, when he tells you, ‘Wash and be cleansed’!” So he went down and dipped himself in the Jordan seven times, as the man of God had told him, and his flesh was restored and became clean like that of a young boy.

Then Naaman and all his attendants went back to the man of God. He stood before him and said, “Now I know that there is no God in all the world except in Israel. So please accept a gift from your servant.”

The prophet answered, “As surely as the Lord lives, whom I serve, I will not accept a thing.” And even though Naaman urged him, he refused.

“If you will not,” said Naaman, “please let me, your servant, be given as much earth as a pair of mules can carry, for your servant will never again make burnt offerings and sacrifices to any other god but the Lord. But may the Lord forgive your servant for this one thing: When my master enters the temple of Rimmon to bow down and he is leaning on my arm and I have to bow there also—when I bow down in the temple of Rimmon, may the Lord forgive your servant for this.”

“Go in peace,” Elisha said.

— Bible, 2 Kings, 5:1-19

Naaman had a problem.

A chronic bacterial infection, leprosy starts slow enough but then gradually (very gradually), tears you apart.  How gradually?  Well, the first appearance of blotches or ulcers on the skin may lag behind your exposure to the disease by as much as twenty years. So, you know… pretty gradually.  Once it gets going though, leprosy tends to snowball. 

Most things do. 

As Hemmingway famously said when asked how he went bankrupt, “Slowly,” he responded.  “And then, suddenly.”  Wealth begets wealth and poverty, poverty.  Success breeds more success and failure leads to more failure.  Plato tells us that people only choose bad things because the fruit of their actions is far away (in time) and thus (as something which is physically far away does), appears small.  It is only when we get up close to it, when The Bill for our choices starts coming due, that we notice with sudden apprehension that the Consequences are actually quite large and that perhaps we’ve bitten off a bit more than we can chew.  You can get on for years and years drinking and smoking and burning your skin in the tanning bed and never feel any worse for the wear because of it.  But slowly, slowly, all that damage is building up.  And one day you’ll find a lump, or develop a cough, or look in the mirror and notice that you’re a little jaundiced.  Then before you know it you’ll find yourself in the doctor’s office and he’s standing before you with a clipboard and a frown.

Things snowball.

It’s a law of the universe.

Momentum is everything and, whatever path you’re on, if you’re not careful, you’ll find yourself travelling down it faster and faster until one day you can’t change course.

That was Naaman.

A man staring down the barrel of an unalterable course.

Judging from the text he was still in the “early” stages of the disease.  He was for example still working.  A man-at-arms.  A warrior.  However bad his leprosy had gotten, we can reasonably assume that he had not yet reached the stage of paralysis, or of the crippling of the hands and feet.  His nose had yet to fall off and he was almost certainly not yet blind.  Probably at this point he just has a localized rash on his body.  Maybe a couple of lesions.  A touch of muscle weakness perhaps, or some tingling in the extremities now and again… that was all.

It was going to get worse though.  And everybody knew it.

Today, leprosy is a nothing-burger.  It’s still around but people in the U.S. get it almost exclusively from contact with armadillos, so, unless you’re snuggling those little armored possums on the regular, the likelihood of your contracting the disease is quite small.  And then, even if you do get it, thanks to modern medicine you can be reliably cured via a course of antibiotics.  Glory be.  Back in Naaman’s time though, around 800 B.C… things were different.  No cure.  You just had to live with it.

…

And I do mean live with it.

Have you ever seen these creatures frolic? They frolic. It’s quite unnerving.

Contrary to what most people think, Leprosy seldom kills you.  It can shorten your life expectancy, yes, but that’s mainly due to all the physical and psychological complications arising from its symptoms.  Mycobacterium Leprae, the bacteria that causes leprosy, does not itself kill its victims.  It merely deforms, paralyses, blinds, and disfigures them.  Gradually.  Over the course of their whole lives.

Almost be better if it killed you.

No?

On top of all that of course there’s the social element.  The fact that leprosy de facto made you a pariah.  Understandably, nobody wanted to catch such a thing and so those who had the disease were, in almost every culture, outcasts.  They had to live in secluded communities with other lepers, couldn’t hold normal jobs and, humiliatingly, often had to announce their presence in the streets by shouting “Unclean!  Unclean!” wherever they went, so others knew to give them a wide berth.  Coming into skin-to-skin contact with a leper, or even handling their clothes, risked spreading the infection, and the only way Naaman was able to live a semi-normal life despite his condition was because he was part of the aristocracy.  A personal friend and servant of the king.  How long that would last though was anyone’s guess.  The King may have loved Naaman, but… he’d probably already stopped wanting to touch him.  Handshakes, friendly slaps on the back, all that sort of thing that military men do with one another to express comradery had probably stopped and, despite everyone’s best efforts, Naaman was probably already feeling the slow vice of social isolation tightening a little more each day.

Leprosy was serious.

And absolutely nobody knew how to make it better.

A sense of hopelessness surrounded the disease and so it is little wonder therefore that when an Israelite servant girl in his household started spouting off about a wonder worker back in her homeland, Naaman and his wife took notice.  The fact that it was almost certainly nonsense didn’t much matter.  The ancient world was full of charlatans, as indeed the world still is, and people promising this or that miraculous result or cure are never in short supply.  Strong odds that the girl was just spewing peasant drivel.  The uneducated folklore of rubes and country bumpkins who’d fallen in with some shyster of a holy man taking them for a ride.

Still though…

It was worth a chance.

The hopeless are easily fleeced.  A broken man is often willing to be cheated out of his last dollar on the slim chance that a gamble might pay off.  Naaman you see was desperate, and that desperation gave him space enough to believe.

What the king thought we can only imagine.  “By all means, go,” he said when Naaman asked permission to leave.  Did he think it would work?  Did he believe Naaman was being foolish?  How much stock did the king really put in the rumors of a house slave?  Maybe he was just humoring his friend.  Perhaps he simply didn’t have the heart to tell Naaman no.

Who can say?

Mycobacterium Leprae.

Well… the feelings of The King of Aram on the matter aren’t spelled out for us, but the feelings of The King of Israel are.  He didn’t believe such a miracle was possible.  So much so in fact that he took it as a given that The King of Aram didn’t either.  Israel’s King thought it was a ruse, a trick.  A diversion sent by an enemy to stir up quarrel in the hopes of creating a casus belli for war.  “Look!”  The King said.  “He’s sending me this impossible case and asking me to play God and cure him!  Then, when I can’t, he’ll accuse me of withholding medicine from a dying man and say I deserve death for it!”

That’s what Israel’s King was thinking.

And, who knows?  Maybe he was right.  If the king suspected Aram’s intentions might’ve been less than genuine, he probably had a reason.  Perhaps The King of Aram was trying to kill two birds with one stone.  Offering hope and understanding to his friend, and, at the same time, come up with something for his army to do that summer.  Not impossible.  People are cunning.  Rulers of state, particularly so.

Either way, whatever the feelings of Kings the wonder worker in question himself, Elisha, did not doubt his own abilities.  Or, rather, he did not doubt God’s.  “Don’t worry,” he told the king.  “Send Naaman to me.  I will heal him.”

The King did so, and a metaphysical interchange between Naaman and The Prophet ensued.

Everything is everything. 

The Cure We Don’t Want

The fractal nature of the universe means there is no physical event which does not have a spiritual analog.  Bodies in motion have momentum and so do the courses of our lives.  Objects touching one another create friction, and so do social interactions.  Force is mass times acceleration… but it can also exist in Speech.  Weight is something we all understand, and both barbells and feelings can be heavy.

Leprosy was bad.  Really bad.  So bad in fact that it came to be seen not merely as a disease but as a metaphor, a physical analog if you will, for Evil.  The slow rot.  The decay.  The making of men and women numb and blind and ugly…  Was that not what Sin did?  Was leprosy not the perfect visible analog for sin’s invisible effects on the spirit?

Well.  They thought so.

The first great sinner, Cain, the murderer, he was given a mark by God and in a similar way so too had lepers been marked.  And both marks, the spiritual and the physical… were considered more or less incurable.  The concept of forgiveness for sin existed back then, yes, but, in one so far gone, in a man with spiritual leprosy… most would’ve considered that a lost cause.  The Gospel had not yet come and, although Elisha certainly intuited it, most of the ancient world agreed with Solomon who said that what is crooked cannot be made straight.  Bent people… crooked people… marked people… they were damned.  Sons of perdition as hopeless as a leper.

Most people still feel that way.

After two-thousand years, most of Mankind has yet to internalize Grace.

And Naaman… well… maybe when he came to Elisha Naaman also kinda felt that way.  Felt that he was hopeless.  Marked.  Damned.  See, what he wanted from Elisha was a big show.  A spectacle.  His condition, after all, was serious, and it needed a serious response.  Something with oomph.  Something with vigor.  If Elisha was legit then Naaman wanted him to come out full of pomp and circumstance, hooting and hollering to God and waving his hands over him like a modern-day televangelist.

Naaman wanted an outpouring of power.  Something which could undo what was otherwise so obviously permanent.

Instead of that.  Elisha mostly ignored him.  Didn’t even come out to greet him himself but rather sent a messenger.

“Go, wash seven times in the Jordan river,” the messenger told Naaman.

That was it.

And it was stupid.

What was that gonna do?  Absolutely nothing.  Pomp.  Circumstance.  Ritual and Show?  That maybe Naaman could have put his faith in.  But this?  Dipping himself in a river and, by the way, not even a particularly nice or clean one… that was supposed to make his illness go away?  Bullshit.  It was unbelievable in its simplicity and Naaman was angry.  Furious.  He’d traveled all this way, gotten his hopes up, dared to think that maybe… just maybe… he could be healed…

And this dude tells him to go roll around in the water?

Well, screw him.

The Jordan River. Naaman was right. Not overly impressive.

“Master…”  Naaman’s servants approached him gently and carefully.  “Consider though.  If the prophet had asked you to go do some great thing, some momentous task of hardship or asceticism or bravery… wouldn’t you have done it?  Why then will you not try something easy?”

Good point.

And perhaps Naaman hated a little just how good of a point it was.

We certainly do.

If leprosy is a metaphor for sin then its cure is likewise.  Like Naaman, we want it to be hard.  For whatever reason, we want our forgiveness to be difficult.  We want to earn it.  We want it to require a great show and ask of us some momentous task.  “Don’t you dare give me anything God!  I’m not looking for any handouts.  I won’t be made a debtor to Heaven!”

Well…

Supply and demand.  The world is in no short supply of priests and preachers and gurus selling you just such a thing.  Telling you that you have to renounce sin harder and mortify the flesh more.  Reprimanding you for not trying hard enough and exhorting you to be holier than you were yesterday.  “Be more perfect!” they shout at you.  “Be more righteous!  It’s your fault if you’re still sinning.  You must be better.  Better so that you can make your salvation sure.”

The world is full of people offering you ways to “earn it”.

And, every one of them, an absolute den of hypocrisy.

Because you can’t earn it.  You can’t be better.  If you could, you would have already done so.

“Just don’t give in to Lust anymore!”  “Just stop eating so much!”  “Why don’t you just quit drinking!?”  “Why won’t you just stop being gay!?”  “Stop being depressed!”  “Stop being anxious!”  “Just turn your jealousy off already!!”  “Why can’t you just stop being a bitch!?”

On and on.  On and on.

Doesn’t work.

We attempt oh so many acts of heroism and fail each and every time.  Because can what is crooked be made straight?  Can the leopard change its spots?

You can’t earn it.  You can’t make yourself better.  You can’t heal yourself or change who you fundamentally are.  The only possible hope for change is to thrust yourself into the arms of a Better.  To trust in a higher power.  To have faith.  If you will be healed it will only ever be by Grace.  A mysterious, completely unearned condescension of something from above.

And you know, even after Naaman was healed he wanted to buy it.  Still… even then, his ego would not accept that there was nothing he could offer in exchange.  “Take this gift Elisha.  Please.”  And God only knows how lavish a gift a man like Naaman was offering to bestow.

But Elisha couldn’t take it.  Grace hasn’t ever been for sale.  There is nothing in our pockets or our bank accounts that God cares about in exchange.  Aren’t we silly?  To think we have anything to give to God apart from Love?

But, you may ask… what of that which God doesn’t heal?  What of those marks and stains and sins which he leaves on us?  Those which we ask him to cure but he will not?  What of the man who has converted, as Naaman did, who has tried to give himself to God and yet still finds that he falls daily to his lusts or the woman who cannot stop herself from burning inside with jealousy at a rival?  What of the person who finds that though they love God they still struggle with their sexuality, or their gluttony, or their greed or pride?  What are we to do when we wish that God alone was our master, but yet find so many other forces still over us, cracking the whip, compelling us to do what we’d rather not?

…

Well.  In ancient times there was no sin worse than idolatry.  Kingdoms fell because of it.  Households destroyed.  Life and wealth obliterated over the issue.  Indeed, in The Old Testament, how much idolatry a king tolerated is sometimes treated as the sole criteria for determining whether that ruler was good or bad.

Rimmon. Thunder god of Syria.

And yet…  here’s Naaman.  Newly converted.  Newly clean.  Newly forgiven… Making an incredible ask.  Renewed spiritual state aside, he recognizes that he’s still an earthly man with an earthly master, one which will routinely ask him to go and worship a foreign god.

“When I must do this thing,” Naaman asks, “may The Lord pardon me.”

“Yes,” Elisha responds.  “Go in peace.”

This side of Heaven God seldom makes us perfect, for how insufferable and prideful should we become if we were, and then the last state of our souls would be worse than the first.  Three times Saint Paul asked that a sin of his would be taken away from him, and three times God responded by saying, “No.  My grace is sufficient.”  In the same way, in the body we will always suffer temptation, and, though God has cleaned us, when still Lust or Pride or Gluttony or Greed drag us, as Naaman’s master did, to do and worship what we would not…

Know you’re already forgiven.

Know, and go in peace.