The Physician Christ

How can our theology become more healing, inclusive, and transformative for the individual and society?

Written by healthcare practitioner Jeff Goddard, The Physician Christ addresses the need to do away with the courtroom model of our relationship with the divine in favor of a more healing model.

Readers who enjoyed Steve Young's The Law of Love, Adam Miller's Original Grace, and Fiona and Terryl Givens’ work will find this a meaningful contribution to an important theological conversation.

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Scripture and early Christian writings frequently employ metaphors of illness and healing to refer to sin and Christ’s salvific work. Jeff Goddard, as himself a practitioner of healing, writes a gem of a book that explores the doctrinal and practical dimensions of the healer’s art.
—Terryl Givens, co-author of The Christ Who Heals

“Jeff Goddard takes the ultimate truths of Christ's gospel and extends them into practice. I really resonate with his ideas of nontransactional relationships with God and each other, and becoming apprentices to Christ in His great healing work, whether or not we deserve Jesus’s healing (we never do). This book contains nuggets of gold.”
—Steve Young, NFL Hall of Fame, author of The Law of Love

As a scientist I frequently think of an oft-aphorism I heard in a long ago inorganic chemistry course: “All models are wrong, but some are useful.” The more I studied the hard sciences of chemistry and physics, the truer this seemed to become.

We as a species have used metaphors and analogies to make better sense of our world since the beginning. The stories we tell each other help us to understand darkness and storms, death and disease, light and love, and yes, even science. These models help us to come to terms with the monsters in the night, or the mysteries beyond our capacity to understand. Perhaps most importantly, they help us to come to terms with
the monsters and mysteries inside ourselves.

Of all of the stories that have captured the human imagination, perhaps none is so pervasive as the story of man’s relationship with the Divine. We have used our own experiences to try to elucidate what Deity might be, and to understand our own place in the universe. For most of our existence as an agrarian society, we’ve understood the changing of the seasons and weather as the capriciousness of nature gods or spirits, and tried to find ways to appease them. The ways we sought to gain their favor were often as absurd as they were arbitrary.

That practice did not stop once we developed monotheism. Our stories around the campfire and our experience in the world created myths around Jehovah and our origins as species. The Israelites were a people surrounded by violence and war, so they saw in their God a Lord of Hosts, the great general who would slay their earthly enemies. Of course, when Israel was subsequently destroyed as a nation, the logical explanation within their worldview was that they had, in their wickedness, become the enemies of Jehovah and he, in his great wrath, razed their sovereign nation to the ground. So completely did they cling to the idea of a Conquering King that when Jesus appeared and laid claim to the title of Messiah even his followers could not fathom that he might not overcome their political enemies.

All of this is to say that the narrative we tell ourselves about our relationship with heaven is heavily influenced by our earthly experience. Christianity is no exception. How else could a society explain the seemingly arbitrary deaths and recoveries during times of plague if not the will of God? Disease was then the loss of Divine favor for some sin. How easily we forget the poem of Job.

In Christianity, perhaps one of the most pervasive metaphors used to explain our relationship with God is judicial. Most modern Christians will be familiar with the setting: We are the defendant, and Satan is our prosecutor. The Father judges us, and Christ, if we have accepted him as our personal Savior, stands as our advocate, defending us against the accusations of the adversary. This metaphor has its place, and has certainly helped shape the collective understanding of the Atonement for generations of Christians. But if permitted, I might offer a different approach. I am in no way denigrating the analogy when I say that it is not my experience. I am not a lawyer or judge, nor do I understand the legal sphere beyond what I’ve seen in film or read in books. So, in the search to better understand my relationship with Christ, I find the courtroom metaphor falls a little flat.

I do, however, have personal experience in medicine. I have worked for years in that field, and have interacted with patients and various members of the care team. I have been the patient from time to time, and a family member of the sick and dying trying to navigate the medical culture. So, in order to make better sense of the Atonement and frame my relationship with the Divine, I will set aside the common courtroom and picture instead the bedside of the patient. Thus the Justifier and legal Savior becomes for our purposes the Healer. Christ the Advocate in the form of a criminal
defense lawyer then becomes Christ the Physician.

I recognize this metaphor, too, has its limitations, as all do. If all models are indeed wrong, I pray this one is at least useful. But, as with any tree, the best way for you to know if it is good is to see if it bears good fruit in your life, as it has in mine. The purpose of this book is to lay out the foundations of the metaphor of The Physician Christ.

Although I recognize the value of the Restored Gospel, and therefore the theology of modern prophets and revelation, and affirm the Book of Mormon as the word of God, I do not intend this book to be solely for members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I believe we are all trying to better understand ourselves and our relationship to the Divine, and so it is my sincere hope that this book will be of use to those who do not belong to my church, or perhaps any church. After all, we are all truth seekers in our own right, and if this book contains any truth at all, it is truth that belongs to everyone. Take it, and make it your own. I believe that is what Christ would want.

Ultimately, I see myself as a healer, imperfectly attempting to follow Christ in that endeavor. Almost all medical schools have a ceremony early in their course during which students are ritually adorned in their white coats to symbolize their acceptance into the society of doctors. During these ceremonies, students will often be prompted to repeat a version of the Hippocratic Oath, a variation of the same pledge made by countless healers over the course of several thousand years. The version that my class recites includes the oath, “That into whatsoever house I shall enter, it shall be for the good of the sick to the utmost of my power.” To me, this line is a sacred promise, and this book is an effort to fulfill it. Many books are written to afflict the comfortable, and this volume might do that for you, but its primary and ultimate end is to comfort the afflicted, for the good of the sick. As we shall see, this might well include all of us in mortality.

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