Freedom or autonomy?
This has been something that people have struggled with for millennia.
Back in the sixties and seventies the big Freedom Movement was about that they wanted to be totally free or Born Free or Wild and Free or whatever.
It was the same thing, they didn't want freedom. Freedom is what our Founding Forefathers wanted and sought for and lay their lives on the line for.
What they wanted in the sixties and seventies in the cultural revolution as is it called, was autonomy. They wanted to be totally free of any authority, especially God's Authority and His Word which as any Christian knows, there's no such thing as total freedom without having a loving relationship with Christ and serving him daily! C.S. Lewis has an excellent quote on this "I willingly believe that the damned are, in one sense, successful, rebels to the end; that the doors of Hell are locked on the inside. I do not mean that the ghosts may not wish to come out of hell, in the vague fashion wherein an envious man "wishes" to be happy: but they certainly do not will even the first preliminary stages of that self-abandonment through which alone the soul can reach any good. They enjoy forever the horrible freedom they have demanded, and are therefore self-enslaved: just as the blessed, forever submitting to obedience, become through all eternity more and more free."
C. S. Lewis The problem of Pain.
He can say it so much better that I can but the fact of the matter is human nature is always been the same. It was what brought down Satan and those who followed him and his rebellion in Heaven. He did not want to be under the authority of God, he wanted to be God himself ! As it clearly says in Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28. Like the Rich Young Ruler who asked Christ what he must do to be saved, and then once was told, walked away from it. All of these prized something more than serving God and let Him be God in their lives.
Faith healers do the same thing. They know God, but God is not sovereign to them. They did not fear Him and prized what this world can provide more than a loving relationship with Him. Even though they know someday that they will stand for God and be held accountable for every word they speak! They, just like the demons and Satan who rebelled against God in Heaven, prize something more than their reverence and sovereignty of God.
It is one of the hardest things in the world for me to understand that people actually do this, or actually and knowingly do this. I guess that is the best way to say it, but it's just mind-blowing to me. This shows the depravity of man's heart as it says in Jeremiah 29:7 "The heart is desperately wicked and totally evil who can know it?" Indeed that is true. I will close with a quote from Ezekiel 18 why would you die man turn and live
