Dying to Live

There are some patient stories that I as a physician will never forget. When I was at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, United States, I cared for a woman admitted with acute myeloid leukemia. We all thought she was going to die. She quickly developed respiratory failure and was transferred to intensive care. We tried giving her a partial dose of the chemotherapy that could save her, but she was so frail that it nearly killed her, so we had to stop. Her condition worsened to the point where we told the family there was little hope for recovery. As the family began a prayer vigil, however, she began to improve spontaneously. When we did a repeat bone marrow biopsy, she was inexplicably found to be in complete remission from her leukemia. It was a modern-day miracle!

Through this experience she and her family went on a profound spiritual journey that convinced them that God loves them. She exhibited that perfect peace that comes only from trusting God completely (Isa. 26:3). Unfortunately, two years later her leukemia recurred, and this time it was unstoppable. She was readmitted, and nothing we tried made a difference. When I visited her for the last time to discuss hospice care, she ended up consoling me as she took my hand and said she was ready to die. She was so grateful to God for the two extra years she was given, and looked forward to meeting her Savior. The true beauty of this story is that she learned to love and trust God through both good and bad times, and her faith was not dependent on her circumstances.

I shared this story at a gathering of Adventist medical professionals, and after my talk a woman from the audience found me backstage. She asked whether I had shared the health message with this patient and whether the patient had adopted a plant-based diet. I explained that given the patient’s frailty and unintentional weight loss, I didn’t feel comfortable further restricting her diet and thus didn’t emphasize plant-based eating. The woman shook her head sadly and said, “If only she had gone plant-based, she might have lived.”

This comment took me aback. Knowing that this patient was miraculously healed the first time without any lifestyle change, and considering the profound spiritual journey that brought her closer to God and gave her peace at the end of life, I wondered: Did God really withhold His healing this second time because she didn’t go plant-based? I shared this story at the conference because it illustrated God’s loving providence and His desire for all of us to develop a faith that is not dependent on outcomes. But for this woman, it seemed all she took away from my talk was that the patient died because she didn’t become plant-based.

The Purpose of Health Reform

Our church has been given a rich blessing in the health message, yet it’s easy to lose sight of its true purpose. Ellen White received her comprehensive health vision in 1863. At that time her husband, James, was quite sick, and his condition weighed heavily on her heart. In vision she received counsel to help her address her husband’s health, and she was also shown that “health reform is one branch of the great work which is to fit a people for the coming of the Lord. It is as closely connected with the third angel’s message as the hand is with the body.”[1] Ellen White was made to understand that “the great object of hygienic reform is to secure the highest possible development of mind and soul and body. . . . Obedience to [all the laws of nature—which are the laws of God] . . . will aid us in a preparation for the life to come.”[2] Therefore, the ultimate purpose of the health message is to prepare us for Jesus’ return.

The health message is a means to an end, not the end itself.

How does the health message accomplish this? According to Sister White, “[God] designs that the great subject of health reform shall be agitated, and the public mind deeply stirred to investigate; for it is impossible for men and women, with all their sinful, health-destroying, brain-enervating habits, to discern sacred truth.”[3] Physical health is vital because it impacts our ability to discern spiritual truths that lead to eternal life. The corollary is that poor health makes it more difficult to hear and obey God’s voice. “Anything that lessens physical strength enfeebles the mind and makes it less capable of discriminating between right and wrong. We become less capable of choosing the good and have less strength of will to do that which we know to be right.”[4] That is why we are told that “health should be as sacredly guarded as the character”[5] and that “the body is the only medium through which the mind and the soul are developed for the upbuilding of character.”[6]

Seen in this light, we understand that the health message is a means to an end, not the end itself. From God’s perspective, improving physical health was never primarily about prolonging life, but about enabling people to hear His voice more clearly and to appreciate spiritual truths that ultimately lead to a saving relationship with Jesus. It is part of God’s mission to restore His image in all of us. In all His acts of healing Jesus was focused primarily on the person’s spiritual health, with physical healing serving as an entering wedge to reach the heart (see Luke 5:18-25).

The Health Message Distorted

A distorted version of the health message has become widely accepted—one that makes physical health the ultimate goal. This is essentially the health message without God, a counterfeit health message. Its goal is to be as healthy and happy as possible for as long as possible. Longevity and happiness are idolized because they become the end goal in promoting health and wellness. Instead of acting as a bridge to Christ, health becomes a bridge to nowhere.

I once cared for a breast cancer patient who was very health-conscious and doing everything she could to maximize her health. When I began discussing the benefits of a whole-food, plant-based diet and exercise in fighting cancer, she became very excited. She said, “Dr. Shin, I’m so glad I met you, because we are totally on the same page about this!” Then she revealed that not only was she plant-based, but she was vegan. In fact, she was not just vegan but raw, organic vegan. She also took special supplements made by a holistic biochemist, wore power crystals daily, and received Reiki therapy from a practitioner 2,000 miles away. Although she had no religious background, she was deeply spiritual and believed that we are all connected through our spiritual energies. Yet, despite everything she was doing, she felt something was still missing and was about to travel to India to meet a famous guru who could guide her into more advanced “spiritual truths” and mindfulness meditation. I realized that her view of health and its ultimate purpose differed fundamentally from mine, even though we agreed on many principles.

Currently, it is trendy in our culture to embrace a health message without God, and the world has promoted such aspects as plant-based eating and exercise better than our church has. Rather than trying to compete with the world on this level, we should set ourselves apart by ensuring that our health message always points back to the Source of all life (John 14:6).

When I reflect on my opening story and my backstage conversation with the woman from the audience, I realize that we as Adventists are at risk of distorting the health message as well. As a medical oncologist, I often encounter many passionate individuals in our church who are eager to share various natural remedies, supplements, herbal mixtures, diet plans, or alternative therapies they believe can cure cancer and help the body heal naturally. Some of the things they share have supporting evidence; most do not.

From God’s perspective, improving physical health was never primarily about prolonging life, but about enabling people to hear His voice more clearly and to appreciate spiritual truths that ultimately lead to a saving relationship with Jesus.

What strikes me is that many of these people place their faith in the treatment itself rather than in God’s providence. Like the woman who was convinced that my patient might have survived if she had become plant-based, I meet many church members who claim to have faith in God but are on a quest to find the wholistic regimen that will “truly heal.” Armed with anecdotes and unwavering faith in all things natural, they passionately reach out to everyone they can to educate them on how to heal their diseases. When someone follows their advice and has a poor outcome, the fault is often attributed to the person’s compliance rather than the protocol, and they continue their pursuit undeterred.

I understand this mindset well because it was how I thought when my father was diagnosed with brain cancer in 2008.

Natural, Conventional, Spiritual

For much of my life I believed there were only two ways to heal: God’s way and humanity’s way. God’s way involved natural remedies and gentle, nontoxic lifestyle changes. Humanity’s way involved synthetic drugs and invasive procedures that caused many adverse effects and often did more harm than good. Because of this, when my father was diagnosed with brain cancer I had no doubt about how we would treat him: we would do it “God’s way.” I was so committed to this belief that I didn’t even allow my father to meet with a medical oncologist to hear their recommendations. The fact that I am a medical oncologist today is the greatest irony of all, and it took years for God to teach me that He can heal through both conventional medicine and natural approaches.

At the time, I prayed earnestly for God to heal my father, but I also conducted extensive “research” into various natural remedies, alternative treatments, and naturopathic protocols because I was determined to find a cure. Even as I prayed for healing, reading countless testimonies of people who were “cured” through natural means convinced me that the answer lay in the protocols I was investigating. I knew not to believe everything I read online, but I couldn’t shake the growing conviction that a cure existed for my father and that I just needed to put in the effort to find it.

Despite my best efforts and prayers, my father’s health kept worsening. It was the biggest test of faith in my life to pray so earnestly for something, only to see the opposite happen. My family and I implemented every diet change, juicing protocol, and supplement regimen we could find, and we consulted naturopathic doctors and medical missionaries—all to no avail. Desperate for a breakthrough, we took my father to a lifestyle center (now closed) run by an Adventist physician because we heard their program helped many with cancer. I was very curious about this center’s diet and lifestyle protocols, but when we arrived, I was disappointed to find they didn’t recommend anything we weren’t already doing. I wondered if we had made a mistake by enrolling my father there.

As the program progressed, however, besides caring for his physical needs, the physician also attended to my father’s spiritual needs, discussing his depression and fears. At the end of each visit, the physician would kneel at my father’s bedside, hold his hands, and pray for him and our family. These visits moved us all to tears. The physician also spent several hours each day giving presentations to the group on the true purpose of health reform as revealed in the Bible and the Spirit of Prophecy. He stressed that health was not about living as long as possible, but about discerning God’s voice in our lives more clearly. These talks deeply touched us all, but I could see they were transforming my father.

The ultimate purpose of life is not to try to obtain more time, but instead to use whatever time we have to get to know and love God.

As the physician continued to minister to his physical and spiritual needs, my father experienced a spiritual reawakening and decided to get rebaptized, wanting to rededicate his life to God. Sadly, the day before his rebaptism, he suffered a grand mal seizure, was hospitalized, and passed away in the hospital. Despite the profound sadness in my heart, I couldn’t help feeling grateful, realizing that God had answered my prayers for healing on a much deeper level than I had asked. I was comforted by the joy of knowing I would see my father again someday.

Dying for Eternity

Through my experience with my father’s illness, God taught me several invaluable lessons. First, He showed me that practicing the health message was never meant to guarantee health. If life and health depended solely on diet and lifestyle, my father should have been immortal. He had been a strict vegetarian for most of his adult life and took pride in enjoying a bowl of plain brown rice and raw vegetables. He also exercised regularly and went to bed like clockwork. He never smoked, never drank alcohol, nor did he do drugs. Yet despite all this, he developed brain cancer at age 54. The injustice of it all was not lost on my father when his obese coworker visited him in the hospital and said, “Hey, Kenton, no offense, but I think I’ll stick with my Philly cheesesteaks.”

We live in a fallen world in fallen bodies with DNA that is thousands of years removed from the effects of the tree of life, and even if we followed every health principle perfectly, we could still develop cancer or other serious illnesses through no fault of our own. Many genetic and environmental factors contribute to disease, and we cannot always control or even identify all of them. Many of my devout Adventist patients struggle with guilt when diagnosed with cancer because they wonder what they did wrong. They naturally assume that if they had followed God’s health principles perfectly, they would never have developed cancer. While a healthy lifestyle plays a key role in disease prevention, and poor health often results from poor decisions, it is also true that following health principles cannot guarantee health any more than obeying traffic laws can guarantee an accident-free drive.

Another lesson I learned from my father’s battle with cancer is that God is willing to sacrifice the body to save the person. I assumed from the outset that God wanted to heal my father and that the only thing preventing Him from doing so was my family’s lack of faith. My entire focus was on extending my father’s physical life, but God’s focus was always on his spiritual life. Back then it did not occur to me that if my father were cured of his cancer and lived another 30 years in this world but never developed a saving relationship with Christ, he would have gained nothing. It was only after my father’s death that I realized that losing 30 years of life in this world but gaining Jesus in the end meant gaining eternity and losing nothing.

Unless the Lord returns in our lifetime, no matter how healthy we live and no matter what we do to slow the aging process, we will all eventually die. Therefore, the ultimate purpose of life is not to try to obtain more time, but instead to use whatever time we have to get to know and love God. If we accomplish this, it does not matter how long we live. In his book The Problem of Pain C.S. Lewis states, “God whispers to us in our pleasures . . . but shouts in our pain: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.” God used my father’s illness to rouse him from his spiritual slumber and make him feel his need for Christ. When He gets our attention this way, sometimes, as in the case of the paralytic by the Pool of Bethesda, it leads to life. Other times, as with my father, it results in death. But what we often fail to realize is that, whether in the moment or on resurrection morning, God’s providence always results in healing.

I tell my patients that winning the battle against cancer is not about how long you live, but about how well you live whatever life you have left. This holds true not just for cancer patients but for all of us. God has blessed us with His health message so that we can live our remaining life as fully as possible. He gives us the gift of health and time to help us better hear His voice and fall in love with Him. Let us never forget this as we embrace the health message and seek to relieve physical suffering. No matter the method, I pray that our focus in pursuing health will always be to seek Jesus and to lead others to Him.

[1] Ellen G. White, Testimonies for the Church (Mountain View, Calif.: Pacific Press Pub. Assn., 1948), vol. 3, p. 161.

[2] Ellen G. White, Christian Temperance and Bible Hygiene (Battle Creek, Mich.: Good Health Pub. Co, 1890), p. 120. (Emphasis supplied.)

[3] Ellen G. White, Counsels on Diet and Foods (Washington, D.C.: Review and Herald Pub. Assn., 1938), p.70. (Emphasis supplied.)

[4] Ellen G. White, Christ’s Object Lessons (Washington, D.C. Review and Herald Pub. Assn., 1900, 1941), p. 346.

[5] Ellen G. White, Medical Ministry (Mountain View, Calif.: Pacific Press Pub. Assn., 1932), p. 77.

[6] E. G. White, Counsels on Diet and Foods, p.73. (Emphasis supplied.)