Leprosy--and members cutting each other off

The analogy between classical leprosy (Hansen's Disease) and the effect of unresolved bitterness between members of the Body of Christ. Both cause members of the body to lose sensation and be vulnerable to infection and death. "Cutting off" members only accelerates this.

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Leprosy is the paradigm for ritual uncleanness throughout the Old Testament. It is analogous to the effect of unreconciled offenses between believers on the Body of Christ, as explained below.

Unclean people could not enter the community but had to live outside it. They were cut off from the entire community by their uncleanness. Leviticus 13:45-46; Numbers 5:1-3. Lepers were required to maintain their own isolation from the community and to loudly announce their own uncleanness whenever they were unavoidably required to be near normal, clean people.

People unclean due to leprosy also could not enter the Tabernacle or Temple–except to show themselves to a priest when they believed their leprosy had been healed. Leviticus 14:1-7. They could not join in communal worship.

The various conditions which could lead to a determination of leprosy are described in Leviticus 13:1-44. They include a number of conditions which are clearly not classic leprosy (Hansen’s Disease). But they also include Hansen’s Disease, which was the most feared among them because of what it did to the body of the sufferer.

What Hansen’s Disease does to the human body is analogous to what unreconciled offenses do to the Body of Christ. This is particularly obvious when the effects of an offense are made open and explicit, as they are when one member of the Body follows the modern popular psychology approach to an offense and cuts the offender off entirely from their life. Recall what was said in the last installment: a person who is “cut off” is treated with complete indifference, as if they no longer existed and never had any right to exist. At the very least, it makes the offended person who cuts off their offender completely insensitive to the needs of that offender, and willing to trample them and their (nonexistent) rights whenever this is convenient to the offended person. But it can also lead to infliction of pain without remorse, because it is impossible to hurt someone who doesn’t exist (at least in the mind of the wounded victim inflicting the pain). In extreme cases, it can lead, and has led, to murder without remorse, for the same reason.

Hansen’s Disease is a mycobacterial infection that slowly destroys the peripheral sensory nerves. mostly in the extremities and face (though also occasionally the optic nerve or sensation in the trunk). This causes the body to gradually lose sensation, first usually from small patches of skin. The body becomes insensitive to the affected areas, which it no longer recognizes as parts of itself. Therefore, it no longer “cares” for these arts as it cares for its other parts. In a sense, the affected parts are “cut off” from the body even while they remain alive and physically attached to it.

Hansen’s disease, through its effect on peripheral nerves, also affects blood circulation to the affected areas. This explains Moses’ instructions in Leviticus’ the examining priest should look for white or raw patches. So, while these areas may remain alive, they are not fully alive in the same way as unaffected body parts, because the disease limits their blood supply. These patches slowly grow in area and proliferate. Because the patient can no longer feel first patches of skin, then whole appendages or limbs, the patient does not know when those areas have been injured or strangulated from blood flow, and opportunistic infections by other organisms set in. These opportunistic infections, or strangulation of blood flow the patient can’t detect anymore, may cause body parts to be lost. They may also cause gangrene, which can be fatal.

Left untreated–and there were no treatments in Bible times–leprosy will usually disfigure, then kill, the sufferer over a period of years, sometimes as many as 20 or 30 years. It was a slow, painful, and humiliating way to die, lived out alone, in isolation from the community and all loved ones.

Thus, leprosy gradually destroys the human body’s ability to “feel” some of its members. In time, this results in impairment, disfigurement and death, Similarly, unresolved offenses gradually destroy the ability of the affected members of the Body of Christ to “feel” other members of the Body–and even to recognize that they are members of the same Body. This, too, gradually leads to impairment, loss of some parts of the Body, and disfigurement of the Body in the sight of the world. The analogy should be obvious!

The results are essentially similar, too. The affected members, which can no longer “feel” or be “felt” by the Body, become vulnerable to strangulation from the life of the Body and opportunistic infection by further bitterness and/or false teaching.

The practice of privately “cutting off” other members only accelerates this.

The only treatment for Hansen’s Disease is antibiotics which kill the causative mycobacterium.

The only treatment for spiritual leprosy is reconciliation, which kills the causative bitterness resulting from the offense. But, in the absence of reconciliation, just as in the case of Hansen’s Disease, those infected must be isolated to slow its spread to other members of the Body. See, Matthew 18:15-17 and Romans 16:17-18, both of which will be discussed in later episodes of this series.

But remember, I am only an old fool, not a medical doctor or a Levitical priest. And I do not speak for any church or other organization. I only tell it as I see it in my pure folly.