Although this blog probably makes it look like I know what I'm talking about when it comes to what the Bible says, I'd like to make it clear I don't understand everything in the Bible. I don't mean little things like who possibly could have found Cain after he killed Abel. I'm talking about some specific things Jesus did.
Why, for instance, did Jesus command some of the people he healed to go tell people about the miracle that he'd performed and then why did he tell some of the others not to? Me personally, I would think God would be glorified every time someone told about Jesus healing them by the power of God. This question matters to me if only because I feel what God has done for me through my disability is my way of telling people about my faith; my disability is also the reason for my faith.
Look at the story of the deaf and mute man in Mark 7. Jesus came to a region known as the Ten Cities (not unlike the region I personally live in, known locally as the Seven Cities). A few people brought a man to Jesus who couldn't hear and who could barely talk. They were convinced if Jesus touched the man, he would hear and talk.
Jesus took the man aside, putting some space between him and the crowd, and he healed him by sticking his fingers in his ears and spitting on his tongue. When I read this part today, I had a dyslexic moment and I thought I was seeing Jesus give the guy a wet-willy, but alas, it was just a miracle.
I think Jesus was getting a little exasperated by this point, you know, having already healed so many people. Maybe these people didn't really care about their friend but they just wanted to see the only deaf guy they knew healed as a parlor trick. It might explain why Jesus sighed.
Tadaa! The man could hear and talk now!
The next verses seem almost counter-intuitive; Jesus commanded them not to tell anyone, but the more he did so, the more they kept talking about it. I had a hard time with this, because here, Jesus just gave a dude the ability to speak, and it felt like he was saying right afterwards, "Oh, by the way, don't tell anyone what I just did for you." It seems like this because the previous paragraph ended while talking about the man who received his hearing and ability to speak, so naturally one assumes the paragraph following that sentence would relate to him.
You have to look back at verse 32 and then at the next verse to realize that the ambiguous pronoun "them" is probably talking about the crowd of people who'd brought the man to Jesus, not necessarily the man. Yes, Jesus is amazing, but because the people were swooning that Jesus was able to work his magic on a deaf guy, well, it sounds an awful lot like Dean Cain from "Ripley's Believe It or Not" was somewhere nearby.
Because it's not immediately apparent what Jesus said to the person he'd helped, it's feasible Jesus hadn't told him to keep quiet. I still don't understand why Jesus tells some miracle recipients not to tell the world what happened, but God helped me see today that in this case, it was the man's friends who were shushed.
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