When Healing Becomes Educating, Vol. 2 - Waldorf Research Institute

it needs to be balanced out in some way in a later life on earth. There is
also wrongdoing that is on the humanity level and connects us with God
himself. Because evil was permitted to be part of our evolution from the
very beginning, it is also God’s “fault” to have made that original decision.
It is because of this that we read those direct dialogues between God and the
devil in the Old Testament and between Christ and the spirit of sickness in
the New Testament.
This shows the significance which this third way of falling ill can hold
for the individual and for those who share in the experience. This form
of illness really touches on the ultimate questions and therefore on the
very core of our individual nature, the spiritual entity in us we refer to
as the “I”. This I is bound up with the destiny event in three ways. It is
the cause of our personal destiny and therefore the source spring of our
individual development. For destiny and development are shaped according
to the deeds of this I during lives on earth. At the same time the I is part
of common destiny. Looking back on one’s life one will find that one owes
everything one has so far learned to the people who have shared this life.
Our development is thus the outcome of all the human encounters we have
had; and new people are continually coming into our lives who help us to
become aware of short comings and make up for them, at least in part. Seen
like this, we are in the debt of the people who have enabled us to gain all the
abilities we now call our own. In a third dimension, the human being and
his destiny are also part of the whole destiny of the age, part of the evolution
of humanity as a whole, and once again we are indebted. It is this last aspect
which makes the concept of illness a Christian one.
The question is not: What do I or those around me gain from the
illness? It is: What can I do for humanity by sharing in its suffering with my
illness and its overcoming? The Christ went through suffering on behalf of
others, for there was no fault in him. This third category of illness is often
seen in cancer and AIDS patients. These are people who have a definite
feeling that they are not—or at least not only—suffering for their own sake;
they are aware that they are balancing something out for humanity as a
whole by taking on suffering for the sake of others. They serve humanity
by taking this path. “Blamelessly” they share in carrying the burden of sin
humanity had to take on itself because evil, with all its temptations and
challenges, is part of human history.
If one suffers an illness or impediment or is close to someone who does
and is asked for help, one might ask the three questions I have outlined
above. Put briefly, they are as follows: What gain may there be for the
individual concerned, or what may he learn from this? What may the people
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