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Archetypes To Live By Series
The Archetypes of Healer and Magician
“Your Sins are Forgiven You”
The other day, as I was sitting in church, the pastor used the scripture about Jesus healing the paralytic. In Matthew 9:5, the friends of this man had lowered him into a home in which Jesus was being entertained. The friends wanted nothing else than for their friend to be healed.
As I listened to his sermon, I wondered about something. Was Jesus stating that he had forgiven the man’s sins? Or was he stating the words as fact, “Your sins are forgiven”? Yes, Jesus claimed he was the Son of Man. He also talked about being one with God. But, in this instance, could he have just been telling the man that he was “getting in his own way”, as we often are?
We don’t know the story of this man. Was he injured, then paralyzed? Was he a poor man who had suffered a disease that had left him unable to move? Was he born that way? And why, if he was?
Sometimes I see Jesus as a powerful magician. And yet, he was a healer. Are they so different? Yes…and no.
The magician knows how to make people believe what he is doing is real. That is, in reality, what he has to do, if he is to succeed. The healer does as well. This goes for the silly magic tricks we learned when we were…
