[In John chapter 5] Jesus asks the simplest kind of question -- the kind that can be answered with yes or no. “Do you want to get well?”
The man’s answer is none of the above. “Sir,” the invalid replied, “I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. While I am trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me.” (John 5:7 NIV)
Jesus has just been briefed on this situation, probably while the disabled man sat and listened. So when Jesus looks down and asks if he wants to be well, the man know his motives are being called into question. And he launches into his well-worn excuse.
The book “Happiness Is a Choice” by Frank Minirth and Paul Meier is devoted to overcoming depression. In it, the authors discuss the tendency of Christians to say “I can’t” when they find themselves confronted by obstacles. They write about how they cringe when patients use the words “I can’t” and “I’ve tried,” which the two doctors identify as “lame excuses.” Instead, they insist their patients use the words “I won’t.”
When working with a man who says, “I just can’t get along with my wife,” the two counselors would make him rephrase that as, “I just won’t get along with my wife.” “I can’t control my spending” would become, “I won’t control my spending.” They believe that the sooner people understand the place of their own free will, the sooner they can begin to move toward a cure.
-- Kyle Idleman in “The End of Me: Where Real Life in the Upside-Down Ways of Jesus Begins”
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