our america...

One of the new shows on Oprah's network OWN is Lisa Ling's "Our America." I saw her profile the show on Oprah and made sure to set a reminder to record.

The first episode "Faith Healers" left me thinking. I appreciate Ling's style and felt like she was honest and real in her presentation of the subject even if I don't always agree. The story documents MorningStar Ministries in Fort Hill, S.C. while Ling covers a "healing signs and wonders conference." She introduces people looking for healing and those hoping to do the healing including Todd Bentley... a Christian evangelist with a pretty public fall from grace after announcing his separation from his wife before taking a break and trying to rebuild his reputation through MorningStar.

One of the people attending the conference is Steve. After a car crash at 18, Steve was left with brain injury and a speech impediment. Then 15 years ago he fell off a roof and was paralyzed in his lower body. He believes God told him to go to the conference and he would be healed. Steve is convinced he'll be healed during the last session of the conference. Debbie and Sherri have brought their mom Carol who is suffering with cancer and they believe she will be healed.

During the conference Ling watches as people are laid out and what they hope is healed. During the last scene, we see Bentley lay hands on Steve during the last session and Ling shares her thoughts through tears...

"I don't even want to be near him because this is the moment he has been waiting for, for 15 years. I am just praying really really hard right now. For three days I wondered what would happen if the promised miracles didn't apear. What would happen to Carol and Debbie and Sherri? What would happen to the thousands of others who had come here seeking healing? What would happen to Steve who knew beyond doubt that tonight was his night."

Steve's response... "Last night, Saturday night, I thought that was my night. But evidently it wasn't."

Ling commented, "Steve sitting in that wheelchair, who could have been really devastated by the fact that he didn't walk on the night that he thought he was going to walk. But then he transferred that energy to me immediately. That was amazing. As Steve laid his hands on me, I began to understand something for the first time. Maybe I was the one that was expecting too much."

That moment touched me too. Here he was realizing his dream of being healed wasn't coming true. This incredible hope and faith he placed in this experience had just "failed" and he was hoping to still bless someone else. To me... that is true faith.

Ling asks Bentley, "What are you hoping that we take away from this experience? people who are watching this?"

"I hope they take away an openness," he said. "Religion doesn't have all the answers just sometimes like medicine doesn't have all the answers. I'd hope people would walk away with faith and an openness that to say, 'hey if you're real God come and meet me in my circumstance and help me in my life.' The bible says hope deferred makes the heart sick. When people don't have hope they get sick. They get discouraged. People need to know no matter how dark and how much they've fallen you can always start over again. You can always get up again. You can always move forward."

Ling tried to wrap up her experience, "The conclusions here were for me were not easy ones.  Todd's road to a comeback still seemed built on a tenuous promise of miracles, no matter how sincere. Carol, whom I never did get to see again, went back to Georgia. When we last spoke Debbie and Sherri told me her cancer steadily been getting worse. But I did learn something unexpected here. Lives could be genuinely changed. Hope could transform and faith could empower."

A girl spoke and said, "A year ago to this day, I almost died. Like I was getting abused, beaten that's when it hit me. That's when I realized Greater is God who is in me than the person that was trying to kill me and it healed me."

"Maybe faith was its own reward," Ling said.

Steve wrapped up his experience, "I'd like to be healed, yeah, but if I don't, this is just a brief period, a blink compared to eternity. You know, we'll all be given new glorified bodies in heaven."

"I came into this with a very preconceived idea of what it was going to be and that there was going to be a lot of manipulation and false hope and I'm leaving here thinking that I don't think there's such thing as false hope," Ling said.

I'm not sure she convinced me there isn't false hope. Steve demonstrated his hope was just placed in something bigger than just being healed. So yes, hope in a healer that didn't heal would be false... but Steve is saying he has hope in a God that even if he doesn't heal him here on earth, he believes he'll be healed in heaven.

I'm grateful for Ling's experience and I'm hopeful for a faith like Steve's.

Watch the Full Episode