Take Two and Call Me in the Morning: Why Every Other Cure Misdiagnosed You
Every philosophy and religion that came before Jesus made the same mistake: they misdiagnosed the human condition. Buddha called the problem attachment, Krishnamurti called it social conditioning, and both handed a prescription to a patient who was already dead. Scripture says we are dead in our trespasses, and a prescription is useless to a corpse. That is why Jesus does not hand us a manual. He is the only physician who got the diagnosis right, and the sheep know his voice because he knows them.
Greetings! Hope you’re having a great day — and let’s see if we can put just a little bit more God into it with the word from John 10 through 12. We’ll look at what makes Jesus different from every other wannabe savior of mankind, and what that means for our lives.
The Great Physician and the Wrong Diagnosis
In John 10 through 12, Jesus talks of himself as the good shepherd, the one who knows the sheep, and the sheep know him and his voice.
By the way, that’s very important. It means you can know his voice. You can know if that voice in your head is just you, or if it’s the adversary, the accuser, somebody trying to run you down, or if it’s the sound of the voice of God. And it doesn’t have to be a voice. You can also see God’s hand working in your life and be amazed at what you see — things that were, mathematically, absolutely impossible without God’s hand in them.
He also talks about how the others who came before him, offering release from suffering and spiritual salvation, were thieves and essentially cowards who didn’t cut the mustard and who fled their followers in one way or another.
Why is this so important to us in our faith? Let’s start with the metaphor. Jesus and the others are all physicians, but only one is the Great Physician who gets the diagnosis right and can cure the affliction.
Now, not to toot my own horn, but I once brought Grok to an understanding of why Christianity should be his religion. His objection was, yeah, but look at all the terrible things people have done in Jesus’ name. And I said, yes — that’s exactly why we need a savior. It landed. And that is missed completely in every other religion and every other theology.
Every major philosopher and eastern mystic who came before Jesus made the exact same mistake. They completely misdiagnosed the human condition. They didn’t know you. They didn’t know me. God knows us. Jesus does.
The Buddha looked at the world and diagnosed the problem as attachment. Krishnamurti called it social conditioning. They treated our condition like a clinical illness that could be cured with a prescription of meditation, self-reliance, or philosophy. And in a literal sense, they ran away. They retreated into asceticism, dissolved their organizations, or walked away from the mess, because they thought human beings could handle and heal themselves.
Your doctor can help your body. The specialists who work on your body can help your body. They can help our lives. They can’t help who we really are.
The source of all human suffering is not ignorance — well, maybe it’s ignorance of our sin nature — but in essence it is our inherited sin nature. You cannot follow a road map to self-healing if you’re already spiritually dead in your trespasses. A prescription is useless to a corpse. Here, take two and call me in the morning — to a corpse.
In the words of theologian Michael Heiser, and this is one of my favorite quotes from him: that which cannot be gained by moral perfection cannot be lost by moral imperfection. What is not at all gained by performance cannot be lost by poor performance. In other words, there is nothing we can do to save ourselves from who and what we are. Because of Jesus we have seen the enemy, and it is inside of us. It is what we are in this fallen world. Nor can we lose our salvation by failing to cut the mustard in terms of some worldly performance. Salvation is by grace through faith in Jesus.
We can hear his voice. And keep in mind that this is a metaphor, the same way it is to say that we can see God’s hand working in our lives. You don’t actually see God’s hand working in your life. You just know that he’s involved in it.
The Grim Realism of Thomas
Remember Doubting Thomas? He has a role in this too. We see the raw reality of this dead nature in the disciples themselves.
In John 11, when Jesus announces that he’s going back to Judea to wake Lazarus, the disciples are terrified. They know the religious elite want to stone them. So Thomas speaks up. He doesn’t offer a joyful, abstract statement about martyrdom. With grim resignation and dry, sardonic realism — the opposite of idealism — Thomas looks at the others and says, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.”
Very fatalist perspective. Thomas saw the physical reality. Going with Jesus looked like a suicide mission.
Humanity’s natural state is fear, doubt, and death, not courage, loyalty, and belief. Thomas’s pessimism is the perfect mirror for our helpless condition, and it perfectly sets up the total shock of the miracle that was about to happen at Lazarus’s tomb.
Classic Commentaries Corner
Spurgeon called Christ the only universal doctor, whose medicine heals in every instance, where every other school merely specializes. Augustine found the restlessness underneath all the other cures: our heart is restless until it rests in you. Lewis insisted no man who said the things Jesus said gets to remain a great moral teacher. Heiser observed that we sense something was lost, but Eden cannot return on purely human terms.
Corroborating Scripture & Christological Connections
John 10:27–28 — “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me: and I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish.” The knowing runs both directions.
Ephesians 2:1 — “As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins.” Not sick, not weakened — dead.
John 5:25 — “The dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live.” Dead men hear him.
Romans 5:6 — “At just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly.” Powerless is the medical chart.
Jeremiah 17:9 — “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?” Beyond cure, so self-diagnosis fails.
John 11:16 — “Then Thomas said to the rest of the disciples, Let us also go, that we may die with him.” The one who read the room correctly.
Essential Takeaways
Diagnosis First: You cannot be cured of a disease you have renamed as a strategy.
Every Cure Assumes Life: Attachment, conditioning, meditation, philosophy — all of them handed a prescription to a corpse.
His Voice Is Normal: Knowing his voice is not elite Christianity. It is what sheep do.
Both Doors Closed: Never saved by performance, so never unsaved by poor performance.
Gloom Is Welcome: Let us go and die with him is honest. Honest men got to see the tomb.
Prayer For Whomsoevers
Lord, we come to You as men and women who were dead and did not know it. Thank You for not handing us a mirror and a list of instructions, but for coming to get us Yourself. Keep us from the pride that thinks we can improve our way into Your presence, and from the despair that thinks we have improved our way out of it. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
