Today the CD of Hillsongs latest release (although a few months old now) arrived in the post. I only ordered it yesterday so was impressed. The thing this this CD is that I’d been debating for a while whether to get it because of it having the song ‘Healer’ on by Mike Guglielmucci.

For those that don’t know this song was (from what I gather) quite the anthem of Soul Survivor…written by a man diagnosed with terminal cancer…a song given to him by God 2 years ago. However in early september it emerged that this was a complete lie and that Mike had fooled his family, his church and the world…he’d even appeared on stage wearing tubes to give the idea that he was ill.

The difficulty is how do we respond to such a problem? The song Healer is actually very powerful, yet introduced to us through a very strange series of events. Soul Survivor have removed it from their live album and it appears to be being taken off newer prints of ‘This is our God’ but should we do this?

My initial reaction was yes however reading into the story a bit deeper and in particular the statement issued by Mike’s Father (link) which stated the following made me think a bit differently

Michael wrote the song Healer because he wanted God to set him free from his addiction but hid it behind the lie of a fabricated illness. 

So does it matter if a song was introduced by lies? I don’t think it does, the song is powerful and although not about cancer as mentioned and promoted it is about wanting God to heal us and we all have things we need God to set us free from whether it is a physical illness or any other kind of problem we need healing from, God doesn’t just heal the physical but has the ability to heal addictions, broken pasts and so much more.

I think Christians struggling with the lies of Mike Guglielmucci don’t need to throw away their CD’s with him on, tear up their music for the song and repent to God for ever singing it but in plain terms they need to get over it. When we sing a song it’s about where our hearts are at, it’s about meaning those words to God, it’s about laying ourselves on a metaphorical alter in front of God and pouring our souls out to Him. And can we do that with this song? Yes but if we need to then we must forgive Mike, pray for him in getting help and ask God to help us focus the song onto His mighty self and not the author.