False Beliefs and True Faith (1) - Healing

Dale Neuman, aged 47, was convicted of second degree murder because he refused to call for a doctor when his 11 year old daughter, Madeleine, became ill and eventually comatosed. This American man and his wife face many years in prison because of their mistake. When the child became very ill, unable to walk, talk, eat or drink, the parents opted to continue praying for their daughter’s recovery instead of taking her to the hospital. She had undiagnosed diabetes. Mr. Neuman, who had once studied to be a Pentecostal minister, said that he believed God would heal his daughter and that he did not expect her to die. He told the court,

“If I go to the doctor, I am not believing what he said he would do. ”

However, the Attorney General told the jurors that Mr. Neuman was “overwhelmed by pride” in his interpretation of the Bible and selfishly let Madeline die as a test of faith. Doctors testified that Madeleine would have had a good chance of survival if she had received medical care. Mr. Neuman’s defence lawyer told the court that Mr. Newman “sincerely believed that praying would heal his daughter. He was administering faith healing. He thought it was working.”

This tragic case is an example of what can go wrong when the Bible’s message is misunderstood.

Investigations of ‘Christian healing’

Louis Rose was a British psychiatrist who investigated cases of faith healing. He corresponded with many patients and healers and sought confirmation from their doctors. In 1971 he wrote a book on faith healing. In this he concluded, “I have been unsuccessful. After nearly 20 years of work I have yet to find one “miracle cure”; and without that (or, alternatively, massive statistics which others must provide ) I cannot be convinced of the efficacy of what is commonly termed faith healing.” i

William Nolen was an American surgeon who also set about investigating claims of spiritual healing. After attending the healing services led by Katherine Kuhlman, the prominent Christian healer in the 1960s and 1970s, he obtained the names of twenty five people who had been “miraculously healed”. Although some were helped symptomatically, he concluded nobody had been cured of organic disease. One woman who had cancer in her spine was told to remove her brace and run across the stage. The following day she developed severe back pain when her spine collapsed. She died four months later. Dr. Nolan wrote a book entitled “Healing: A Doctor In Search of a Miracle” in which he describes his investigations into the claims of several faith healers.ii

The Rev. Ralph DiOrio was a Roman Catholic priest who led very popular healing services. In 1987 a science writer. Eugene Emery Jr, attended one of these services and obtained the details of nine people who had been pronounced healed. In addition Ralph DiOrio provided the details of 10 others whom he claimed had been healed through his ministry. Mr. Emery wrote up his investigations in a Christian magazine and concluded that none of these individuals had been cured.iii

James Randi was a professional magician who set about investigating some of the apparent miracles that contemporary “healers” were performing. In a damning book he describes how many healers had become both famous and rich through fraudulent claims and techniques. On one occasion he investigated Peter Popoff, a healing evangelist. In a large auditorium Mr. Popoff would call individuals up to the front and would tell the audience their problems. He even sometimes knew the row or seat number that the person was sitting in. He claimed that this information came from God. However James Randi noted that this healer was wearing a small hearing aid. He thought it strange that a healer should be deaf and he wondered if this might be connected to a radio receiver. He therefore returned with a radio scanner. His suspicions were confirmed. Peter Popoff’s wife was relaying to him relevant information that had been gleaned from members of the audience as they entered the hall. Randi exposed all this dramatically on a television programme, ‘The Johnny Carson Show’. He first showed a video clip of Randi interacting with a member of the audience. He then replayed the video with Mrs Popoff’s voice, relaying relevant information, superimposed. Randi also exposed another evangelist W.V.Grant who was also able to call out people by name, as well as describing their problems. Grant obtained this information from letters that people had written to him. He used to mix with the audience prior to the show and so obtained people’s names which were correlated with the letters. Grant used crib sheets to aid his deception. After one performance, Randi obtained a set of these notes from the rubbish bin! Randi also discovered that some of those who had gone forward had given false names and false diagnoses.

Dr. Stephen Barrett also attended some of W.V.Grant’s healing services. He noted that the subjects were typically “slain in the spirit” and fell backwards into the arms of Grant’s assistants. One elderly lady did not want to fall backwards so Grant pushed his fingers into her neck so hard that she could not remain standing. Dr. Barrett also witnessed a man limp up onto the stage. The audience was told that one of his next was shorter than the other. Grant supposedly “lengthened” the man’s leg. Prior to the show Dr. Barrett had noted that this man was one of Grant’s assistants and had walked normally.iv

These may be extreme cases. Why do such Christian healers feel pressurised into using fraudulent techniques and a gross exaggeration? It must be because they are not confident of their own healing powers. Jesus was very happy to have the results of his healings verified by independent authorities and our hospitals now have to audit their results, so shouldn’t Christians, who of all people stand up for truth and integrity, want an honest audit of their claims. Such excesses do great harm to the church and the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Experiences of Christian Healing

It is undoubtedly true that there are individuals who have experienced some form of help. Some people do look back on a spiritual healing episode as the time their symptoms improved dramatically. They may have been ‘bowled over’, ‘slain in the spirit’ or experienced strange feelings when the symptoms disappeared. This may have been associated with a public healing service or when they were prayed for individually. Are we to discount this? Surely we should not. I have met many who have been helped in such ways. And doesn’t the Bible urge us to pray in all circumstances and for church elders to pray for those who are sick? The question is whether the underlying pathology or x-rays have changed.

Healing services are common to all creeds, and the same criticisms about a lack of organic healing could be placed at their doors also. They are also unable to heal the amputated leg or the stunted Thalidomide arm. Their healers also avoid or at least keep away from the seriously ill, the geriatric wards, the deformed and the like. I once read one survey that suggested that Fijian Magic was a very effective form of spiritual healing. There the healer would often pommel the painful area. Suddenly blood would appear and sometimes a stone would be delivered that had ‘clearly been the cause of the pain’. This magic is very affective at relieving symptoms. The healers are conjurers who secretly palm sachets of chickens blood and the stones. They also find that they can help symptoms but not organic disease.

The placebo effect

Belief in the therapist or the treatment itself is well known to be very therapeutic. The following story is a good example. A psychologist went for a walk with his four your old daughter. He warned her about the stinging nettles, but to reassure her he also told her about dock leaves. He said,

“If you get stung, then we’ll rub the bad place with a dock leaf and it will very soon be better.”

Ten minutes later his daughter had walked into some stinging nettles so he reassured her that the dock leaf would cure her. He then played a trick on her. He picked a dock leaf but said to his daughter,

“Oh dear, I can’t see a dock leaf anywhere. However, here is a dandelion leaf. I wonder if that will work. I’m afraid it probably won’t. Dandelions are not the same as dock leaves. They just aren’t so magic.”

He rubbed his daughter’s leg with the dock leaf which his daughter thought was a dandelion leaf.

“Oh, daddy, it’s a no better, it still hurts. It’s getting worse.”

The rash certainly looked as bad as ever.

“Let’s see if we can find a proper dock leaf.”

They looked for some more.

“Ah, here is just what we need. This should work.”

Her father picked a dandelion leaf, which his daughter thought was a dock leaf, and rubbed the foot again.

“How does it feel now?”

“Well, a little bit better.”

“But the rash is going away.” Indeed the rash was settling.

“It does feel better.” And within a couple of minutes there was no rash to show.

Yet dock leaf magic is purely placebo magic. Dock leaves have no pharmacologically relevant properties, any more than dandelion leaves to. Their power depends on nothing other than the reputation we have acquired over the centuries. The old English name is docce, which sounds like the Latin doctor, hence ‘doctor leaf’. It is providential that they often grow close together.v.

Could this be an explanation for the benefits spiritual healers can give?

Concerns about publicity

It is a concern that too often Christian healing services appear to be a mixture of advertising and showmanship. A stage is involved with an entrepreneur healer. There is so much hype and publicity. In this theatre people collapse, there may be screams. The atmosphere too often is built up with music and words so that the dramatic is expected. The central focus is so often the healer. Contrast this with the way Jesus and his apostles behaved. They were usually calm and quiet, addressing an individual. The cures were complete and immediate. Does Jesus really want his church to be theatrical? Isn’t godliness and integrity what he most wants us to be known for? Do the people who flock to these services leave knowing that the Lord Jesus is the answer to their biggest problem, their sin, and with a deeper understanding of his word to us?

What is the Gospel?

Recently I was in a London bus sitting next to a Nigerian gentleman. I was returning from an evangelistic talk to a new group of first year students. The Nigerian asked me what I had spoken about. I explained that I had talked about Jesus, and the significance of his death to pay for the penalty of our sin. “Did you not tell them about healing?” After this we had a fascinating conversations. He thought that the Bible’s main message was about healing. He dismissed my talk about sin and forgiveness saying that modern man was not interested in this. He thought the churches today should concentrate on physical healing. The conversation shifted onto what sort of healings he had seen. He admitted that he had never seen the dead raised but confidently affirmed that could this was being ‘done by those who have faith’. I asked him if people who have had a leg amputated could expect to have this restored. “Oh yes” he confidently replied. Similarly he assured me that babies born with the stunted arms because of thalidomide could have them restored. Again he had never witnessed this himself.

The consistent message of the Bible is that,

“God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” John 3:16

The Bible’s message years that Jesus entered this world in order to die on that cross to resolve the problem our sin caused – a separation between us and God. Therefore Jesus bore the penalty for the sins of those who trust in him. If we do not belong to God’s one and only son then we are neither forgiven nor can we experience the power of God’s spirit to enable us to live as God wants.

Just a few days earlier, a nurse was explaining to a group of doctors why she felt it was important that patients should be offered prayer for healing. “If only the patients believed in Jesus they could be healed,” she explained. She gave us some Bible verses to justify her saying this. These we will look at later.

There is clearly a conflict here. How can people suggest to vulnerable patients that extraordinary supernatural healings are occurring today when there is no evidence for this. I have been told,

“You cannot see the healings because you do not have faith.”

The problem with this view is that it puts faith in a different realm to reality. The Bible does not support such a dichotomy. God made all of us with the same senses. When we become Christians we do not gain an extra sense. The ability to be duped is not a spiritual gift.

A little while ago I was phoned by a national newspaper reporter as he had seen an article in ‘Triple Helix’, the magazine of the Christian Medical Fellowship in which it was suggested that doctors were in a good position to share the Christian gospel with their patients. He implied that many are concerned about this. This is understandable if he feels that the gospel involves supernatural physical healing. This is why we must be clear that the gospel does not promise organic healing.

“What do you think?” the reporter asked.

In reply I reminded him that in the annual ‘State of Health of the Nation’ report, given by Professor Calman (then Chief Medical Officer) a few years ago, health was defined in terms of being well physically, mentally and spiritually. All three are interlinked closely. I then suggested that whether we should talk about spiritual matters to a patient should be controlled by three questions. These questions also apply to any other clinical matter we are thinking of discussing with them. The reply to all three should be in the affirmative if we are to go ahead.

1. Is it true?

2. Is it likely to be helpful to this individual?

3. Is it helpful to society?

There is now so much misunderstanding about the church’s message. I was once involved in organising an inter-church evangelistic event. Christians from many churches invited friends and family to come and hear Paul Weston explain the gospel. A young Christian doctor wrote a personal letter to a lady he had met when she was a patient in the hospital, to come and listen. Instead of replying she contacted a local newspaper reporter who was not sympathetic to the Christian gospel. He thought this was a healing session and was very concerned. This reporter phoned me up and asked whether I expected the lady to be healed of her problems. I explained that this meeting was to explain the Christian good news and was nothing to do with healing but he clearly did not understand or want to. Unknown to us the reporter turned up at the meeting and went around many people asking if they expected to be healed. A very harmful front page article was written. The newspaper eventually apologised for this article and published a front page apology, though it was written in small print.

There undoubtedly is a widespread misunderstanding of what Jesus and his apostles were teaching. The kingdom of God was their emphasis. They taught how people could enter it and how God would then enable them to enjoy living both now and in eternity under His authority.

I was once asked by a fellow consultant, “Why are you a Christian?” The answer given was, “Because it is true.” The reason the message about Jesus is vital is because he really did enter this world, he really did those miracles, the resurrection did happen. Those disciples were convinced enough to die for their message. The Old Testament prophecies about God’s chosen king coming to save his people are fulfilled in incredible detail in the life of Jesus. We are selfish sinful people who turn our backs on God. Yet if we return to live under His authority we are treated by him as if we have never rebelled. His death on that cross takes on him the penalty for our sins. By his death we are saved. This is the church’s message

The Physical Benefits of Faith

Undoubtedly there are physical benefits that come as a by-product of being a Christian.

1. Having a faith does help individuals

Dr Monty Barker, in his Templeton Lectures challenged the sceptics on the question of whether there are physical advantages of faith to look at the scientific evidence. He concluded that there are great benefits. He showed that regular worshippers live longer and tend to be healthier both physically and mentally.vi

A study looking at almost 4000 elderly people in North Carolina found that those who attended religious services regularly were 28% less likely to die during the study than others, even after controlling for other risk factors. This benefit was so strong that it was equal to that of not smoking cigarettes.

Dr Harold Koenig studied 87 hospital patients who were depressed as well as suffering from organic conditions such as heart disease and strokes. In his report in the American Journal of Psychiatry in 1998 he demonstrated that the stronger an elderly persons religious beliefs, the faster they recovered from their depression. This benefit was independent of medical intervention and quality of life issues.

Chamberlain and Hallvii have written a book that gives a scholarly overview of the hundreds of scientific papers on the relationship between faith and well-being, both in the physical and psychology realms. They looked carefully at the significance of ‘observer bias’ but they still came to the same conclusions as Dr Barker,

“Fully 80% of psychological research on religion and health conclude that a strong faith is advantageous.”

“The scientific evidence convincingly demonstrates that the natural by-product of ‘religion realised’ is longer life, less illness, better physical and mental health, more marital stability, less divorce, less suicide and less abuse of alcohol and other substances.”

They quote Professor Dale Matthews, Professor of Medicine at Georgetown who also argues strongly for the soundness of the ‘faith factor’ when he analysed hundreds of different researchers studies.

The head of psychiatry at a Scottish university said,

“If my patients could be assured of forgiveness, half of them could go home tomorrow.”

The psychiatrist C. J. Jung wrote towards the end of his lifetime,

“During the past thirty years, men from every civilised country in the world have come to me for consultation. Among all my mature patients there was not one whose problem did not spring from a lack of religious world outlook. I can assure you that each of them had become ill because they had not that which only a living religion can give to a man, and not one of them will recover fully unless he regains the religious view of life.”

People do to know the true explanation and answer to life in order to have a full, satisfying existence.

It has been said that if there is a therapy that statistically gives a 5% advantage to patients, then this should be discussed with patients. On this basis having a clear faith, that people are really committed to, is clearly advantageous to them and on this basis should be mentioned.

Having a faith does help society

Western societies are now seeing the effects of ‘self-centred’ religion. Where there is no belief in a supreme God, to whom we must answer selfishness takes over. Family break-ups and all the consequences of this increase. Litigation goes out of control as people seek their rights whilst neglecting their duties. Care of the elderly and chronically sick becomes a real problem as less and less families see these family members as their responsibility. AIDS becomes common in societies where sexual promiscuity is widespread. The increased use of drugs and alcohol suggest a widespread dissatisfaction in society. Statistically those with a firm faith have lower blood pressure, less depression and anxiety, stronger immune systems and cost the health care system less than people less religiously involved – there are real economic advantages for a society with a widespread faith.

Few people have realised that the word ‘integrity’ has an opposite. It is ‘dis-integrity’ or ‘disintegration’. When individuals cease to be concerned about doing what is right before God, and behave with themselves as their ‘God’, then their personal life will tend to begin to disintegrate. Next their family and social life is affected and eventually the nations life is influenced. When a society looses a strong religious faith then the laws of that society have to become firmer and hasher. Kindness for others is the fruit of a faith, selfishness is the result of a loss of faith. Such kindness helps society run better. Furthermore a loss of faith opens the door to totalitarian governments.

So faith though primarily spiritual does have great physical, social and psychological advantages.

Jesus’ Miracles

We must now come back to the Bible. Jesus and his apostles all taught us that the Bible is the word of God. It should be the rule by which we live.

God is God and can therefore do anything he wishes. If he can create a world and put humans in it and raise a man like Lazarus who had been dead for four days then he is omnipotent. Jesus and the early apostles did perform extraordinary miracles involving organic physical healing – even his enemies acknowledged that. The dead were raised, and they really were dead. The paralysed walked, the blind saw. The Bible teaches that these miracles were performed to verify his claim to be God’s one and only Messiah, God’s chosen king of the universe. There are very strong grounds for accepting these miracles, including the resurrection of Jesus. Jesus and all he was, did convince a large number of people and they changed the world.

The only question is how we should understand what is written and does the Bible teach that we will be able to emulate Jesus after he departed - the next article will address this concern.

Summary

With the evidence available today, it is wrong for anyone to suggest that there is an alternative route for the healing of organic disease using ‘spiritual healers’. God does not readily break his own laws of nature even though he is able to do so.

There are many Christian doctors in the Christian Medical Fellowship who are committed to this omnipotent God. They believe he can and does heal, but the evidence is lacking that this is being done through ‘spiritual healers’. The healing God has promised his people will be experienced fully in the next life, and it is a fact that we will die of old age or disease before we get there. God is however very active in changing people’s lives now. He wants to give us peace and purpose. Anyone who turns to Christ will find there is great power available to live a godly life. He is also in control of all that happens to us – what a joy it is to know that we are in the hands of a sovereign God.

Often a feeling of great peace and satisfaction comes when a person understands who Jesus is, that they have been both forgiven and that they have been accepted by God into his kingdom. This may well have other beneficial effects. For a dying person to know that they have a heavenly Father who is waiting for them is wonderful news.

BVP

i Rose L. Faith healing. Baltimore: penguin books, 1971

ii Nole W Healing: A Doctor in Search of a Miracle. New York 1974, Random house Inc

iii Emery CE. Are they really cured? Providence Sunday Journal Magazine, January 15, 1989

iv Stephen Barrett, ‘Some thoughts about Faith Healing’ http://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/faith.html

v Great Expectations: The Evolutionary Psychology of Faith-healing and the Placebo Effect. In “Psychology at the Turn of the Millennium, volume 2: Social, Developmental, and Clinical Perspectives, Ed Claes von Hofsted and Lars Bäckman, pp225-46, Hove:Psychology Press, 2002

vi Montagu Barker, ‘Psychology, Religion and Mental Health’ Rutherford House 2000

vii Theodore Chamberlain and Christopher Hall, ‘Realized Religion’, Templeton Foundation Press 2000