Sage College of Spiritual Learning

Failth Healing
Faith healing is healing purportedly through spiritual means. Believers assert that
the healing of a person can be brought about by
religious faith through prayer and/or rituals that, according to adherents, stimulate
a divine presence and power toward healing disease and disability. Belief in divine
intervention in illness or healing is related to religious belief. In common usage, faith
healing refers to notably overt and ritualistic practices of communal prayer and
gestures (such as laying on of hands) that are claimed to solicit divine intervention in
initiating spiritual and literal healing.
Claims that prayer, divine intervention, or the ministrations of an individual healer
can cure illness have been popular throughout history. Miraculous recoveries have
been attributed to many techniques commonly lumped together as "faith healing". It
can involve prayer, a visit to a religious shrine, or simply a strong belief in a supreme
being. Some people interpret the Bible, especially the New Testament, as teaching
belief in, and practice of, faith healing. There have been claims that faith can cure
blindness, deafness, cancer, AIDS, developmental disorders, anemia, arthritis, corns,
defective speech, multiple sclerosis, skin rashes, total body paralysis, and various
injuries.
Unlike faith healing, advocates of spiritual healing make no attempt to seek divine
intervention, instead believing in divine energy. The increased interest in alternative
medicine at the end of the twentieth century has given rise to a parallel interest
among sociologists in the relationship of religion to health.
Faith healing is an example of pseudoscientific magical thinking. The American
Cancer Society states "available scientific evidence does not support claims that faith
healing can actually cure physical ailments."
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"Death, disability, and other unwanted outcomes have occurred when faith healing
was elected instead of medical care for serious injuries or illnesses." When parents
use faith healing in the place of medical care, many children have died that otherwise
would have been expected to live. Similar results are found in adults.
Faith healing refers to healing that occurs supernaturally, as the result of prayer
rather than the use of medicines or the involvement of physicians or other
conventional medical care. Such healings are often referred to as miracles.
The term is best known in connection with Christianity, but is also used in other
religions. It is further used in relation to such occult, New Age healing techniques
as Reiki.
This entry addresses faith healing within Christianity.

Legitimate vs. Illegitimate

The belief in, and practice of, faith healing is found among:

sincere Christians with a good understanding of the Bible's teachings on the

subject

sincere believers whose misinterpretation of Scripture (and/or use of private

''revelation'') implicitly or explicitly, contradicts Scripture

abusive churches and cults of Christianity

people involved in the occult

con artists, including many so-called charismatic preachers

Based on the teachings of the Bible, there is a legitimate belief in - and practice of faith healing.There also is an illegitimate approach to this issue; one that usually puts
people at risk to the point of injury and even death.
While faith healings do take place today just as they did in the early Christian church,
the teachings of some churches, movements and individuals on this subject amount
to spiritual abuse.
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Unbiblical teachings on this subject range from aberrant to heretical. Many cults of
Christianity preach and practice an unbiblical approach to faith healing.
Others place unreasonable demands on their followers, expecting strict obedience to
extra-Biblical teachings rejected by legitimate churches and movements. Legitimate
churches, movements, and individuals do not equal using drugs or receiving proper
medical attention with unbelief, insufficient faith, or otherwise sinning against God.

Faith Healing in Buddhism

The practice of faith-healing is prevalent in many countries. Many people are trying
to influence the public through emotional persuasion designated as faith-healing. In
order to impress on their patients the efficacy of their healing powers, some faithhealers use the name of a god or a religious object to introduce a religious flavor into
their faith healing methods. The introduction of religion into faith-healing is actually a
guise or a decoy to beguile the patient into developing more devotion and enhance
the confidence or faith of the patient in the faith-healer. This healing act, if
performed in public is intended to get converts to a particular religious
denomination.
In actual fact, in so far as faith-healing is concerned, religion is not all that important.
There are numerous cases of faith-healers performing their faith-healing acts without
using religion at all. A case in point is the science of hypnotism, the practice of which
involves no religious aspects at all.
Those who associate religion with faith-healing are in a way engaging in a subtle form
of illusion trying to attract converts to their particular religion by making use of faith
healing and describing certain cures as miraculous acts.
The methods employed by faith healers are to condition the minds of patients into
having a certain mental attitude with the result that certain favorable psychological
and physiological changes invariably take place.
This attracts the condition of the mind, the heart, the consequent blood circulation
and other related organic functions of the body, thus creating a feeling of a sense of
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well-being. If sickness is attributed to the condition of the mind, then the mind can
certainly be properly conditioned to assist in eradicating whatever illness that may
occur.
In this context, it is to be noted that the constant and regular practice of meditation
can help to minimize, if not to completely eradicate, various forms of illnesses. There
are many discourses in the Teaching of the Buddha where it was indicated that
various forms of sicknesses were eradicated through the conditioning of the mind.
Thus it is worthwhile to practise meditation in order to attain mental and physical
well-being.

Faith-generated Healing Forces

When doctors try a new drug they generally divide the trial group into two sections.
About half the subjects get the new drug and half get sugar pills (made to look like
the hopefully-effective product). These inactive tablets arecalled "placebos".
They do this because patients often experience relief when a doctor or institution in
whom they have confidence prescribes anything new and different. Inone study of a
medication being tried for arthritis, for instance, 40% of thepatients who were taking
totally ineffective placebo pills experienced substantial relief. Many of them had
objective improvement increased range of motion, decreased swelling etc., not just
diminished discomfort and pain.
What has actually happened in these cases? The best explanation seems to be that
the patients have developed faith in the "medication" (because it was prescribed by
someone in whom they had faith) and mobilized confidence-generated healing
forces. No one really understands exactly what those forces are.
We just don't know whether improvement from placebos has the same basis as that
generated by religion-based faith healers, medicine men in primitive tribes,(and
perhaps some physicians incidental to their applications of science).
Actually, similar forces also seems sometimes able to keep you from getting sick in
the first place. A few years ago a team of researchers in Michigan developed a
promising cold vaccine.
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They arranged a substantial trial, dividing their subjects into three groups. One group
got the vaccine, one got shots of distilled water (which they were told was vaccine),
the third got nothing. Compared with the untreated group those receiving the
vaccine got only one-third as many colds in the next season. But the researchers also
found that the people who got the distilled water did just as well!
Sometimes similar forces seem even to add to the effect of potent medicines or
treatments. Many drug companies today hire people to seek out treatments used by
shamans and witch doctors in primitive areas. Often they find that the herbs, barks
and other remedies discovered by trial and error over many generations have
effective chemicals in them. In many instances the effective chemical can be isolated
and manufactured as a drug. But that drug almost never proves quite as effective
when administered without ritual as it had been when accompanied by the dances,
laying on of hands, or other healer routines.

Religion's Place in Faith Healing

From ancient times, long before medical science achieved substantial cures, most
healing efforts were associated with religion. Primitive cultures, for example,
generally relied on medicine men, or witch doctors, to pray to the spirits for healing.
The ancient Greeks and Romans also prayed to various gods to cure their illnesses
and repair the body. For example, infertile couples who wanted to conceive a child
would pray for intervention at the temple of Imhotep (ca. 2700 BC), who was a vizier
to the Egyptian King Djoser and achieved divine status after his death.
Healing by priests or shamans persists in many of the world's current cultures. From
Navaho dances to Tibetan prayer-wheels, the variety of healing efforts based on
various non-Christian religions is huge. This subject is too extensive for coverage
here. If you are interested in healing efforts within any particular ethnic or religious
group, you will need to seek information under its title.
One of the largest institutions practicing religion-based faith healing is the Christian
Scientist organization. This organization was founded by Mary Baker Eddy, a dynamic
leader who had experienced an unusual health phenomenon. Believing herself to be
pregnant, she had all the usual bodily signs there of.
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She ceased to have menstrual periods. She suffered morning sickness for the first
two or three months. Her
abdomen swelled substantially. But no fetus was present, and after nine months her
body resumed its normal non-pregnant state.
Perhaps this proof of the extent to which belief could alter body function had
something to do with the lady's later career. She became convinced that prayer and
bible reading could resolve illnesses. She founded an organization which still has
thousands of branches throughout the world, with healing through prayer and faith
as its mainstay.
Although scientists have made phenomenal advances during the twentieth century in
understanding and curing sickness and disease, faith healing associated with religion
continues to flourish in modern society. Other examples are the evangelists who
claim to heal through prayer and touch. While many believe that these evangelists
"stage" their miraculous cures, the debate continues to rage over the effectiveness of
faith healing. However, the line of demarcation between "believers" and "nonbelievers" is not clear cut. A 1997 survey of physicians at a meeting of the Academy
of Family Physicians found that 99% of them believed that religious faith plays a role
in patients' recoveries. Not all of these physicians believed in divine intervention but
rather that belief can reduce stress and have other psychological effects that help to
improve patients' immune system and the ability to fight disease.
More than 200 scientific studies have focused on the role of faith and religion in
health.
One of the most noted studies took place at the San Francisco General Medical
Center in 1982 and 1983. The researchers found that the 192 heart patients who
were prayed for were five times less likely to develop further complications than the
201 who were not. In this study and others, patients were picked at random and not
according to their religious beliefs, and they did not know whether or not others
were praying them for them.
In 1998, researchers at Duke University also studied 4,000 people over the age of 65.
They found that those who participated in religious activities were40% less likely to
have high blood pressure and showed faster recoveries from physical illnesses and
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depression. Scientific explanations for statistically significant better health and faster
recoveries in religious people include healthier lifestyles and a stronger social support
that bolsters mental wellbeing However, none of these studies have proved that an
individual "faith healer" has the ability to cure disease.

Distinguishing True Healers from Charlatans and Frauds

If any substantial number of people believe someone has healing power, that person
has open access to the public purse. This attracts many unscrupulous people to the
less selective healing professions. (There are still many more applicants for medical
schools than can be admitted. Admission committees try to consider character as
well as talent. They may not screen out every knave, but they certainly reduce the
number.) Many faith healers and members of the subsidiary health professions are
sincerely dedicated to the patient's welfare. But a substantial minority are primarily
interested in making money without regard to that welfare.
There is no doubt that charlatans of all sorts occasionally achieve relief of symptoms
or even cure of disease. Some of that relief may stem from the patient's faith in the
healer or in the measures he uses (like massage or manipulation).
In many instances it is hard to believe that the practitioners themselves can swallow
the purported mechanism of action of their approach.
Medical fraud investigators have found devices with flashing lights of various colors,
various meters and gauges, elaborate means of attachment to the patient and
absolutely no possible means of action. The fact that patients paid heavily for use of
these machines might be thought mere evidence of public gullibility, but a more
reasonable explanation is that, when accompanied by a convincing explanation of the
machine's purported effects, the device mobilizes enough credence-generated
healing force to make patients feel better. That keeps them coming back,
recommending the process to others, and enriching the charlatans.
However many healers mobilize the healing forces generated by faith without any
medications, massage or machinery. Faith healers and Christian Science Practitioners
have a big advantage here: Most of them have deep and sincere belief in what they
are doing, which conveys itself to their patients. Practitioners in many other health
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cults would seem to need either fabulous talent for self-deception or great acting
skill. Just examine the tenets upon which they are based objectively and you will
realize that their "revolutionary ideas" are unbelievable malarkey.
To take one example, a member of one of the non-medical healing "professions"
opened a "Cancer Clinic". His advertisements featured testimonials from patients
who had been found to have no trace of cancer after a series of treatments with a
machine of his devising. After people had paid him a great deal of money for such
care he absconded. His magic machine was found to have no possible healing effect.
Investigation showed that the testimonials were from actual patients, but the
complaints for which they had been treated seemed most unlikely to have been
cancerous.
This points up the fact that more than the public purse is involved in inappropriate
"healing". The benefits of healing efforts which are not aimed at the cause of disease
are often temporary. The "placebo effect" wears off after a few weeks. Relief
stemming from faith in the healer often follows the same course. Meanwhile the
disease process may be extending itself. Infections can be spreading. Cancers can be
reaching the incurable stage. Diabetes can be doing irreversible damage to the
patient's eyes or kidneys. An infected appendix can burst.
Because of these substantial potential risks, the medical community has strongly
opposed forms of healing not clearly based on scientific knowledge. That opposition
makes it lean over backwards to assure that any treatment it recommends has a
scientific basis. Since no one has identified the mechanism by which faith generates
healing forces, people who legitimately invoke it have often been lumped with the
charlatans and frauds.
As an example, a Maryland physician studied the various folk remedies for warts
rubbing with the cut edge of a potato in a graveyard at midnight, for instance. He felt
that this was a variety of faith healing faith in the ritual doing the job. So he
developed a ritual of his own to see if it would work:

He wrapped a red string several times around the wart, saying that it would cut
off circulation.
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He covered the area with a bulky bandage. (A heavy bandage always makes a
wart accumulate moisture and turn white.)

"Leave the bandage on for 24 hours," he would say. "Then take it off. If the
wart has turned white you'll know we've got it licked. But come back in three
weeks, I want to see if it leaves any scar when it drops off."

Almost all of the warts were gone before the return visit! His cure rate was almost
exactly as high as that of doctors who burned or froze off warts, with no pain and no
risk of complications. But he never reported his findings in any medical journal.
"They would run me out of town on a rail," he said. "Brand me a quack. Even if I
could find any journal that would accept the idea."
Warts which disappear after being wrapped with red string are just as fully cured as
those burned or frozen off. Yet medical science spurns such results instead of seeking
to understand the healing force involved.
This seems a harmful over-reaction. But scientific medicine needs your faith, too. At
least part of its healing power presumably stems from that faith.
And your willingness to use its other services--to take the medicine your doctor
prescribes, have the operation he deems necessary etc.--depends on the confidence
you have in him. In him individually and in his profession as a whole. Is that just an
excuse or a real justification? What do you think?

Science vs. Faith: Must It Be Either/Or?

A few decades ago it might have been reasonable to surrender the rather sparse
benefits of medical science for the credence-generated healing force mobilized by
faith healers or charlatans. If you read about the care George Washington had during
his last illness you conclude that he would have lived much longer if he had
depended on the power of prayer. His doctors cut into veins to extract pint after pint
of blood. They forbid fluid intake and made liquid pour from his bowel with
purgatives. Practically every measure they prescribed was opposite to what we no
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know should have been done.

Near the turn of the century the great physician Sir William Osler stated that
medicine's main weapons were morphine, Epsom salts and pats on the back. The
"pats on the back" were the reassurances and confidence-building measures we
might call the ART of medicine. Those "pats" presumably mobilized the faithgenerated healing forces we've been discussing, and they really were effective. By
contrast, medical science at that time had no antibiotics, no hormones, no
antihistamines, no specific cures for any disease whatever.
In that framework, a patient didn't give up huge benefits by choosing a faith healer
(or even a charlatan) rather than a physician. Today the benefits of science have
greatly increased. It seems most unwise to surrender the advantages which have
almost doubled life expectancy for credence-generated healing force. But you can at
least try to eat your cake and have it too: To pray that your doctors find the way to
cure you instead of praying for the cure itself. To find physicians in whom you have
enough the healing forces generated by that faith works in conjunction with scientific
care.
Unfortunately, you will find few doctors who deliberately generate and use this
force. Most still deprecate it as "placebo effect" instead of trying to understand and
mobilize it. But many doctors help patients with their "bedside manner" without
doing so deliberately. They mobilize healing forces through their interaction with
patients whom they are treating as people. They inspire confidence by bearing and
manner. You can enjoy some of these benefits if you choose a doctor in whom you
have total faith.
Many physicians and lay people believe that religion-based faith healing hasa role in
modern day treatment of illnesses and disease. A 1996 survey of the general
population by Time magazine found that 82% of the respondents believed in the
healing power of personal prayer. At the same time, only 28%believed in the ability
of "faith healers" to make people well. If there is any scientific consensus on the
matter, it is one of caution.
Perhaps that is why one of the most intense efforts to wed faith with science in
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medical care has been a dubious success. Oral Roberts, the TV evangelist who
founded a university in Tulsa, OK, made joint religious and scientific care the goal of
his medical center. Many top medical scientists, even those of deep personal faith,
have seemed reluctant to link their careers with that concept. This has been a barrier
which even abundant funding has had trouble overcoming. But the project continues
to develop, and may yet accomplish its goal.
While many physicians and scientists agree that faith can play a role in healing, most
concur that relying on faith healing to the exclusion of modern medicine can be
dangerous. A University of California, San Diego, School of Medicine study looked at
172 pediatric patients who had died over a ten year period. They found that 140 of
the of these children would have had survival rates of more than 90% if they had
received medical care for their illnesses, which included appendicitis, pneumonia,
and diabetes. In some cases, parents who have relied on faith healing alone to cure
their sick child have been convicted of involuntary manslaughter due to medical
neglect when a child died.

It seems a shame that such incidents occur. After all, medical scientists didn't create
the remedies they use, or (if you believe in a Creator) their ownintelligence and
talent. Can't one pray that his doctors will know and use the remedies God created?
Can't one let faith in God and faith in medical science (which He also created)
coexist? Does one really have to choose between the healing power of faith and that
of science, rather than benefit from both?