Re: prayer and healing

On 4/1/06, Jack Haas <haas.john@comcast.net> wrote:
>
> Greetings:
>
> The elders of our (Presbyterian) church have often laid on hands....
> according to the Biblical Injunction. In some cases people have seen
> remarkable improvement in their health. Others have had told us that
> they have been encouraged in their battles. Others showed no
> discernible change. We always felt that we had done the right thing
> regardless of the outcome.
> Jack Haas

In our church (Evangelical C of E) we do something similar. We have a
Prayer Ministry team which is available during and after communion for
anyone requiring prayer of any kind. This is performed with laying on of
hands. Sometimes it is physical healing that is sought, at other times more
just for prayer over emotional difficulties - anxieties over difficult
situations and so forth.

Sometimes physical healings do occur, and plenty of members of the team
attest to this, though clearly it's not something that can be scientifically
tested, and I don't believe such things should be tested in this way.
Suppose one could establish, by a double-blinded trial that prayer had a
definite effect & could be regarded as effective as any other medical
treatment, and placebo ruled out (maybe you could get atheist actors to
"pray" over someone?). Suppose such a trial established prayer was a
treatment over and above placebo. Wouldn't that sort of constitute a
"proof" of God, or the supernatural, and make faith redundant because you
could always cite the paper in whatever medical journal in which it was
published? One of the commonly raised objections to ID is that it claims to
"prove" the existence of a Designer (aka God). Would not a positive result
from such a trial be similar?

I have first-hand experience of one of these physical healings, as I was a
participant in it (unsought, and pretty scared). I had joined the team
because I felt I had listening skills that could be useful in a counselling
context. I was a volunteer with the Samaritans organisation, and wanted to
put my listening skills in a more spiritual context (Samaritan volunteers
are prohibited from preaching religious views to their callers). Then one
morning, another member of the congregation bought up this elderly lady who
was in some distress and pain. She said "Just look at her hands! Can you
pray for her?". I looked, and her fingers were stiff and immobile, and she
was in considerable pain. She said it was chronic arthritis. I was frankly
horrified at the prospect of being required to "perform a miracle" (of
course, it's God who performs the healing, not us), but I was definitely
fazed by it! I'll never forget the childlike look of faith on the woman's
face as she asked me to pray, and I suspect her faith was more trusting than
mine. So I did as she asked - laid hands on her hands, and prayed
something. Her hands relaxed immediately and she could move them again. I
was actually too spooked out to take in what had happened, but the other
woman saw it clearly. Then after the service, I saw the woman who had been
thus healed again in the car park. She raised her hand up and waved at me,
by flexing her fingers, to show that she could move them. It was then that
it dawned on me that it had really happened, and that she hadn't been able
to do that before.

I've no idea if her relief from pain lasted, or if indeed one can get
temporary release from this kind of immobility via a placebo effect ( a
physiotherapist I know from the church tells me that you don't just get
mobility back just like that). But as I said, such things, in my view,
should not be pried into scientifically.

I'm not even sure such things have apologetic value. Humans, even
Christians, are by nature doubting. You hear lots of stories of miraculous
healings, but when you do (when I have in the past), you always think "I
wish I'd been there to see it, then I'd be sure". And if you haven't seen
it happen, then the natural inclination is to doubt.

No similar event has to my knowledge happened to me since then (about 16
years ago) and I don't make any claim to have supernatural powers. I think
with this woman, it was a case of "your faith has healed you".

Iain

Mervin Bitikofer wrote:
> > Just out of curiosity: how many of you have ever gone to the elders
> > of your church when you were sick and had them lay hands on you, etc.
> > as instructed? As a last resort? as a first resort? ever at
> > all? I'm not trying to be a stick-in-the-mud as far as Biblical
> > literalism goes -- I am a Christian who really wants to know God's
> > will and I try to (do) take the entire Bible seriously as God's
> > word. I'm just wondering how many of us put our money (or health)
> > where our mouth is. Not that anything in the Bible prohibits us from
> > using other medical recourse as we can, but meanwhile this exortation
> > is still there.
> >
> > As C.S. Lewis once noted, Jesus' promise as given in Mark 11 (after
> > withered fig tree) is that whatever we ask for in prayer, if we
> > believe it, it will be done for us. No caveat that it must be within
> > God's will. No conditional that is has to be something 'good'. Just
> > believe, and it will be done. Lewis concludes that new believers
> > should certainly not be tantalized with passages like this before some
> > maturity of immersion in the wider body of scripture. But how do you
> > literalists deal with passages like this? Or at the end of Mark
> > (I've been reading Mark lately) -- the signs that WILL accompany those
> > who believe: they will handle snakes and drink deadly poison
> > without harm. How many sermons have you heard preached on that
> > passage? I view all scripture as authoritative from God, but I can
> > sure understand the eye-rolling delight agnostics get from passages
> > like this and from us in our "bend-over-backward" antics to explain
> > why certain passages "don't apply." Probably, I'll get a half dozen
> > well polished reasons from some of you about why snake-handling, etc.
> > can be dismissed as a cultural difference or some other thing. And I
> > can guarantee you that all such explanations (some of which may be
> > entirely correct IMO) will still elicit only condescending smiles from
> > hostile challengers who will only see the "convenience" of our
> > dismissal. Out of a two thousand year history of Christianity, has a
> > mountain every been thrown into the sea? Maybe nobody in Christendom
> > has ever been able to "believe" enough. Yes, I know, it's only
> > metaphorical mountains that are cast aside, we tell ourselves.
> > "How convenient!" my athiest friend would respond. (He's a
> > literalist like some of you apparently are, and extremely stubborn
> > about it.) So how do we answer people in this mode of thought?
> >
> > --merv
> >
> >
> > Dick Fischer wrote:
> >
> >> It's too bad they didn't have a fourth group where they actually did
> >> what the Bible says to do: /"Is any sick among you? let him call for
> >> the elders of the church; and let them pray over him, anointing him
> >> with oil in the name of the Lord"/ (Jas 5:14).
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> Dick Fischer
> >>
> >> Dick Fischer, Genesis Proclaimed Association
> >>
> >> Finding Harmony in Bible, Science, and History
> >>
> >> www.genesisproclaimed.org <http://www.genesisproclaimed.org/>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> If the increase in complicaions in the third group is real, perhaps
> >> it will
> >>
> >> be cited as scientific confirmation of the command to pray in secret
> >> (Matt.
> >>
> >> 6:6).
> >>
> >> __
> >>
> >> Louise M. Freeman, PhD
> >>
> >> Psychology Dept
> >>
> >> Mary Baldwin College
> >>
> >> Staunton, VA 24401
> >>
> >> 540-887-7326
> >>
> >> FAX 540-887-7121
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> -----Original Message-----
> >>
> >> From: "jack syme" <drsyme@cablespeed.com>
> >>
> >> To: <asa@calvin.edu>
> >>
> >> Date: Fri, 31 Mar 2006 15:06:50 -0500
> >>
> >> Subject: prayer and healing
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>> There are some interesting findings in a large study on the effects of
> >>
> >>> distant prayer on healing in today's "American Heart Journal":
> >>
> >>>
> >>
> >>> 1800 patients were randomized into three groups. One group was told
> >>
> >>> they
> >>
> >>> "might" be the object of distant prayer, and they were. Another group
> >>
> >>> was
> >>
> >>> told the same thing, but they were not. And the third group was
> >>
> >>> promised it
> >>
> >>> would receive prayer and did.
> >>
> >>>
> >>
> >>> The findings were interesting. Not only did distant prayer not help,
> >>
> >>> but
> >>
> >>> being told they were being prayed for seemed to increased
> >>
> >>> complications, the
> >>
> >>> most common complication being atrial fibrillation.
> >>
> >>>
> >>
> >>> The first two groups had the same complication rates, about 50%. The
> >>
> >>> third
> >>
> >>> group had a complication rate of 59%. The authors were not sure this
> >>
> >>> increased complication rate is real, and did little speculation on the
> >>
> >>> cause.
> >>
> >>>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >
> >
> >
>

--
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After the game, the King and the pawn go back in the same box.
- Italian Proverb
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