Healing and Faith

A book by Bryan Johnson and Maria Pagano was accented in an article entitled: Can Faith Rewire an Addict’s Brain?  Because Johnson is a professor at Baylor University, and Pagano at Case Western Reserve University, I followed their academic approach to respond to the question posed in the article’s title.  Their answer is affirmative, that faith can revive the brain, perhaps achieved by moving the control from left to right lobes in the process.  Shift in brain lobes relates to science for evidence, and the reference to faith relates to testimonials from former addicts that faith played a part in their recovery.  The point struck me that the addicts were greatly helped to health through cooperative faith and science.  The article made science and faith cooperative, and that some illness was addressed both as a physical and spiritual matter.  Commonly it is taken that something like alcoholism is either illness or sin – not both/and. Both/and needs rethinking, perhaps both and/or.  The authors affirmed: New evidence shows that God consciousness can keep young people off drugs and alcohol. (Houses of Worship, reviewed in WSJ, 03/28/2014)

We are reminded that Jesus served to solve physical problems of the man referred to in the text above caused by spiritual influence (in this instance devils) – so to be treated both physically and spiritually.  Further, we are reminded that Jesus had no medical credentials issued by education and/or government.  Luke, the human author of the passage cited here, was a physician.  The opening of his gospel reveals how carefully scientific he was in the research he made for writing the book we call The Gospel of Luke.  Luke was a competent and sophisticated man who would fit well in our modern context of searching out truth through evidence to conclusion and assertion.  Luke found the answers in research related to Jesus. (Note Luke 1:1-4)  In attempts to secularize faith, faith that ought to be the avenue to God, many persons (including professionals in health fields, both mental and physical) turn to options of human creation like meditation, and some medications for purpose, or exotic therapies (like aroma, exercise, acupuncture or even humor therapies).  Buddhism relying heavily on meditation has increased in popularity among many persons turning to some  recovery.  These factors often prove helpful, aided by testimonies of recovering persons.  The efficacy of a system is partly related to the faith the seeking person holds for the therapy.  I have never forgotten the woman who gained sobriety through Alcoholics Anonymous by turning the spiritual factor in the AA procedure into a faith in her highly respected employer.  She felt it worked – at least for her.  Others followed the AA system by omitting God and putting their faith in a process of self-improvement only.  A large segment of any population resists belief in God and puts faith in this or that human, enlarging natural process for desired results – even in astrology acceptance.  The attitudes may work for persons holding positive mental/physical/emotional procedures.  Analysts usually relate the successful application to the release of tension, of some inner change in function of the body or mind to benefit.  Often there is available heal thyself potions that work for persons.  Often too, those potions are simply finding relief from some beliefs or conditions (like fear or anxiety), conducts, attitudes, even ignorance.  Sometimes process choices, like snake handling or use of exotic drugs, achieve the end of problems with death.  Some faith processes used as placebos do not serve us well.

Nearly all the benefits found in the affirmative factors noted above can be achieved in a true faith in God. Especially is this true for the meaning of meditation.  Scripture calls us to prayer, and prayer is an excellent context for meditation to mediation.  King David gives us both the physically energetic responses forming prayer, and the silences of prayer.  His night-time vigils included it.  In short, the issues of life, the unraveling of our tensions and emotions, the concern for health and problem solving, the resolution of concerns are also found in prayer, with a competent God helping us along through the increments of life.  For the person believing in prayer, it seems like folly to engage the good concepts of meditation without believing there is a person teaching, even healing, related to the interests and issues of holistic life. Prayer relies on truth and God, not on sometimes distractions and inventions of mankind.