—Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet
It is asserted by some, that men possess the faculty of obtaining results over which they have little or no direct personal control, by means of devout and earnest prayer, while others doubt the truth of this assertion. The question regards a matter of fact, that has to be determined by observation and not by authority, and it is one that appears to be a very suitable topic for statistical inquiry…. Are prayers answered or are they not…? Do sick persons who pray or are prayed for, recover on the average more rapidly than others?
Francis Galton, 1883
When it comes to miracles, one question we have to ask, which was touched on in the last section, is this: Can prayer heal the sick? Surprisingly, the answer is no, but it is also yes, but not necessarily for the reasons we may think, and not for reasons we completely understand. And to the extent prayers do appear to contribute in anyway to curing the sick, we have to ask if such cures are the result of a God granting someone a reprieve from their illness (which leaves us to wonder why they were punished with such a disease in the first place), and perhaps just to show He exists and requires human worship, or is the cure the result of something else? These are the questions we will here answer as best we can.
Religious traditions across the world display beliefs in healing through
prayer, according to a study published at the National Institutes of Health. But the results of those traditions are indistinguishable from total randomness. "Prayer has
been reported to improve outcomes in human as well as nonhuman species,
to have no effect on outcomes, to worsen outcomes and to have
retrospective healing effects. For a multitude of reasons, research on
the healing effects of prayer is riddled with assumptions, challenges
and contradictions that make the subject a scientific and religious
minefield." If God is trying to communicate that He exists by sometimes curing people in response to prayer petitions to do so, He appears to also appears to have a desire to camouflage such miracles to look like pure chance.
On the one hand, some studies show positive correlations between prayer and healing. “Patients who were the subjects of prayer … needed fewer antibiotics,
experienced a lower percentage of congestive heart failure, and were
less likely to develop pneumonia. [After analyzing the data, Byrd]
concluded that ‘intercessory prayer to the Judeo-Christian God has a
beneficial therapeutic effect in patients admitted to the CCU.”( https://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/31/health/longawaited-medical-study-questions-the-power-of-prayer.html) Correlations are not causation, however, even though the atheist sees the former and the Christian has "faith" that they see the latter.
On the other hand, "The largest study yet on the therapeutic power of prayer by strangers has found that it provided no benefit to the recovery of patients who had undergone cardiac bypass surgery. “There have now been two big studies, with hundreds and hundreds of patients, that show no effect,” said Dr. Harold G. Koenig, professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Duke University. The results showed that prayers had no beneficial effect on patients’ recovery 30 days after surgery. Overall, 59% of patients who knew they were being prayed for had complications, compared to 51% of the patients who did not receive prayers. The difference was not considered statistically significant."
So, why would God cloak His miracles behind a mask of statistics that make them look as if prayers not only have not helped the patients, but has even maybe made things worse? And why would people pray for someone if doing so may have either no effect or make matters worse?
Prayers on behalf of others are regarded as helpful to recipients. We identify them as a moral action. However, intercessory prayers are regarded by senders as directly helpful to recipients… such that they may be a substitute for monetary donations or even not seeking medical help and thereby potentially causing harm. People who pray for others often feel like they have done their altruistic duty, and need do no more. (After my brother's recent heart attack, for example, my very Catholic siblings expressed they were "praying" for him, and offering up masses for him, but no one said "I love you" or visited him to help after he'd returned home from the hospital.)
But still, even if prayers being offered up for someone's healing is narcissism masquerading as altruism, and done more to seek approval from a God than to exert pressure on such a being to perform a miracle that it has chosen not perform up to that point, and presumably because it has not received enough prayer-pressure to flex its miracle powers, why then are so many so convinced that, when people do recover from a terminal condition, it was as much because of God as those who prayer-pressured Him into doing what He had been unwilling to do prior to enough people complaining about His inaction?
There is no doubt that there are certain benefits, both emotional and physical, to having a healthy spiritual life. It connects us to others, for example, and we are surely social animals in need of connection with other members of our species. But for all of the benefits that can come from the comfort and security of religious connections to community and things larger than ourselves, religion also leads many people toward feelings on inadequacy and inauthenticity. Such experiences can result in religious trauma that separates a person from themself. In "The Myth of Normal," Dr. Gabor Mate discusses how this dissociation from oneself can result in actual terminal conditions, like ALS or cancer. To heal, Mate points out, requires reunification with one's true self.
Rather than compliance to dogmas or the rules preached by priests acting as spiritual physicians, those who healed the most from physical ailments like cancer were those who, like a heretic, asked questions and took back control over their own life. As Mate explains:
"The psychologist Kelly Turner has studied many cases of so-called spontaneous remission of what had been diagnosed as terminal malignancy. “Having worked as a counselor at various hospitals and oncologists’ offices,” she reports, “I know firsthand that the patients who listen and follow instructions are considered ‘good ‘patients, while the ‘annoying’ patients are those who ask a lot of questions, bring in their own research, or—worst of all—challenge their doctors ‘orders.
"Yet these latter ones, she found, those who find ways to take control of their own healing, are the ones likely to do better in the long term. In hindsight, Dr. Turner notes, all her radical remission survivors wished they’d started much earlier to be active agents of their destinies rather than compliant patients in the hands of physicians. As with authenticity, capitalism sells a bogus version of agency through personal-power mantras like “Be all you can be” and “Have it your way."
Mate also gives the example of a woman who, by obeying her Christianity and staying in an unhealthy marriage, developed her own health problems as a result.
Donna was a thirty-eight-year-old family therapist in San Jose, California in a highly dysfunctional marriage. She only "began to accept that the realities of her marriage were intolerable only when she developed an autoimmune disease. Based on her fundamentalist Christian upbringing, she had truly believed her God-given duty was to “accept”—read endure—the miseries her husband’s own traumatic imprints visited upon her. “As the connection between my stress and my illness dawned on me,” she related, “at one point I remember going, ‘Holy shit—I’ve been in this kind of martyr-honoring-God position of staying in this abusive marriage, and there’s just no way: this is going to kill me!
‘Above all, Donna made a fundamental decision about how to live whatever lifespan remained to her: true to herself, even if her intuitions defied the opinions of doctors, family, and friends. “If I only have six months to live, my children are going to know me, the real me, who I am,” she recalled telling herself. “This always makes me cry. I remember that moment. And I said, ‘You know what? No more. I accept this. I’m going to be me, and I’m going to go forward being happy’ . . . And I meant it. I just drew this line, and I never went back.” Catching her own hyperbole, she quickly corrected herself: “I’m human, and I fall into that trap all the time. But I get out quick."
In short, pretending to be a false self is cancer. To heal be real.
Mate also discussed Harvard psychiatrist Dr. Jeffrey Rediger, who has explored many cases of “miraculous” recovery from terminal malignancy and other fatal diseases. Rediger told Mate that, more than anything else, the key that enabled people to overcome their diseases was a transformation of identity. “It’s a nebulous concept,” he conceded, “but ultimately that’s where the healing is to be found. These people who get better really change their beliefs about themselves or their beliefs about the universe.” Rather than being the result of divine intercession, such people healed themselves by finding the will to change how they saw themselves. They "died to self," to quote the Bible, and in doing so, received a second chance at life - they were "born again," in other words.
Could they have done this without a belief in a God? Maybe, but for some, maybe not. But just because some people needed to believe in a God to produce the effect does not prove that such a God exists or, even if He did, that He intervened to heal a person as a gift or reward for their belief that He exists. What is clear is that the causal connection for such people is not that such a God must therefore exist, but that such people simply needed to believe He did, even if He didn't.
This has been my observation as well, Mate went on to explain, "no matter with what illness: cancer, autoimmune disease, or neurological disorders like ALS. Some refused medical treatment; others wouldn’t have survived without it. In all cases, people voluntarily and with relentless courage underwent a painful but ultimately exhilarating shedding of a second skin, the blend of adaptive, self-abnegating traits" related to "attachment versus authenticity, and grouped also under Erich Fromm’s term “social character.” Disease’s role as teacher rests in how it leads people to question everything they had thought and felt about themselves, and to retain only what serves their wholeness."
In "The Mind Body Code," psychologist Mario Martinez came to the same conclusion as Turner, Rediger, and Mate. He came to conclude that the transformation requires overcoming self doubts and feelings of being unworthy. "Healing cannot occur if we do not accept our worthiness," wrote Martinez, "that we are worth healing, even if doing so might shake up our view of the world and how we interact with others." Should that worthiness require us to accept we are born sinners in need of forgiveness for our sinful nature? And worse, should it depend upon our willingness to accept a certain denomination of Christianity, or any denomination of Christianity whatsoever? Or should we accept that there's nothing wrong with us from birth, despite being told we are born sinners?
Comments
Post a Comment