In defence of healing the body through faith

Faith healers can abuse their services. This is the point well brought out by the articles in The Tribune. Those who attend healing services tend to ‘divinise’ the so-called healer — they make false gods of the healers. A faith healer can indulge in fake healings; he can use his services to make money or to gather followers into his fold. Such abuses do exist. But crookedness exists in practically every profession. It is not the monopoly of religious people.

POWER: The support that a sick person receives through prayers from many people, including faith healers, helps in healing. ISTOCK

Bishop Agnelo Gracias

Apostolic Administrator, Jalandhar Diocese

ALL of us, at some time or the other in our life, stand in need of healing — healing at different levels: healing of bodies, healing of our emotions, healing in our relationships and healing of our spirits. These levels are inter-connected. Physical ailments often have psychological roots — what we often term ‘psychosomatic illnesses’.

Let’s begin with an occurrence in daily life. A person is ill and he/she goes to a doctor. Sometimes, even before taking the medicine, the person feels better. What has happened? Seeing the doctor has triggered the body’s inner regenerative resources. Finally, it is the body that heals itself. Medicines help the body’s healing resources. What is required is to create the right conditions for the body to heal itself.

This is what often happens at healing services. The right conditions are created for the body to heal itself. One of the first things that a good faith healer does is to ask the person to forgive anyone he/she has not forgiven. Negative emotions such as hatred, anger and feelings of revenge block the body’s healing properties. Positive emotions like joy and inner peace help in the healing process. What helps too is the support that the sick person receives from many people, including the faith healer, praying for him or her. Prayers put a sick person in a proper disposition for the body to heal itself. These healings are not ‘miraculous’ any more than the healings brought about by a doctor.

This is not to rule out God. God works through human agencies, whether through a doctor or a caregiver, or through medicines and sometimes through a faith healer. The doctor along with the whole medical profession is one set of his human instruments. God’s saving power is at work through them. A cancer specialist in Mumbai once said in a public speech: “The doctor treats. Finally, God heals.” And that is so true. A doctor can stitch or suture; the power to join tissues belongs to nature — for the believer, God is at work through a person’s body. Praying for the sick is a common feature of all religions; it means that people seek God’s intervention to get healed. The same is true of Christianity.

Faith healers can abuse their healing services. This is the point well brought out by the articles in

The Tribune. Those who attend such services tend to ‘divinise’ the so-called healer — they make false gods of the healers. A faith healer can indulge in fake healings; he can use his healing services to make money or to gather followers into his fold. Such abuses do exist. But it is good to realise that crookedness exists in practically every profession. We do find unscrupulous doctors who fleece their patients. Crookedness is not the monopoly of religious people. The law of the land should deal severely with such crooks, whether they be religious or secular.

A faith healer certainly has no right to cheat people or lure them with false claims. But he does have the right to hold gatherings at which he invites people. People are free to attend these services and make their decision about whether to join his ‘church’ or not. The mainline churches, like the Catholic Church, have lost a number of adherents. But that is the failing of the mainline churches: they have not been able to retain their followers. The preaching of some of these ‘healers’ has been powerful and has drawn away the followers of the mainline churches.

Many purported healings are natural and due to psychological or physical factors, whereby the body heals itself. They are not what we term ‘miracles’ which are healings which cannot be explained by medical science. Miraculous healings do occur. Anyone who visits the Lourdes pilgrimage centre in France can witness this. At Lourdes, there exists a Medical Bureau made up of doctors, independent of the church. A non-believing doctor (an ‘atheist’) can be a member of the bureau. Any alleged cure that is brought to the bureau is thoroughly investigated — past X-rays, CT scans and reports of doctors are examined.

The bureau does not certify to a miracle — science does not enter into the realm of religion. At the most, in rare cases, the bureau will certify that a healing cannot be explained by present scientific knowledge. On the basis of this certification, in some cases, the church will pronounce a healing as a miraculous one: one which is directly due to divine intervention. In fact, out of the hundreds of alleged cures reported in Lourdes since the time Mary appeared there in 1858, only 70 have been declared miraculous by the church.

Whether healing is ‘natural’ due to the body healing itself through a person’s faith or ‘supernatural’ due to God’s intervention is of little importance. Here is a person suffering, who has not found relief for his pain after trying different medicines. He goes to a faith healer and finds relief. We can rejoice that he has found relief from his suffering. Human welfare is of paramount importance.

There will come a stage where every human resource comes to an end, when all healing remedies will cease to have any effect. It is the time when we give back to God the gift of life we have received. At this stage, ‘healing’ reaches its highest point in the acceptance of death. And death leads to the greatest healing; it opens the door to a new life where there is no more pain and suffering, when every tear is wiped away.