A Time to Heal

In this age of constant advancement in the medical field, more people are choosing to explore alternate forms of health care. Massage, acupuncture, homeopathy, Reiki and more are gaining in popularity. People are coming to understand that there is more to health and healing than fixing physical symptoms. Hospitals are even employing music and art therapists in order to give their patients an extra advantage for quick recovery, and most hospitals have a chapel where people can go to pray for strength and improved health. Religion plays an important role in many people's lives, especially in times of illness. One of the more religious forms of alternative health care is faith healing.

Faith healers are the subject of much controversy. They are called charlatans, con men, and worse. Yet people still flock to them. Why? Are people really so desperate to be healed that they will try anything? Or does it really work? If so, how? Is simply believing enough?

One religion that embraces faith healing is the current Pentecostal Christian tradition. They believe the Holy Spirit can fill a person and allow them to speak in tongues, show strong emotions, and even spontaneously heal illness. This healing is believed to be a gift of the Holy Spirit. Some people will even refuse traditional medical treatment because they are so certain that God will heal them. Skeptics everywhere denounce this type of healing, claiming it gives people false hope and that it is a product of mass hypnosis. Still, healing through faith is a tradition that lies throughout Christianity, from its very beginnings.

We start with Jesus. Here is a man who traveled around teaching and healing. He cast out demons, resurrected the dead, and cured people of their illnesses, according to the Bible. But we don't know what happened afterward. Did these people remain cured? And was it Jesus who cured them, or their faith in him? Or was it something else entirely?

Science tells us that our bodies are made up of energy. There is a belief that when our energy particles vibrate too slowly, we get sick. Medical intuits-people with a medical background who can see or sense energy fields in the body-say that we have a spiritual body, an emotional body and a physical body, and lower vibrations in the spiritual or emotional body will eventually manifest in the physical body as illness. Therefore, to heal the body one must heal the spirit or the emotions. We do know for certain that a person can become physically ill by thinking themselves so. The term "hypochondriac" describes someone whose mind convinces their body that they are ill, even when there is no physical cause. And we know too that people under stress have a lower resistance to viruses. If you expose a roomful of people to a virus, some will get sick and some won't. One explanation for this is that some people neglect their spiritual or emotional health, so their physical health suffers too. Curing someone of an illness in this case is only temporary, because the person has only fixed the symptoms and not the true cause of the illness. This may explain chronic or recurring pain in some people.

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