So What Harm Is Done, Anyway?

Let me answer two questions frequently asked of me following my lectures. The first one is: Even though they don’t heal, don’t the healers at least bring hope to their subjects and, if so, what harm do they really do?

By teaching people dependence on magical practices, faith-healers take them back to the Dark Ages, convincing them that they are only pawns in some great game they cannot comprehend, the rules of which are concealed in sacred writings. The victims are told that these writings need careful interpretation and that can be provided by the healers along with the transfer of healing powers from a divine source. Faith-healers take from their subjects any hope of managing on their own. And they may very well take them away from legitimate treatments that could really help them.   A second question I often hear is:As long as healing takes place, why question how the healers do it?

My opinion is that miracles are not being done, by healers or by anyone else. And, of course, the question that supersedes all the others in this discussion is: Do any evangelist/healers actually do any healing? My answer is no. But that answer requires much explanation, which I will preface with the admission that I am not a medical expert, I do not have scientific training, and I am writing on this subject from the point of view of a reasonably observant layman with normal abilities to consult appropriate sources of information. This book is an account of my earnest efforts to discover one example of faith-healing that can stand examination. I have found none.

The Nature of the Ailments

Two classes of ailments are brought to faith-healers and legitimate physicians: imaginary and real. Some are obviously psychosomatic in nature. Such ailments, by their very nature, are going to be susceptible to faith-healers’ ministrations. It is a recognized fact that suggestible individuals, immersed in an emotional, theatrical atmosphere and surrounded by thousands of others who expect a miracle, will be swept up by it all. Their symptoms may well vanish, either temporarily or permanently. But that result can also be achieved by a sufficiently good bedside manner or by any one of a hundred placebo treatments—in which category the healing ministries belong, when and if there is any observable result from their incantations and ritual. Organic diseases constitute another matter altogether. No healer will accept someone who needs a new finger or a nose to be grown back. The healers typically choose for their audience demonstrations people who have such problems as arthritis, diabetes, and heart trouble. “Healings” of such ailments cannot be proved one way or the other at the scene of the performance, but only upon subsequent examinations. Information gained from any such examinations will never be communicated to those witnessing the show.

The Elusive Proof

Author Eve Simson, in a lengthy study of the subject, The Faith-healer: Deliverance Evangelism in America, says:Over the years ... I met individuals who testified that they had received a miraculous cure, and I witnessed many claims to instantaneous cures at the revival meetings. But I was not able to obtain enough proof for any of them to convince me that they were true miracles of healing. At no time did I encounter anyone who testified to something like the regrowth of the severed arm or leg. Nor am I, according to some of the devotees of faith-healing, likely ever to witness it, because, they claim, to see a severed limb instantaneously restored would destroy faith by pushing it into the realm of certainty.

That last comment is most interesting to me. In at least two other instances, I have seen that “out” used by claimants who fell back on it in desperation. One case involved the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and his Transcendental Meditation claim that his adepts can levitate their bodies through mind power. When we ask to witness this wonder, we are shown only a hilarious demonstration of TM-ERS hopping about on mats while in the “lotus” position. This is highly entertaining but nothing more than acrobatics of dubious value. The TM-ers insist that their people can actually levitate into the air and stay suspended there as well as zoom about like Peter Pan, but they refuse us that remarkable sight because, they say, if we were to know that levitation is a fact, we would not need to summon up the faith to blindly believe it, and faith is needed to perform levitation. Similarly, a now-unfrocked “psychic” named Uri Geller was pressed at one time by serious parapsychologists to submit to test conditions while he did such parlor tricks as bending spoons and deflecting compasses. He declined to do so, saying that if he were to pass their simple tests, his psychic powers would be definitely established and he would no longer be a controversial figure. As it turned out, he is no longer a controversial figure because he refused to be tested, and no responsible people in science now believe that he has any powers that a 12-year-old amateur conjuror does not have. George Bernard Shaw had a penetrating observation on almost every facet of human behavior. He, too, was bothered by the fact that no organic healing seemed to be taking place in the faith-healing business. His comment on the shrine of Lourdes was:All those canes, braces, and crutches and not a single glass eye, wooden leg, or toupee.