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#09. Church
healing
(posted 16 February 2001)
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From:
"Eddie Miller"
Date:
Wed, 14 Feb 2001
Dear
Discussion,
When
attending services at 'charismatic' churches one notes the amount of
driving out of demons that accompany healing.
Whilst
I do not deny the existence of demons it was interesting to read the
following in 'A BASIC INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT' edited by
Robert C Walton:
'The
idea that many illnesses were caused by demons was very common. The
diseases themselves were spoken of as a 'spirit of leprosy', an
'asthma spirit', a 'spirit of heart disease', and the like.
Some
healed by Jesus showed symptoms of madness (eg Mark 5:5) and here it
might be good for us to treat the disturbed person in the gentle way
suggested by James 5:13 to 15.
One
may wonder if Ecclesiastes 10:20 does not suggest a belief in
'psychic phenomena' as it says, "Curse not the king, no not in
thy thought; and curse not the rich in thy bedchamber: for a bird of
the air shall carry the voice, and that which hath wings shall tell
the matter."
Listening
to church members I was struck by how freely they talked of
spiritual phenomena, 'hearing things', etc., and I thought of how
differently psychiatry would often view this (perhaps classify them
as mad).
For
this and other reasons various churches are participating in a
petition aimed at giving a priest more say in the diagnosis of
psychiatric patients.
Churches
can e-mail me at edmiller@isat.co.za
for the petition.
Thanks
Eddie
Miller
From: Werner
van <wernervdw@yahoo.com>
Date: Fri,
24 Aug 2001
Subject:
Response to "healing in churches"
I
must disagree with the notion of giving priests a say in diagnosis
of psychiatric disorders. Considerable medical and psychotherapeutic
training is required to make a diagnosis. Istead, why don't priests
and psychiatrists work together as a team in case where this may be
appropriate, each being competent in his own field of practice? All
people who are troubled in some way require a holistic approach to
healing, this includes spiritual as well as psychological
intervention. If psychiatrists were to allow priests to intrude on
their field of practice, would priests allow psychiatrists and
psychologists to intrude on their field of expertise so easily?
Werner
From:
"Eddie Miller" <mathed@isat.co.za>
Date:
Thu, 18 Oct 2001
Subject:
Psychiatry and church healing
Dear
Discussion,
I
do tend to agree with the sentiments expressed by Werner (response
to healing in churches) and that priests should not be allowed to
override a psychiatrists opinion in various cases, BUT if the
psychiatric profession is allowed too much power is there not
potential for enormous problems?
To
illustrate , may I give information from an article in the DAILY
NEWS of 7 Feb 1991 ( this is a Durban Newspaper)?
An
experiment was conducted in the 1970s in which eight pseudo-patients
were submitted to a mental institution. They gained admittance to 12
different hospitals. Except in one case the diagnosis was
schizophrenia and each was discharged with a diagnosis of
schizophrenia "in remission". An institution which doubted
this research was then informed that one or more pseudo patients
would attempt to be admitted into the psychiatric institution.
Forty-one out of 193 patients were alleged "with high
confidence" to be pseudo patients - in fact no pseudo patient
had presented himself.
The
Reader's Digest of April 1993 (A Habit That's Hard to Kick) points
out how much overprescribing of tranquillizers there is and says that
these pills have been associated with violence, child abuse and petty
crime (do they dampen the conscience along with anxiety?). In this
regard, from what I have heard, tranquillizers can remove inhibitions
concerning sexual morality and I would be interested to know if
others have heard about or observed this.
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us your
comments for posting to this page.
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