Comments on: Faith healing that works

By: kim

kim — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 23:17:39 +0000

Perhaps faith healing works for conditions that are faith based? I have heard that the only thing that can really stop alcoholism is spiritual growth. Perhaps your friend’s experience of the pain leaving his heart induced enough spiritual growth to cure the alcoholism? Maybe your father’s back pain had a spiritual derivation?
I guess I must be something of a Process Theologist, thinking “God” doesn’t manipulate the physical world, only the spiritual one….

By: Trouble

Trouble — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 21:23:17 +0000

community, compassion, gratitude are components of the intercessory healing event. those are the positives. the downside is in the popular idea that those who aren’t healed have a bigger problem than the affliction. they don’t have faith, they are sinners not worthy of healing until they repent, or that god wants them to endure the affliction as part of a bigger and holy plan.

part of my prejudice is that these hands on healing scenes make me very uncomfortable. there may be a value in them to the 1% that embrace the effect, but at what cost for the other 99%?

By: Kevin

Kevin — Mon, 22 Jan 2007 20:37:49 +0000

I think that somehow Unitarian, being the hyper-rationalists that we are, have lost sight of the fact there is an element of the spiritual, the unexplainable.

I certainly see myself as a theist, but more in the old school Unitarian school of Emerson/Thoreau/Dickens.

I believe in the oversoul.

About the sermon–

I think that the placebo effect works. Religion is the opiate of the masses, as Marx said. But these days, opium is the religion of the masses. And this is the paradox that Unitarian Universalism finds itself in.

By: CP

CP — Mon, 22 Jan 2007 04:58:42 +0000

It’s a strange thing – desperation. It can really bring people together. In that way, desperation can fuel healing, by breaking down boundaries that exist when people are not desperate. But, this cannot be the only way that healing occurs. It is only one way. I feel like this is the only way that some people know how to heal – by being brought to their knees in the face of adversity. By having the wind knocked out of them. Well, the wind doesn’t always come knocking. Sometimes people need healing not from an overwhelming tragedy, but from things like loneliness, pride, self-pity or self-loathing. We shouldn’t be so reactive. That is, we shouldn’t wait for tragedy to strike before healing. We should be proactive healers – taking care to tend to the needs of the everyday that people have. These needs so often go unfulfilled.