I love the Fox cartoon, “The Family Guy”. I know it’s crass and pokes fun at every type of person out there, but it makes me laugh. Last night’s episode was no different.
It took aim at Faith Healing, specifically Christian Science and their belief that prayer alone will heal. In the episode a couple who practices Christian Science had an infant with a treatable form of cancer. The couple exercised their right to not treat their son, but rather pray for healing. In the end, Lois, makes the statement that medicine is the answer to their prayers and the couple concedes to therapy.
I’ve sat in church enough to have heard this story time and again. I’ve also heard the sermon about the man in the flood who kept praying that “the Lord will save me” every time an emergency worker arrived to help him. But how can we agree with this when the proposed treatments are just as likely to harm, main or kill you as the diseases they treat.
Just this morning I spoke with a man who was telling me his mother’s doctor wants her on an arthritis medication that has a side effect of death. His response, “of course she won’t feel any pain, she’ll be dead.”
My response to the whole “my research is better than your faith” argument is this: 1. We all have a legal right to choose and your choice is not better than mine. The book I read says “Your faith has made you well” not “here take this pill; there is a 30% chance of it healing you and a 30% chance it’ll kill you, but do it anyway because that’s what the research says.” It distinctly says “Your FAITH has made you well.” 2. Research constantly changes and in five or ten years (After they’ve made their billions of dollars) new research will come out and say how bad the pill is for you… be patient. 3. I have yet to read a physiology textbook that said the body is incapable of healing without drugs. In fact they go into great detail describing all of the chemical reactions that take place in healing. They describe all of the awe-inspiring events that take place so we can be well and recover if we need to.
If you are going to take the “God has already answered your prayers” position, know that you are right in that He already gave us everything we need and it’s inside of us. It was there upon our inception and creation and will be there in our bodies until the day we die. It is there regardless of medicine. Keep the faith.
