Healing and Prayer, part 5

Asking questions doesn’t weaken our faith; it strengthens and affirms it. This is not about proving or disproving prayer. …I have trouble doing long di­vision; therefore, I’m not about to try to fully understand the mystery of prayer…. It is about demonstrating the awesome power and grace of the Creator in providing this glorious tool for us to employ. Faith does not lend itself easily to scientific scrutiny, nor should it. By definition faith involves unproven …by logic… and unseen beliefs. Dr. Larry Dossey, a Texas internist who has written extensively on the healing power of prayer, said, “When we test prayer we are not storming heaven’s gates. These studies can be sacred reverent exercises. Testing prayer can actu­ally be a form of worship, a ritual in which we express our gratitude for this remarkable phenomenon.” (1)

The burden is on science to demonstrate the power of prayer. I know by faith prayer is answered; can science confirm that? Understand that science, by its nature, cannot conclusively prove or disprove faith issues. You may ask, if faith is independent of science, then why bother? It is worth analysis for many reasons, but one important consequence is its evangelistic application. There are many people that speak the language of science that would never open the door to the Gospel unless it was presented in terms they could understand. A missionary in Japan would not be very effective unless she spoke Japanese. These studies allow the Good News to be presented in a way that is understood by many from scientific, skeptical, or secular backgrounds.

The person suffering from chronic pelvic pain is a patient that most gynecologists dread, mainly because the etiology of the pain is both difficult to identify and troublesome to treat. A competent physician starts with the assumption that the pain really exists. The problem is confidently identifying the source of the pain with available methods. Trouble often arises when readily available techniques fail to elicit a pain etiology. At times I have found myself in this situation thinking, “Well, if I can’t identify the pain source, then the pain must be in her head.” No, I just can’t explain it given my current knowledge and technology. The same ap­plies to prayer. We know prayer works by our faith. If science validates that, good for science. If it falls short, the problem is with science, not faith. The fallacy of our post enlightenment age is that many people believe faith and science aren’t compatible. The evidence is overwhelming that this is not the case.

If we are going to study prayer, how are we going to define it? How do you measure prayer? What is a good outcome and what is not? These and other issues must be critically evaluated by anyone attempting to assess the scientific evidence for prayer. This is not bringing God into the laboratory; it is bringing the laboratory to God. It is not a simple, straightforward exercise, but one with many twists and turns that can derail even the best research design.