THREE MODELS OF HEALING

A while ago, my younger brother Bruce drove himself to the hospital with a severely infected appendix. He drove himself because he doesn’t understand the concept of contraception. Let me explain. At the time, Bruce had four children, all under the age of six. As you can imagine, there was no getting this crowd up and dressed at four in the morning for something as silly as a ruptured appendix. So, because of his galloping fertility, he ended up driving solo to surgery.

As I was thinking about him the next day, it occurred to me that during his hospital­ization and recovery he would deal with three distinct yet interre­lated modes of healing.

The first, and by far the most immediate, is the mechanical mode of healing. This is surgery to remove the infected tissue. No intelli­gent person would disagree that this is a necessary and helpful tool in this situation. As young surgeons in training we are taught, “When in doubt, cut it out!” Before surgery and anesthesia was rendered relatively safe, many died from rupture of the appendix and subsequent sepsis. So utiliz­ing the mechanical healing model is highly effective and desirable in this scenario.

The second mode of healing that is available to Bruce is mind-body healing, the mental mode. This is healing that is influenced by how we think, feel, and believe. Unfortunately many Christians have incorrectly associated this type of healing with various “New Age” philoso­phies, so they have an unfounded bias in accepting the legiti­macy of this healing tool. God designed this relationship between mind and body as part of His perfect plan for our healthy existence. We are much more than just our physical bodies. For example, how you feel about an illness can dramatically affect its course. There is a new branch of science called psychoneuroimmunology that studies how thoughts and emotions impact your immune system. It has been scientifically proven that emotions such as anxiety and anger can actually decrease the function of white blood cells, your body’s defense against disease. So, how stressed Bruce is, how much faith he has in his surgeon, and his belief about his own state of health all can impact his healing.

The third mode of healing that I envision for Bruce is the heal­ing power of prayer, the spiritual mode. To date this has not been as scientifically validated as the first two modes,…as it will not need be… yet I firmly believe its role is just as powerful and effective as the other two. In fact, it pre­dates the other two as a healing tool. Prayer has long been associ­ated with healing, and it is only recently that this unnatural separation has developed. For thousands of years the healer in a community was often also the religious leader. There was an acknowledgement of the dualistic nature of health: physical and spiritual. With the advent of the Enlightenment and the age of reason, science began to separate from faith. Science measured the observable and faith dealt with the unobservable. Through the years this chasm has widened to the point now where, for many, there is an impenetrable demarcation separating science and religion. This is unfortunate,…and unnecessary… but there are signs of change on the horizon.

These three approaches, biomechanical, mind-body, and spirit are not exclusive to one another. They work best to achieve healing when they work together. The wise person is the one who doesn’t focus on only one mode but embraces all the gifts and graces that are given so freely. It is impossible to be totally healed without some influence from each area: the biomechanical, the mental, and the spiritual.