USC professor studies Faith Healing
I just read this interview on The State with a University of South Carolina Professor, Jane Teas, who studied role of faith in healing sick or injured people.
The interview of her study is interesting and highlights some of the tensions faith healing creates in the modern world. 4 years ago, if you did a search on the internet for healing and or miracles, you could barely find anything. Now the interest, tension and testimonies are rising more than expontialy. It seems everybody wants access to the Christian’s birthright and the children’s bread. After watching this for over 3 years I have begun to notice a pattern.
There are currently 3 debates going on in regards to faith healing:
- The number one debate on the internet about faith healing is: Athiest are commonly throughing down the challenge: ” Why doesn’t God heal amputees?”
- Then there is a myriad of Christian factions that debate whether healing is for today, or if it died with the apostles.
- Lastly and more diverse is the debate about the source of the healing. From reiki healers claiming to be Christian and healing diets to occult healers.
What I liked about this interview is that it highlighted another growing agenda within the athiest community. There seems to be an intellectual pursuit to disprove faith healing as legitimate and if not the healing the it’s source.
“The studies seemed to have a “gotcha” feel, as some kind of test for God to make God prove he existed. In my study, I merely wanted to listen to people who felt that God had healed them.”
Also I like the way she talked about our society’s tendancy to try to find something that matters in what we can measure because we often can’t measure what really matters. That the study of things that matter from a purely intellectual prusuit loses it’s value and so we seem to reduce it’s value even though it can be the most valuable.
“As a society, we are very good at categorizing ills and describing suffering, but peacefulness and equanimity have yet to be fully appreciated. As one of my professors at Harvard said, “We don’t know how to measure the things that matter, so we count the things we can and make them matter.” Our study gives a myriad of examples of things that matter, and by their examples, it may be possible to begin to understand how we might measure the essential meaning and fulfillment in life.”
Although this study wasn’t an exhaustive scientific study to prove an anti-athiest agenda either, the interview, and it seems the study, are a great look into the culture of faith healing, the people and ultimately into faith healing itself. Jane and her collegues intreviewed over 100 people about faith healing and published them in a book called: “Faith that Heals: Stories of God’s Love.”
I took the time to research the project and found it at the University of South Carolina as a published work. After looking at the paper, it seems to also have another agenda of diet related cures for cancer and other medical issues.
Original Interview