Editorial November 10, 1986 Issue

Weighing the evidence of spiritual healing

Michael D. Rissler

Weighing evidence is often perplexing. When the final decision bears upon large questions of human welfare, sifting through evidence can be a lonely endeavor. And often an honest person willing to do such work has to fight against feelings of being all alone.

But when we turn to the Scriptures, we see that many spiritual breakthroughs and revelations came in moments of solitude. Moses found God alone in a desert. Jacob, without others looking on, wrestled with the deepest issues of his life, with his conscience, and with years of decisions in order to obtain God's blessing and his own peace of mind. Elijah, hated and scorned, prayed for death as an escape when no one was there to give comfort or sympathy, but instead he found God and renewal in his solitary exile.

One finds the same kind of experience repeated in the life of Christ Jesus and his disciples. Human, physical aloneness is often the matrix within which spiritual discovery is born. This solitude does not isolate a man or woman from God or from others. Instead, the time spent alone becomes a means by which the individual can learn to silence the opposing testimony of the material senses that would argue the alienation of man from God, divine Life and Love.

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