Editorial February 19, 1996 Issue

Healing, curing, and caring

William E. Moody

Are healing and curing synonymous terms? What is the relationship between healing and curing? I considered these questions from a different perspective after attending the symposium "Spirituality and Healing in Medicine"^{Conference sponsored by Harvard Medical School and The Mind/Body Institute, Deaconess Hospital, December 3–5, 1995, under the direction of Herbert Benson, M.D. See reports in the Sentinel, January 15, 1996, and in The Christian Science Journal, February 1996.} last December in Boston.

At this conference, it was encouraging to see the serious search for spiritual answers by so many people professionally engaged in caring for the sick and alleviating suffering. One issue that was brought up on several occasions was put forward not only by medical professionals but also by members of the clergy. It was suggested that while prayer and spiritual means can clearly be shown to bring significant healing to a patient, they may not always bring a cure. In other words, from this vantage point, spiritual healing is believed to be a force that does make an important difference in a person's life—the individual may consequently feel closer to God, more at peace, more forgiving, or gain a sense of deeper meaning and purpose to existence. Even so, such an approach to healing, some felt, shouldn't be expected to prove itself as a consistently reliable method for actually curing disease, or restoring broken bodies, or eliminating physical pain.

Perhaps this view of spiritual healing is held because the cure of disease through prayer is still believed by many to be in the realm of miracles; that is, it is thought to represent a random occurrence that one cannot reasonably expect to be repeated with confidence or accuracy. Or it may also be that those who have felt called to minister to the sick have personally witnessed so much tragic illness that it appears inescapable to them that "healing" must often be defined as something other than curing. From that basis, it would only seem natural to assume that no matter how fervently one petitions God for healing, if a cure isn't realized, then either the healing must be explained in different terms or God isn't hearing or isn't answering those prayers. One speaker at the conference, for example, who tenderly told of her husband's death from a terminal illness, also shared what she felt certain was the healing that had occurred—the peace and closeness to God he gained during his last months.

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