Editorial November 12, 2018 Issue

Why spiritual healing?

Chet Manchester

In an age where medical care is apparently more accessible and more sophisticated than ever before, why would someone be interested in spiritual healing as Jesus practiced it and as Christian Science carries it forward today? Why pray about a health issue when this often requires so much more of an individual than simply letting a doctor do the work or leaning on one’s health care insurance for medical treatment?

I grew up in a family where my dad’s best friend was an M.D. and my mom was studying Christian Science, so I gained firsthand knowledge of both approaches to healing. I felt a real love, and still do, for the physician who cared for me and my siblings when my dad wanted us to have medical care. But I also learned early on that doctors didn’t have all the answers and that there was much more to healing than pills. For example, when I had a bad case of strep throat, our family physician prescribed penicillin and bed rest. Two very painful weeks later, I returned to school and to my basketball team, but it took another two weeks before I was really back to myself.

When the same condition recurred the next winter, I turned to a friend of my mom’s who was a Christian Science practitioner. She didn’t check my temperature or ask about my body. She simply helped me understand more about God’s boundless love for me and my inseparability from this love. I recall feeling fear drain away as she prayed for me, replaced by a closeness to God I had never known before. When I leaped out of bed the next day, I was not just well: I felt different inside—less fearful, less vulnerable to disease. And I felt a deep desire to know more about God and about myself as God’s loved, spiritual, disease-free image and likeness. I had glimpsed the deeper “why” of spiritual healing.

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Bible Lens—November 12–18, 2018