Faith Healing: The belief that sick, addicted, or “possessed” people can be supernaturally healed using prayer, faith, and/or the laying on of hands.
Is any sick among you? let him call for the elders of the church; and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord: And the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up; and if he have committed sins, they shall be forgiven him. Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much. (James 5:14-16 KJV)
Are you sick? Call the church leaders together to pray and anoint you with oil in the name of the Master. Believing-prayer will heal you, and Jesus will put you on your feet. And if you’ve sinned, you’ll be forgiven—healed inside and out. Make this your common practice: Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you can live together whole and healed. (James 5:14-16 The Message)
According to James 5:14-16, sick Christians should:
- Call for the elders/leaders of the church, asking them to pray over them and anoint them with oil in the name of Jesus
- If the elders/leaders of the church pray in faith, Jesus will heal the sick, restoring them to health
- If the sickness is due to sin, their sins will be forgiven
- This should be a common practice in Christian churches
Are you a Christian? Former Christian? Have you ever witnessed church elders/leaders anointing a sick church member with oil, praying over them, and the person was supernaturally healed? Some of us have, perhaps, witnessed this healing ritual, without healing taking place. I can’t think of one time when a sick Christian was supernaturally healed. Not-One-Time. Typically, clerics blame prayed-over sick people for their lack of healing. “You didn’t have enough faith,” sick/dying followers of Jesus are told. Wait a minute, the Bible says the healing of sick Christians is dependent on the faith of elders/church leaders, and NOT the faith of the sick.
Turn on Christian television — an oxymoron if there ever was one — and what do you find? Programming dominated by Evangelical/Charismatic/Pentecostal/Apostolic charlatans claiming they can supernaturally heal the sick by laying hands on and praying over them. This fake healing has filtered down to countless churches and pastors who week after week claim they are healing people in the name of Jesus.
Have you ever noticed how their practices never square with James 5:14-16; that healings never materialize; that when healings do occur, they are the result of very human medical intervention? If Jesus is indeed a prayer-answering, healing God, he sure is bad at his job. I would argue that MOST healings attributed to supernatural intervention can be attributed to human instrumentation or natural healing, and those few healings that seem to have no medical explanation are not enough for us to warrant giving credit to Jesus, the Great Physician. Not every recovery can be explained by science, but that doesn’t mean God — which God? — should get the credit. Unexplainable stuff happens, but that doesn’t mean we should praise a deity who hides from us for what happened. Sometimes, the answer is, “Hmm, I don’t know.”
Billions of Christians have lived and died since Jesus walked the shores of Galilee. Billions of sick, dying people of faith have desperately prayed — often for months and years — for Jesus to intervene in their lives, without success. Prayer may have a psychological benefit, but it doesn’t affect healing. By all means, pray if it comforts you or gives you hope. but when you find a lump in your breast or feel sharp pains in your chest, the only proper response is to either call 911 or see a doctor. It’s 2024. We no longer need to seek out shamans, witch doctors, homeopaths, or faith healers for healing. Doctors certainly aren’t the end-all, but they should be the first people we contact when sick. Pray if you must, but by all means, get that lump in your breast biopsied or get an EKG for the pain in your chest.
Last week, TD Jakes, an Apostolic megachurch pastor of The Potter’s House in Dallas, Texas, recently suffered a medical emergency while preaching. Jakes collapsed, 911 was called, and emergency medical personnel rushed him to a hospital where surgery was performed. Jakes has not said what caused the emergency, but it was serious enough to require immediate surgery and ICU care. Afterward, Jakes said, and I quote, “Many of you don’t realize you’re looking at a miracle. I faced a life-threatening calamity, was rushed to the ICU unit, I had emergency surgery. Survived the surgery.” Jakes later added, “I’m in good spirits, I feel good, no pain. I’m in peace and tranquility and I want you to know that I can feel your prayers.”
Did church elders pray over Jakes, anointing him with oil, believing in faith that Jesus would instantly heal Jakes so he could finish his sermon? Of course not. They dialed 911. No time for empty religious rituals; no time for anointing oil and prayers. In a lucid, rational moment, church leaders knew that Jakes needed immediate medical intervention lest their pastor die.
A miracle? Nope. Another win for science.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
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Hear hear! Great post Bruce, and one that mirrors what I’ve said on this subject. You have to be wilfully ignorant of history and science, completely and utterly unqualified in every conceivable way, to believe that faith healing is somehow a viable alternative to proven, verifiable medical practices. Unfortunately, as we both know, there are plenty of people out there so blinded by hate for science, they cannot and will not see the wood for the trees.
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I was raised on stories of miracle healing, particularly of my Uncle who was on crutches for a time of uncertain duration. Near our village on The Netherlands border with Belgium was and is a forgotten little chapel called Our Lady Of The Oaks (Ons Lieve Vrouw Ter Eiken) on the site of an ancient miraclulous appearance of the Virgin Mary. The chapel is said to have miracle power to heal like Lourdes, and like Lourdes, the healed left canes and crutches there. My Uncle reportedly walked miles daily on crutches to pray for healing. How long he did I never knew but he reportedly recovered and left his crutches there. Did that happen? It was a well known family story. My Uncle’s legs apparently recovered and he lived a normal ambulatory life. That area of the south Netherlands was solid Catholic then and miracle healing was believable even by the likes of my Father, a skeptic of religion, churches, and Priests. Whatever disabled my Uncle ran it’s course. Miracluous healing of a devout man dragging himself daily to the little chapel was believable in that time. Today, Catholic churches there are shut for lack of attendees and Mass, where still held is sparsely attended, mostly by elderly. The forgotten chapel is locked most of the time, tended by neighboring volunteers. I visited the chapel to give substance to the stories. Sure enough, crutches hung there and I wondered if they were my Uncle’s. The body heals itself of real maladies and the mind heals itself of imaginary maladies. Praying for miracles seems similar to what popular psychology calls affirmations. Talking one’s self into something in the form of prayer or otherwise, may change behavior. For a heart attack, better call the ambualnce and pray later.
While Catholicism doesn’t have a tradition of faith healing (that I’m aware of, anyway) as Evangelical Christians have, some Catholics go to sites like Lourdes in the hope of finding a “miracle” cure. The Catholic Church admits that there are very few such “miracles.” I wrote about it here: https://brucegerencser.net/2021/02/if-the-snow-doesnt-melt/
I’m not aware of Catholic faith healing of the sort we are treated to in recent times. The miracle chapels, grottos, saints and relics with supposed healing powers are nothing less than faith healing, albeit not by charismatic preachers.
The Christian flavor that I came out of believed in divine healing. My wife and I believed in the same. There was one area of prayer that we were 100% in. Every person we prayed for to be healed of an incurable, terminal disease, died of that disease. 100%. We lived, breathed, and preached divine healing. But I can’t think of a single time that unexplained, divine healing took place. I’ve heard many stories from older preachers saying they saw miracles, but they had no way to substantiate these claims.
I personally know at least three preachers (who were wonderful human beings and seemed to be full of love and faith) who believed in divine healing who died young of cancer while believing that they received their healing.
It would be nice if it were true. I’ve just never seen any evidence to show that it is.