For many, Gabrielle Giffords' recovery from an assassin's bullet has been nothing short of miraculous. Her case highlights how healing involves the spirit as much as medicine. For too long the role of the spirit in healing has been denigrated as nothing but a "placebo effect." But recent studies suggest that placebo healing is real, and understanding it may shed light on how healers of the ancient past, such as Jesus, had such powerful positive effects on those around them.
Two recent reviews of the placebo effect (Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, 52, p. 518; Lancet, 375: 686) argue forcefully for the scientific legitimacy of this form of mind-body healing. While its effectiveness can vary, and unquestionably it has limitations, placebo healing is neither imaginary nor miraculous. Instead, it is where the social context of treatment plays a critical role in unleashing the body's natural healing and pain-coping mechanisms. So important is the social context that one review argues that the term "placebo effect" is better understood as "interpersonal healing."
Two factors are central in creating the healing social context: (1) the quality of the interaction between the patient and caregiver and (2) the strength of the patient's beliefs and expectations about the efficacy of the treatment being administered. Thus, placebo healing is most likely to occur when a doctor conveys genuine empathetic concern for the patient and when the patient is convinced that the treatment offered is an effective one. In addition to these two factors, the role of ritual in treatment also looms large in promoting placebo healing. For example, the simple repetitive act of taking a pill (even an inert one) can reduce symptom severity, and more frequent (inert) pill-taking produces even greater symptom relief.
The reviews also emphasize the fact that both healing and physical aliment have different aspects. Healing consists of both natural healing and technical healing. Natural healing refers to the body's own healing response to infection or trauma, such as the immune system fighting off a virus. Technical healing refers to the full array of medical and surgical interventions used to treat various ailments. Similarly, disease and illness compose two distinct aspects of any physical ailment or disorder. Disease refers to the physical processes responsible for one's symptoms. Illness refers to the patient's personal and social experience of those symptoms. Disease affects the body; illness affects the person. All of these aspects are inter-related and contribute to the overall experience of being sick or injured. For example, the stigma attached to certain diseases (AIDs for example) can make one a social outcast. This social rejection can dampen the immune system, exacerbating symptoms and rendering medical interventions less effective.
These findings are relevant to the ongoing debates about Jesus as a healer. University of Heidelberg (Germany) New Testament scholar Gerd Theissen has recently presented an analysis of Jesus' healings that dovetails nicely with what modern research tells us about the placebo effect (see his chapter in the book The Problem of Ritual Efficacy, 2010, Oxford Press). First off, Theissen rejects all arguments that Jesus' healings are inauthentic. Some scholars have contended that the historical Jesus performed no "miraculous" healings -- these were added much later in an attempt to bolster his messianic credentials. Theissen finds no convincing evidence of this. The Jewish Messiah was not necessarily expected to perform miracles, he contends, and the earliest accounts of Jesus assume miraculous deeds. Thus, the notion that they were added later is unfounded.
So if Jesus was a healer, how did he do it? Theissen points to two unique properties of Jesus' healings. First, unlike most traditional healers of the ancient world, Jesus consistently emphasized faith as critical to healing -- both the faith of the one being healed as well as the faith of those around him or her. For example, consider the blind men healed in Matthew 9:29 or the companions of the paralytic who lower their friend from the roof so that Jesus could heal him (Mark chapter 2). In both cases, Jesus remarks specifically on how the faith of either the ones being healed (the blind men) or of the healed person's companions (the paralytic) was responsible for the healing itself. Furthermore, where faith is absent so is healing power. In the sixth chapter of Mark, Jesus is said to have been unable to perform "mighty work" because of the peoples' unbelief.
Second, and again in contrast to most traditional healers, Jesus used only a small, highly personalized set of ritual actions when healing. Typically when healing, Jesus did not invoke elaborate prayers or call down powerful forces, nor did he employ potions or instruments. Instead, his ritual elements were simple and personal: he took the sick person aside, touched the person or whispered in his or her ear. Jesus' use of simplified and personalized ritual actions heighted the intimacy between himself and the sick person. In short, faith and intimacy are the hallmarks of Jesus' healing.
These hallmarks create exactly the context modern research tells us is critical to placebo healing. Furthermore, unless one pleads for miracles, it is unlikely that Jesus' actions had any direct effect on the person's disease. Instead, Jesus was addressing illness -- how the person experienced their ailment. But by positively affecting the person's illness, this may very well have unleashed natural healing forces that positively affected the person's disease. This was not charlatanism or late-night "hour of power" phoney-baloney. Real healing happened here.
By calling Jesus' healing "placebo healing," is its impact diminished? Are we explaining away the miraculous and thereby (in the eyes of the Christian) questioning Jesus' divinity? Some may see it this way. But is it not also the case that seeing Jesus' healing in this way intensifies his humanity -- an equally important and often neglected dimension of who Jesus was.
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Placebo Effect - The Healing Power of Placebos
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Isaiah 29:18
In that day the deaf will hear the words of the scroll, and out of gloom and darkness the eyes of the blind will see. (NIV)
Isaiah 35:5-6
5 Then will the eyes of the blind be opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped. 6 Then will the lame leap like a deer, and the mute tongue shout for joy. Water will gush forth in the wilderness and streams in the desert. (NIV)
Isaiah 61:1 (LXX)
The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is on me, because the LORD has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness the blind, (NIV)
The Gospels often show Jesus "healing" in public settings -- the paralytic you adduce was healed in the midst of a public debate in front of a crowd. It would also be well to note that some healings are clearly magical -- did the fellow with slashed ear in Luke have the worst case of hysterical ear loss ever? And Lazarus.
Finally, highly personalized healings were the norm in the brisk trade in magical and healing amulets, for example.
Michael
Wikipedia:
A placebo (Latin: I shall please) is a sham or simulated medical intervention that can produce a (perceived or actual) improvement, called a placebo effect.
Interventions described above are not shams.
Some might respond differently to that general ritual than others. some'll respond better to a doctor being a distant-seeming authority, some more like along the lines of the caregiving type (Probably health care needs more experienced nursing, in particular, they're often the ones that really end up doing the interpreting for the patients)
There's a skillset there, though: one that probably doesn't get enough attention.
The 'placebo effect' can indeed be a powerful ally, (As well as a powerful problem in verifying the efficacy of modern drugs, the effect is charted to be getting stronger, and in the case of some medications, I suspect that they *rely* on the placebo effect for the chemical portions to work, just while we're throwing pet theories around. :) )
The same, I'd say, goes for a lot of spirit effects: (skeptics, bear with me a minute: the point is 'anthropological.') often shamanic type healings and elaborate ceremonies primarily function to manage the cognitive processes involved (both for patient and practitioner and often community:) Sometimes you need that, and sometimes you don't. Sometimes, less is more, even. ;)
Exclusivist claims about something so basic don't wash: Where I've worked some of this stuff (Call it 'miracles?' :)) For modern setical minds, I'd often play Pennandteller about the dramatic bits afterwards. Cause body, spirit, and psyche aren't separate. :)
Nowadays we can apply the approach towards medicine by just making the trappings of medicine warmer and fuzzier.
Everest Metro Police Chief Dan Vergin said Madeline Neumann died Sunday.
"She got sicker and sicker until she was dead," he said.
Vergin said an autopsy determined the girl died from diabetic ketoacidosis, an ailment that left her with too little insulin in her body, and she had probably been ill for about 30 days, suffering symptoms like nausea, vomiting, excessive thirst, loss of appetite and weakness.
The girl's parents, Dale and Leilani Neumann, attributed the death to "apparently they didn't have enough faith," the police chief said.
They believed the key to healing "was it was better to keep praying. Call more people to help pray," he said.
There are more stories like this one. When will people learn?
Doubtful that he could actually heal the truly blind or the paralyzed. But it would seem that hysterical blindness could quite easily be cured by this method.
The dialogue between the scribes and Jesus is classic Cynic construction, of which the writer of Mark was fond.
Another literary aspect of the paralytic is that the paralytic is of course an allegorical stand-in for Jesus himself, the house being the tomb (note the verb used, "dug out") and the cure of paralysis representing Jesus risen from the grave. Each of the original miracles in GMark relate to some aspect of the resurrection. Neil Godfrey, who runs the excellent blog Vridar, is one source of this realization.
At the level of GMark's narrative, it parallels the Elijah-Elisha cycle in the Old Testament. Hence the drawing of the tale from Elijah. For more on that, see The Crucial Bridge.
It is sad in a way; by insisting on historicity, New Testament analysts fail to both understand the text in all its richness, and to give full credit to the writer of Mark, one of history's most influential novelists, whose text was copied by everyone from the writer of Matthew to the writers of Slaughterhouse-Five and The Stars My Destination.
Michael
"A man who could only move one finger of his hand came to the god as a suppliant. When he saw the votive tables in the sanctuary he did not believe in the cures and made fun of the inscriptioÂns. In his sleep (in the sanctuary) he had a vision. It seemed to him that as he was playing dice in the room under the temple and was about to throw the god appeared, jumped on his hand, and stretched out his fingers. When he had stepped off, he saw himself bend his hand and stretch out each finger on its own; when he had stretched them all out straight the god asked him whether he still did not believe the votive tablets, and he said no. "Because before you had no faith in them, though they were worthy of belief, your name in future shall be Apistos,' said the god. When day came he emerged from the sanctuary cured."(p3Â14)
Pistos, of course, means Faith.
Michael Turton
with material drawn from my historical commentary on Mark
http://wwwÂ.michaeltuÂrton.com/MÂark/GMark0Â2.html
i've suggested that healing is from the level of the vaccum wave functional
a phenomenon of faith acting as an automatic prayer which takes the mind to the transcendental field of pure creative intelligence deep within body brain,
ultimately the unified field
John Hagelin refers to transcendental meditation as unified-field-based health care
Christ is the embodiment of the kingdom of heaven which is Planck scale level, the unified field
so his presence acts as a transducer connectiing the sick person through Him to that persons own unified field, the omnipresent
the unifie dfield being th eorigin or home of all laws of nature restores natural orderliness literally reverses the entropy which is what disease is; unified field is zero entropy, immortal perrfect order[incorruptability] negative entropy
Christ's ressurection is from this same reality.
to maintain ahealthy society not just pollution needs to be reduced prevented but also a great faith needs to be maintained so that negativity doesnt cause opposite of placebo healing
in the middle ages the positive effect of faith in Christ healing presence had been neutralized by " faith' in the devil
these days we call that stress stress acts like the devil
for better life then learn TM tm.org to rediuce stress and create deeper connection to the unified field, the kingdom of heaven within you,the Tao, Samadhi, unbounded field of Satchitananda, the joy of the divine immanent
Matthew 8:17(NIV) - Jesus took up our infirmities and carried our diseases.
Hebrews 13:8(NIV) - Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever.
John 14:12(NKJV) - Most assuredly, I(Jesus) say to you, he who believes in me, the works that I do he will do also.
www.deathandlife.org/healing.html
MK 1:32-34 Jesus healed many (but not all).
However, placing hope in a god to heal an illness was not something miraculous during the time that Jesus lived, nor was it unique to Jesus' methods. In fact, this was practically the only form of popular medicine the ancient people knew: call upon a god, burn some incense, and hope he/she/it hears you.