The frightful experiences of the last war produced in many people bodily and spiritual results that place before doctors and pastors entirely new problems in their service to men. If they want to help in compassionate love, they can no longer pass by those so needy without a glance or thought. They must come to grips with the question to arrive at a helpful answer. This knowledge causes men and women of spiritual and intellectual life to attack the problems courageously. They have found a broad and unexplored land waiting to be dis covered. Paracelsus, a famous Swiss philosopher and physician of the sixteenth century, made this thought-provoking observation:
"He who would learn to know man must look at him as a whole and not as fragmentary and patch work. When one part o£ the human body is sick, one should seek the cause of the illness and not merely treat the outward symptoms."
Thurneysen seems to have grasped the thought of Paracelsus. He says:
"Sickness is often the bodily counterpart of a spiritual conflict. Therefore in any illness the physician must seek the unconscious spiritual grounds, otherwise he misses the truly human."
This knowledge is a part of the wealth of thought in the Word of God. The Bible re cords that not only is man a unity in his physical being but within him operate bodily powers created by God, which cannot be seen by the eye.
When the Creator made the first man His work was only completed as He breathed His breath of life into the cold clay. The man was equipped with intellect, soul, and a healthy body. Mind, soul, and body stood harmoniously in the closest relationship to one another. The most delicate processes of life in the human body were carefully ordained by the Creator. Nothing marred the unity and harmony in man's life.
It was sin that brought into disorder the body that God had so wonderfully prepared. The delicately ordered and invisible processes of life were disturbed. Degeneration set in, threatening all life until the present day. The purely physical end of this degeneration is death. God gives the body back to the earth. All processes in the body cease. Its relationships to the surrounding world are broken off. There are no relations between it and the living people who are around it.
The wise man sums up this knowledge in these words:
"The dead know not any thing, neither have they any more a reward; for the memory of them is forgotten. . . , Neither have they any more a portion for ever in any thing that is done under the sun" (Eccl. 9:5, 6).
With that, the problem of our physical life would be solved, from the standpoint of psychology and physiology. There would remain for us only to investigate the disturbed relation ships in the human body, in order, as far as it stands in our power, to help. That means help for the moment.
Many psychotherapists have developed special methods of treatment in the field of helping people who have nerve or soul sicknesses. All the reactions of patients seeking help are care fully recorded. These observations are then brought together, to form a picture of the inner conscious or unconscious happenings. Only then is the treatment begun. As a result, there is much more confidence shown by the patient in his physician than when mere medicines are used.
Why Is Not the Pastor Consulted?
At this point the questions arise for the pas tor: Why do most people in their need of help seek out the psychiatrist and not the pastor? Is it the fault of pastoral work? Has the pastor no message for the one in need of help? Or does the one seeking aid fear the whole truth about his own condition? Naturally, informed students of life know that there are severe emotional or organic neurological problems that must be left to the field of medical specialists, but early problems of adjustment through wrong attitudes frequently enter the pastoral field. We will concede that many preachers may be poor psychologists. They know too little of the processes in the human body. Perhaps they are not aware that behind physical and spiritual needs there is usually some hidden sin. The pastor must be acquainted with cause and effect, in order to make the message of God effective for the soul. Because the pastor does not understand, he may draw false conclusions, and the person in need of help may be harmed. How much ministers can learn from the Master! Again and again He looked into the depths of the soul, and then spoke His words that tenderly but with complete frankness uncovered the very condition of the soul.
Thus He carried on the conversation with the woman of Samaria. Cleverly He pointed to a kind of water that is living. Then unexpect edly He asked the woman, "Go, call thy husband, and come hither" (John 4:16). Her honest answer gave rise to an earnest personal conversation between Christ and the Samaritan woman. She became a witness for Christ. We ask ourselves: How did Christ know that the Samaritan woman had had five husbands and was living with the sixth man in concubinage? Did Christ as a man possess capabilities that we do not have? Had more been given Him by His Father? Or did Jesus Christ make use of all the possibilities of the pastor, to make them effective for His service on earth? Surely we must recognize that -the Lord was familiar with the knowledge of souls (John 2:24, 25). Besides that, He understood mankind, and could say in His sermon on the mount, "The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of-light. But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness" (Matt. 6: 22, 23). To all this was added that which the consecrated pastor must possess a delicate listen ing to the voice of Him who not only sees the body but with His glance penetrates into the most hidden part of man. Like the prophet Nathan, the pastor must let God speak to him before he goes to the man.
Here, I believe, is where our pastoral work suffers. The pastor is in that sense too little a prophet. God must use him more, and he must ask God more. In the Spirit of prophecy we have any proofs of how God uses a man to help a person in the church. But in pastoral work it is not only a matter of the spiritual and physical welfare of the one seeking help. The pastor must also have the experience of which Paul speaks: "The very God of peace sanctify you wholly; and I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the corning of our Lord Jesus Christ" (1 Thess. 5:23).
On the other hand, we should not fail to recognize that the heart is a stubborn thing. Many people ask advice from a nerve specialist, hoping to avoid contact with God. They feel that an encounter with God requires decisions. Because they do not understand their spiritual needs, they seek healing for their physical infirmities, and are satisfied with a partial treatment. They comfort themselves with the thought that next time one can go to the doctor, who may again find a way out for the moment. Bishop W. Stahlin writes:
"Every deeply penetrating psychology meets the observation that many false spiritual reactions and developments have their origin in the fact that men refuse to recognize the facts confronting them. They are constantly in flight away from reality in all kinds of theories and ideas. To express it with a Biblical picture, they try to hide themselves from the call of God through reality, behind the bushes of their own ideas." Der Weg zur Seele ("The Way to the Soul"), Van den Hoeck and Ruprecht Publishing House, Gottingen, 2d year, October, 1950, p. 19.
With these remarks Bishop Stahlin finds the kernel of the problem of pastoral work. Man wants to live separated from God, yet retain the enjoyment of all the privileges that were given to sinless man in Paradise. Thus he would like to hide reality from his eyes, in order to comfort himself with human opinions and help alone. Those are the realities with which the pastor has to deal. One must have a comprehensive knowledge and a believing trust in God to lead such straying people out of the wild underbrush of their theories and ideas. Therefore our prayer should daily be: "Lord, open the eyes of Thy servant, so that I may see. Open my ears and my heart also, that I may hear. And then, Lord Jesus, open my mouth, that I may know how to speak with weary souls at the right moment."