Does Good Religion Include Good Health?

1. Healing Involves the Whole Man

A SURVEY of the Gospels indicates that Jesus spent more time in healing the sick than He did in preaching. Why? Was it not because He recognized that spiritual healing and restoration involves every phase of man's being— physical, mental, social, and spiritual? Not only does good religion help promote good health but we are learning that good health promotes good religion.

The Holy Spirit can communicate with us only through the physical mechanism of our brain nerves. Any thing that interferes with the physio logical functioning of the brain can in turn interfere with our ability to communicate with God. Thus good religion and good health go hand in hand.

God's desire that His people enjoy total health is expressed in 3 John 2: "Beloved, I wish above all things that thou mayest prosper and be in health." Actually, however, this theme forms a continuous thread running throughout the Scriptures. Right at the beginning the Bible tells us that God made man out of the dust of the earth and breathed into him the breath of life, and man became a living soul.

There is no dichotomy in the Bible between body and spirit. The Hebrews viewed these dimensions as a God-given unity rather than the dichotomy we so often hear of today. Body and spirit were combined to make a living, thinking human being.

Jesus understood this. When his friends brought the paralytic to Jesus they took the sick man up to the roof top because they couldn't get through the doorway jammed with people. From that vantage point they lowered him through the ceiling into the very presence of Jesus. The first thing Jesus did was to forgive the man's sins. Then came healing.

The assurance of God's approval pro motes physical health. When a man knows that he is right with God, his soul is fortified against doubt, perplexity, and even excessive grief. These emotions have a lot to do with much illness prevailing today. If we are to make man healthy and whole we must minister to both body and soul.

2. "Nice Guys DIE Last"

Health is not limited merely to a good functioning liver, rich red blood, bulging muscles, strong bones, smooth skin, and a cooperative stomach. These are vital, but they are only part of the picture. A calm, serene spirit is just as essential to health as properly functioning organs. That is why trust in divine power is the ultimate medicine for a tired, nervous, frustrated human being. Medical research tends to substantiate this.

At Johns Hopkins University it has been found that people who attend church have fewer illnesses than those who do not. It is even suggested that peace of mind and release from tensions may be the major factors for fewer heart attacks among people who attend church, as compared with those who do not. ¹

Leo Durocher is often quoted as having remarked, "Nice guys finish last!" Paraphrasing this for our purposes, we might put it this way, based on several studies that substantiate the results discovered at Johns Hopkins, "Nice guys die last!"

There is no question but that a per son's mental attitude has a great deal to do with his state of health and well-being. An individual has a wonderful source of strength when he believes that there is a loving Father in heaven who cares for him. This is what trust in divine power will do for you. It not only prevents illnesses from arising; it is the power you need to make the right choices in taking care of your body.

The one ingredient vital to the success of any new resolve is motivation.

Did you know that we now have evidence, compiled by the United States Public Health Service, that when an individual decides to stop smoking be cause of religious or moral convictions he is virtually assured of success and will not go back to smoking? This was discovered by a two-year follow-up study of ex-smokers. A report on this study states, "The expression of moral reasons for quitting was found to be a 'perfect predictor' of successful abstinence." ²

Anyone who has gone through the throes of stopping smoking or drinking can tell you he needs all the help he can get. He needs motives more powerful than any he can muster on his own. The unaided human will is virtually powerless against the temptations that destroy health of body and mind. That is where trust in divine power comes in.

Here is a wonderful promise for those who find temptation assailing them: "There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it" (1 Cor. 10:13).

Church people do have an advantage, for they accept as their motivating power a strong belief in God. They feel that they have an obligation to render God their body in as healthy a condition as possible.

"What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God's" (1 Cor. 6:19, 20).

3. Need to Return to Biblical Concept

In spite of the clear Biblical evidence that God is interested in our physical well-being, and the facts outlined above, which demonstrate that religion is important to good health, somewhere along the line the Christian church began to emphasize the spiritual nature of man while paying little or no attention to his physical nature. In much of Christendom today the need for maintaining good health through proper care of the body is placed on the back burner.

Many competing philosophies in the world that surrounded the church during its period of development contributed to our current lack of emphasis on the physical. For instance, the early Christian church took the attitude that the Roman and Grecian ways of life pampered and indulged the body at the expense of the soul. So intense was the reaction of the church to this philosophy that an overreaction to this way of life led to the opposite error. By the time of the Middle Ages it was considered immoral to view even one's own body; therefore, people seldom bathed, and wore notoriously dirty garments.³

Plato is linked with the idea that the body is the prison from which the soul must deliver itself. Cullmann summarizes the philosophy of Plato in this respect as follows: "Now, it must be granted that in Greek thought there is also a very positive appreciation of the body. But in Plato the good and beautiful in the corporeal are not good and beautiful in virtue of corporeality but rather, so to speak, in spite of corporeality: the soul, the eternal and the only substantial reality of being, shines faintly through the material. The corporeal is not the real, the eternal, the divine. It is merely that through which the real appears—and then only in debased form." ⁴

The philosopher Plotinus, who lived in the third century A.D., is recognized as the founder of a school of thought that revived some of Plato's concepts into a system known as Neoplatonism. This movement had its influence on the developing Christian church.

Not only did the dualistic concept creep into the early church from the influence of the Platonic tradition of the Greeks but the Eastern philosophy of Gnosticism also seems to have had a significant part in its adoption into Christianity.

With its promise of salvation by release from bodily existence and its insistence that in this life we are to repress or ignore the body, Gnosticism was denounced as a heresy by church theologians, but "its influence did not die with its condemnation." Dawe adds: "Gnosticism continued to have a subtle and distorting influence on much of Christendom for centuries to come. In 529 Justinian closed the medical schools of Athens and Alexandria at the promptings of Church men. In 1215 Innocent III condemned surgery. In 1248 dissection and the study of anatomy were pronounced sacrilegious." ⁵

Paul's writings demonstrate Jewish tradition rather than Greco-Roman thought, even though he seems to have been thoroughly conversant with the latter. The body is not the prison house of the soul. Instead, Paul states: "I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, accept able unto God, which is your reasonable service." ⁶ To the Corinthians he ad dresses the rhetorical question: "What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God's."⁷

In spite of Paul's use of Greek terms that can easily be misunderstood in the light of their common meaning in his day, Paul remains psychologically what he calls himself, a "Hebrew of the He brews." Some ascribe a sense of Platonic dualism to his use of the term "flesh," sarx. In 2 Corinthians 6:14-7:1, Paul exhorts the Corinthian Christians to cleanse the flesh as well as the spirit from all defilement. This could not be done if the "flesh" were essentially evil. Paul's use of the word flesh in Romans has led to a misunderstanding of his position. Particularly Romans 5 and 7 stress the sinfulness and weakness of the "flesh." He views, as H. Wheeler Robinson points out, the flesh as having become the weak and corrupted instrument of sin, and weak and fallen flesh cannot inherit the kingdom of God. But through Christ and the work of the Holy Spirit, man can be delivered from the power of sin established in the flesh even in the present life, and the "fruits of the Spirit" (Gal. 5:22-25) give evidence that the transformation has taken place. ⁸

The anthropology of the New Testament is far removed from the Greek, even though the writers use the Greek language. The words soma, psuche, and pneuma, although the same as those used by the Greek philosophers, certainly are not to be understood from the point of view of Greek thought. The term soma designates the human person in its totality, including the psychic and spiritual function of the corporeal reality. Bultmann suggests that in a number of Pauline passages the term soma can be translated purely and simply by "I".⁹

As Zurcher points out, one must revert to the corresponding Hebrew terms, nephesh and ruach, in order to understand the Biblical usage of the words psuche and pneuma. Their meaning is also quite different than that which is given by the Greek philosophers. Concerning psuche Zurcher states that its Biblical usage "indicates man in his manifestations of living being, but the purely biological and naturalistic sense is generally superseded. Here again, psuche designates most often human life as it is the individual life of a conscious and willing subject. In other words, as for nephesh, the idea of psuche embraces the total man, the entire human personality, the individual being in his perfect unity." ¹⁰

The Greek word pneuma, he states, is used in the metaphysical sense to designate one of the constitutive elements of the human being, but is also used in a general way to designate the complete manifestation of man in spiritual or intellectual form as well as of the manifestation of a person in his totality. Christian anthropology, then, affirms the perfect and indissoluble unity of man. But it does also show that the body is to the soul what "the out side of the cup and of the platter" is "to an interior." The "inside" as well as the "outside" is the work of God, and the "exterior man" is never more than the expression of the "interior man." He sees no trace of dualism in this concept.

A combination of dualism in the Platonic tradition of the Greeks, an abhorrence of sensual Roman life, and the influence of Gnosticism on the interpretation of Scripture brought into the Christian church a divided view of man, which led Christians to place a low value on the importance of hygiene and physical fitness. Much of the death and suffering blamed on "the will of God" by Christians through the ages should instead be attributed to their disregard of the principles of health and hygiene revealed in the Old Testament Scriptures and also revealed in Christ's ministry and the teachings of Paul in the New Testament. Instead of continuing to follow tradition and place unwarranted emphasis on the spiritual to the almost total exclusion of the physical, should not the church and its ministry today recognize, as Christ and Paul did, the need for a blended, integrated ministry to the needs of the whole person?

4. The Healing Team Today

There is an increasing awareness that science alone has not been able to meet the health needs of the individual, particularly in the areas of prevention of illness and permanent correction of emotional problems. Sickness and disease in our modern world have been complicated by the social and ethical issues of our time. Many physicians are turning again to clergymen to secure their cooperation in areas that are beyond the realm of clinical practice and scientific expertise.

An article in the American Medical News surveys some of the current at tempts to put this growing emphasis on medical-ministerial cooperation into practice. It tells of Dr. Richard Maybin's search for a physician's assistant to help in his practice in southwestern North Carolina. He had begun to realize that much of his time was spent with people who merely wanted to talk or needed counseling. Recognizing that it was important to his patients' total health to receive this kind of care, but this was not specifically what he was trained to do, he invited a minister, Ben Davis, to join him in providing a "community approach" to his medical practice. Dr. Maybin feels that he has had more time for accomplishing what he was trained to do, and the two men have gained a reputation of joint concern for all aspects of man's well-being and for the general well-being of their community. ¹¹

Many hospitals have hired chaplains or established departments of pastoral services. Some are even involving clergymen in emergency room duties.

"Someone Cares"

Not all medicine-religion programs directly involve ministers and physicians. The Santa Ana, California, Community Hospital has inaugurated a "Someone Cares" program that has enlisted 163 volunteer helpers from central Orange County churches and synagogues. A full-time coordinator is employed by the hospital to direct the activities of these volunteers, which include aid to those who have returned home from the hospital but need help with housekeeping, shopping, transportation, baby-sitting, and meal preparation.

There is a growing realization that the time has come for the whole church to begin to work together in a combined healing ministry.

This concept of ministry to the "whole man" is not limited to doctor-minister cooperation. The Christian church was organized for and primarily exists as an agency designed to follow in the footsteps of Christ in loving ministry to the needs of mankind, whether they be physical, mental, social, or spiritual. Jesus did not compartmentalize His ministry into clinical and spiritual phases. Neither does He expect His followers to do so.

As Christians respond to the challenge of Christ's exemplary ministry, each in the way his own background and interest dictate, they will minister together as part of a healing team. The time has come for the church to bring together what God never intended to be separated—the spiritual and phys ical dimensions of healing ministry.