by Dr.Harald Wiesendanger– Klartext
What the mainstream media is hiding
“Do you pray?” In surveys, four out of ten Germans now answer “never”. Only 17% pray daily. Somewhat regularly, especially on Sundays and Christian holidays, 27% do. In difficult life situations, such as serious illness, relationship crises, financial hardship, or the threat of job loss, this proportion rises to 40%. What’s the point?
Why has communing with God largely gone out of fashion? One main reason is: constant frustration. In early childhood, we were brought up with an image of God that made us believe in a heavenly father: invisible to the eyes, but omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent, and on top of that, the epitome of love. Like a totally perfect fairytale dad, always ready and able to protect and help us. For us three-year-olds, praying meant asking this father for something.
But all too rarely did our requests come true. In particular, when we asked for healing – for ourselves, for a seriously ill relative or friend – how often did it actually happen? The more often our prayers went unanswered – no matter how devoutly and fervently we presented them – the more our doubts grew: Why does God allow me, or my neighbor, to suffer so much, for so long, so undeservedly? Doesn’t this need literally cry out to heaven? Why doesn’t He do anything about it, even though He could? Is this not tantamount to failing to help? A father who allows his children to suffer when he could intervene is neglecting his duty of care. He becomes untrustworthy.
But this disappointment may stem from a misunderstanding of what prayer is – and how it helps. Many think of it as ordering from a transcendent Amazon, with the expectation that it will be delivered quickly, completely, and free of defects. If this does not happen, we are displeased. If God were to appear as a webshop operator, his customer ratings would be far from five stars; they would be in the lowest basement.
Isn’t praying illogical?
At some point, our doubts become more fundamental: how logical is the act of praying at all? The Christian faith endows its God with the attributes of omnipresence, omniscience, omnipotence, and all-encompassing love. Addressing requests to such a being – assuming it exists at all – seemed increasingly absurd to me from an early age. Either this everywhere-and-nowhere being knows how much I suffer but cannot change it – then He would be powerless; or He does not want to change it – then He would be cruel; or He has no idea – that would contradict His omniscience. Either he knows what I need, then I will get it anyway. Or I don’t need it, at least not from His higher perspective – then pleading for it is also pointless. If He determines and directs everything at all times and everywhere for our good, then even the most serious illness expresses a divine intention that a human expression of will, no matter how piously and fervently presented, can hardly deflect; it takes place regardless of what the person concerned does or does not do. (1) Immanuel Kant already criticized: “Prayer, as an inner, formal worship, is a superstitious delusion (a fetish-making); for it is a mere declared wish against a being that needs no explanation of the inner disposition of the wisher.” (2)
Documented by doctors: Prayers help
Nevertheless, prayers sometimes work, without a doubt. Entire shelves could be filled with careful documentation of prayer healings – some even confirmed by doctors. (3)
For example, the British doctor Rex Gardner reports on a colleague, Jennifer Fendick (4), who was infected with meningococcal bacteria in 1975. She was admitted to the hospital early one morning in a life-threatening condition. The diagnosis was “Waterhouse-Friderichsen syndrome”: a sudden-onset condition that almost always leads to death within a few hours. It was named after the doctor Rupert Waterhouse, who died in 1958. In medical jargon, it is known as “<peracute” (from Latin acutus: acute; meaning: highly dangerous) and “<foudroyant” (from French foudroyer: struck by lightning; meaning: lightning-like onset). Such diagnoses always cause hectic activity in intensive care units. In Waterhouse-Friderichsen syndrome, both adrenal glands are irreversibly destroyed at breakneck speed. High fever sets in. The infected person turns pale, vomits, has diarrhea, and shows all the signs of collapse. The skin bursts open all over the body, and blood oozes out. “No patient like this has ever come through”, Jennifer’s doctors resigned from the start.
Around 8:30 a.m., four healing groups from a sect began praying for Jennifer at the same time, without her knowledge. Each was miles away from her – but almost immediately the woman’s physical condition began to improve, even though she remained in a coma for another four days. An X-ray of Jennifer’s chest had shown extensive pneumonia in her left lung, with collapse of the middle lobe – 48 hours later, it had disappeared. An ophthalmologist had diagnosed and documented a central scotoma in Jennifer’s left eye: a loss of vision caused by a hemorrhage in the eyeball. Jennifer would remain blind in that eye forever, he had predicted – but after she regained consciousness, she could see perfectly clearly, and there was no detectable damage to her eye. She made a full recovery.
The American physician Dr. Rebecca Beard has documented similar, almost incomprehensible spontaneous healings after prayers. One of these happened to her friend Alice Newton, whose stomach was ‘more swollen than that of a heavily pregnant woman’, as the doctor noted. The patient refused any surgical intervention. The deeply religious woman spent two years praying and reading the Bible – then the tumor literally disappeared overnight after a shattering dream in which the crucified Savior smiled at her.
In another case from Dr. Beard’s collection, a four-year-old boy, under pleading prayers from relatives and the doctor herself, suddenly got rid of an extensive, inoperable brain tumor; according to the clinical prognosis, he should have died of it within 12 to 24 hours. (5)
The prayer healings of the Italian Franciscan Francesco Forgione (1887-1968), better known as Padre Pio, who bore the stigmata of Christ on his hands and feet for almost fifty years, are also documented in exemplary fashion. (The lawyer Alberto del Fante published 47 of Padre Pio’s prayer healings, which are supported by medical testimonies and documents. (6)
It is difficult to shake such facts; speculations about “coincidental coincidences” seem rather helpless.
Prayer healing: a purely psychological phenomenon?
To skeptics, the healing power of prayer seems to be explainable in purely psychological terms. They argue: The state of mind in which it is said, as well as a firm belief in this power, can lead to states of consciousness and emotional peaks of excitement, at which therapeutically effective autosuggestions and placebo effects sometimes set biological self-healing processes in deeply religious people in motion. The same may happen when prayers are directed at another person – provided they know about it. The secret of voodoo magic turned positive.
Nevertheless, medical-psychological interpretations remain incomplete. Because they do not do justice to three phenomena (7):
- How are remote healings possible through prayers – even when sick people don’t know about it? (8)
- How can prayers sometimes even reach infants and unconscious people?
- And why are prayer effects even experimentally demonstrable in animals and plants?
For example, several studies on larger patient samples indicate a statistically significant prayer effect in coronary heart disease, leukemia, chronic or worsening psychotic illnesses, and rheumatoid arthritis, as well as in psychological problems such as anxiety or reduced self-esteem. (9) The majority of these studies were “double-blind”: Neither the patients being treated, nor the investigators, nor the doctors involved knew who was being prayed for and who had merely been allocated to a control group. The results were statistically significant: those who were prayed for had a greater chance of recovery, recovered more quickly from operations, required less medication, and were less likely to become an emergency case.
What does God care about earthly research designs?
How can this phenomenon be explained? If we approach it theologically, we end up with the tricky question of what kind of strange Lord God is involved in research designs by earthly doctors and refuses to help the sick after they have been assigned to a “placebo group”.
What actually happens in us when we turn to God? Perhaps we should understand prayer as a technique of consciousness: a method of putting our mind into a special state in which we are filled with the thought and feeling: “Thy will be done” – Your will, not mine. We stop wanting, demanding, asking. Instead, we humbly and trustingly place our fate in the hands of something much greater than ourselves. Is such a meditative state of consciousness similar to the one that successful healers enter when they work? Could it not be that in this state it is easier to access what healers call “universal energies” or “cosmic fields”? Parapsychologists are probably more likely to be on the trail of the secret of prayer healing than theologians. (10)
Shedding denominational shackles
So should you pray when you are ill? Should you include other sick people in your prayers? Yes, as long as you can free yourself from a few common misconceptions and errors.
Christian prayer healings, however numerous, do not prove that one must first become a good Christian in order to be worthy of a similar act of God’s grace. For such cases “probably occur no more often than with Navajo chants”, as the American doctor Andrew Weil soberly stated. (11) No one has ever proven that intercessions by Muslims, Hindus or orthodox Jews are less or more effective than those of a devout Catholic. The idea that a prayer must have very specific forms and content that must be strictly adhered to – otherwise its effect will be impaired – is just as far-fetched. Any prayer can be healing; it is the intention behind it that counts. When prayers are answered, it is probably not because of any inherent power or any other quality – but for the sake of the person who says them. It is not the words that matter, but the spirit behind them. Prayers are also not magical incantations: no abracadabras that conjure away viruses and bacteria. There is no guarantee of fulfillment. Prayer means asking, nothing more.
Neither prayer nor any other religious ritual, nor all of them taken together, are sufficient to protect a person from illness. If they could, people who presumably pray more than others – namely clergymen – simply because of their profession would have a higher life expectancy than the population average. The same applies to people who receive a particularly large number of intercessory prayers from other people – for example, heads of state.
The British natural scientist Sir Francis Galton (1822-1911) empirically investigated this hypothesis a century and a half ago. In a British statistical journal, he published an elaborate study comparing the average age of several thousand British males over the age of thirty from different social groups who had died between 1758 and 1843. (12) (Deaths due to accidents or violence were excluded.) The following were included: 294 lawyers, 244 doctors, 1179 representatives of the English aristocracy and 1632 from the lower landed gentry, 513 merchants and tradesmen, 366 officers of the landed forces and a further 569 from the navy, 395 writers and scientists and 239 artists. The average age at death of the individual groups ranged from 66 to over 70 years. Measured against this, 97 members of the English royal family were well below the mean with an average age of 64, and 945 clergymen stood out with an average age of 69.4. For particularly important members of the royal family and the clergy, the average life expectancy even fell to 66.4 and 66.5 years respectively. Obviously, a wealth of other factors, some of which were probably considerably more important, played a role in determining life expectancy. (Most clergymen at the time lived in rural areas, while the majority of members of other occupational groups lived in the city).
Nor does the fact that members of many sects have been proven to fall ill less often and live longer speak for the power of prayer. As a rule, they lead a lifestyle that is generally conducive to good health; they drink and smoke little or not at all, and they seldom indulge in excessive lifestyles. As they avoid medication as much as possible, their body responds more quickly and positively to it in an emergency.
Not prayer alone, but deep religiosity is extremely beneficial to health, both physical and mental, as the majority of the now more than 200 empirical studies on the subject prove. (13) For eight years, from 1982 to 1989, a team of psychologists observed over 2800 elderly residents of New Haven. Those in whose lives religion played an important role generally fell ill less often, lived longer, were mentally more balanced and coped longer without outside help. It was found that a strong religious commitment had an even greater effect than social contacts or medical care. (14) As the Australian psychologist Jack Schumaker found in a series of tests on students, there is also a clear statistical correlation between a lack of faith and susceptibility to illness or other characteristics of poor physical health. (15) However, no difference was found between Christian and more esoterically oriented test subjects. Religious beliefs, regardless of what they are, serve as an important “buffer against stress”, explains the psychologist: belief in a different reality, higher values and an ultimate meaning can reduce tensions that have been proven to make people ill.
(Harald Wiesendanger)
Notes
The representative surveys mentioned at the beginning: by TNS Infratest Sozialforschung among 3480 adults between April and September 2012; and in 2006 by GfK Marktforschung Nürnberg among 1970 German citizens, commissioned by the magazine Apotheken Umschau.
(1) Harald Wiesendanger: Auf der Suche nach Sinn – Allerletzte Antworten auf letzte Fragen, Lea Verlag: Schönbrunn 2005, S. 57 und 65.
(2) Immanuel Kant: Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der bloßen Vernunft, Erstes Stück, Vierter Abschnitt: Der Dienst und das Pseudodienstwesen der Religion, 2nd ed. 1794
(3) Case studies in Harald Wiesendanger: Das Große Buch vom Geistigen Heilen – Möglichkeiten, Grenzen, Gefahren, Schönbrunn 2000, p. 87 f.; Harald Wiesendanger: Fernheilen, Band 2: Fallbeispiele, Forschungen, Erklärungen, Einwände, Schönbrunn 2004, p. 87 ff.
(4) A pseudonym.
(5) Excerpts from Beard’s book Was Jedermann sucht are reproduced by the parapsychologist Wilhelm Otto Roesermüller in Wenn die Schulmedizin versagt. Religious and medical extracurricular healing methods, Bietigheim 1975, pp. 42-47.
(6) The physician Dr. Francesco Ricciardi, a radical atheist, literally recovered from a serious cancer on his deathbed after Padre Pio had included him in his prayers. The surgeon Dr. Antonio Scarparo was diagnosed with an abdominal tumor with lung metastases. The factory owner’s daughter Nicoletta Mazoni, who suffered from brain disorders with paralysis of the tongue, had not recognized her parents for six months; the doctors had given up on her, but since Padre Pio’s intercession she was considered completely healed. Gemma di Giorgi had been born blind, without eyeballs – yet Pio seemed to have made her see, as a stunned ophthalmologist found confirmed in perception tests. Psychologists at the University of Freiburg i. Br. vouch for a case of remote healing of an organic ailment following Pio’s prayers, which they investigated in detail: An Italian farm worker, paralyzed in both legs, who had suffered a serious spinal injury in 1940, was able to walk again without hindrance. (See Roesermüller, op. cit., pp. 52-56; see note 127.)
(7) Siehe Harald Wiesendanger: Fernheilen, Band 2: Fallbeispiele, Forschungen, Erklärungen, Einwände, Lea Verlag: Schönbrunn 2004.
(8) A clinic director told the Dutch parapsychologist Wilhelm Tenhaeff about a patient who was suffering from ventricular fibrillation and whom he had already given up on. Suddenly, against all expectations, an improvement occurred; finally the man could be discharged as cured. Only later did it emerge that the patient’s wife had turned to a faith healer without his knowledge. The recovery began almost at the same time as the healing prayers began. See Tenhaeff: Extraordinary Healing Powers, Olten/Freiburg i. Br. 1957, p. 306.
(9) Siehe Harald Wiesendanger: Das Große Buch vom Geistigen Heilen, a.a.O., S. 90; Fernheilen, Band 2: Fallbeispiele, Forschungen, Erklärungen, Einwände, Lea Verlag: Schönbrunn 2004, S. 117 ff.
(10) Mehr zur Parapsychologie des Gebetsheilens in Das Große Buch vom Geistigen Heilen, a.a.O., S. 90 ff.
(11) Andrew Weil: Heilung und Selbstheilung, Weinheim 1988, p. 205.
(12) Journal of the Statistical Society vol. 12, p. 355; also in F. Galton: “Statistical Studies in the Efficacy of Prayer”, Fortnightly Review 12/1872, pp. 125-135, reprinted in C. G. Roland: “Does Prayer Preserve?” Archives of Internal Medicine 125/1970, pp. 580-587.
(13) Among 24 studies from the years 1951 to 1979 evaluated by the British psychologist Allen Bergin of Brigham University, 47 percent indicated a favorable influence of religious faith on mental health. In contrast, only just under one in five studies showed psychopathological dangers. A third of the studies were mixed. (See Allen Bergin: “Religiosity and Mental Health: A Critical Reevaluation and Metaanalysis”, Professional Psychology 14/1983, pp. 170-184). A recent literature review by the American psychologist John Gartner from Baltimore, who evaluated around 200 studies, agrees with this (Journal of Psychology and Theology 19/1992, pp. 6-25).
(14) The two psychologists Ellen Idler and Stanislav Kasl report on this long-term study in the American Journal of Sociology 97/1992, pp. 1052-1079.
(15) Jack Schumaker: “Mental Health, Belief Deficit Compensation, and Paranormal Beliefs”, Journal of Psychology September 1987.
Dieser Betrag enthält Auszüge aus dem Buch von Harald Wiesendanger: Auswege – Kranken anders helfen (2015)