The few, the healthy, the lucky

A “truce” with medicine

A mild stir has ensued from a report that my former church is trying to make some efforts to ward off criticism that its form of spirituality is in conflict with general standards of health care. The NYT story didn’t go the way the PR department at the church had expected. It conveys the image of an organization in the final throes of its own death. The few remaining adherents are getting deeply into old age.

To be a Christian Scientist is to attribute health and healing to right thinking about reality. It includes the belief that there is a universal benign power that creates and inhabits a world of perfection and happiness. It also attributes all imperfection and unhappiness to wrong thinking, or the belief that we live in some other universe. Healing involves aligning “thinking” with the the perfect world. So, ultimately the responsibility for health is on each individual.

One of the most serious consequences of this belief system is the implication that sick people are to blame for their problems. I have seen people with every kind of ailment endure pain, disfigurement and various degrees of impairment because they believed that these problems would go away as soon as their minds clicked into alignment with the belief that everyone is perfectly OK.

As detailed here recently, a fine and spunky member of the family succumbed because: 1) she refused to have a fibroid removed, and 2) because, at her insistence, no one would give her nourishment via some alternative means.

The church can posture as much as it wants about how it is liberalizing its policies, but the fact of the matter is that most of its dwindling membership is seriously senior and their brain pathways are deeply grooved in the old policies. Most of them will judge the church as straying from the true path and will continue to hobble through the rest of their lives hoping they will pass away quietly in the night with little or no discomfort. And a few of them may welcome the excuse to finally get a medical diagnosis or a prescription for a pain killer or antibiotic or whatever they need. Parents have been scared for the past ten or so years because of legal measures that provide severe punishments for failure to provide medical care to children - so they aren't a significant part of the intended audience.

The whole belief system is defined by a book, Science and Health by Mary Baker Eddy, which she has deemed perfect and complete and is not subject to revision or updating in light of new facts that may emerge to challenge some of her assumptions. One of the most egregious, for me, is her damningly faint praise for Darwin’s discoveries. She basically says that as far as wrong explanations of the natural world are concerned he is less wrong than most. But still wrong. The world isn’t material, she claims, is not governed by universal physical laws, but is a dream state that is the exact opposite of the true spiritual state, which is totally good and eternal. What I eventually came to realize is that the “spiritual” world is the dream state, while the material one is the one that deserves and needs our attention.

People who take up the Christian Science way of life are idealists who sincerely want a better world, and are appalled that there is so much evil and ugliness in their daily lives. The ones who defend it the most, however, are those who have strong constitutions, good genes and a ton of good luck. Their commitment to advancing the cause of Christian Science allows them to attribute their good fortune to the ideas and techniques taught in Eddy’s book.

However, the aging process moves inexorably along and even the Directors of the church must be feeling it - a recent photo of the five of them is scary. If it weren’t for the attempt to get the public to pay for their religion’s wacky prayer treatments they wouldn’t have bothered to posture as “liberals.” Incidentally, most of the Directors took over the church in 2004 coup because they represented staunch conservatives who thought the religion was being diluted by appeal to an increasingly skeptical public and as well as an increasingly confused and discouraged membership. The effort to get this brand of “right thinking” health care covered by government-paid health insurance is laughable and its rejection is a scrap of evidence that there are still some legislators who can think straight - at least for a few moments at a time.

My response to LATimes article on spiritual healing and legislation

Thanks for your article "Healthcare provision seeks to embrace prayer treatments." As a former Christian Science practitioner ("healer") for over 30 years I can vouch for the statements from the critics to which you refer:

But critics say the measure could have a broader effect, conferring new status and medical legitimacy on practices that lie outside the realm of science.

There is no true "spiritual healing." Most of what passes for it are anecdotes where there is no objective diagnosis or controlled testing, from people whose main problems are psychosomatic. Herbert Benson, MD and others have shown that a "relaxation response" accounts for the relief from such problems.

Toward the end of my involvement with Christian Science, and becoming suspicious of the claims I had been taught, I carefully observed if my prayer or lack of it made a difference in my patients. It didn't. People who believe in spiritual healing, and Christian Scientists in particular, are quite defensive about challenges to their faith in this approach to health care and eagerly strive to provide "evidence" for its efficacy. It's also why the Christian Science church in Boston has a large department of people who do nothing but lobby around the world for the kinds of accommodations being advocated in the present health care legislation.

I agree with Dr. Norman Frost, quoted in your article, that more resources need to be devoted to "evidence-based medical practices" and less to long-disproved, and dangerous, systems.