When In Need Of Healing
A person with AIDS-like symptoms goes to a DOCTOR seeking healing from sickness. The patient is diagnosed and treated with a litany of medications and dietary recommendations. Yet there is something missing. The person may later seek the help of a COUNSELOR to get healing from depression. Still, there is something missing. Then when the person is at a loss in the struggle with AIDS (particularly in the end stages) spiritual help is sought from trusted CLERGY. Even so, there has been “something missing” all along.
The problem is that the three “healers” did not work in concert together. In their approach to their patient in need, they focused on their own area of expertise, specialty or field. What was missing? The whole team ministering to the whole person.
Prayer and Healing: Becoming A Whole Person was the theme of the conference. The guest speaker was Dr. Daniel E. Fountain, M.D. an American Baptist medical missionary who had served for 35 years, 1961-1996, in Congo, currently Democratic Republic of the Congo, Africa. [Personally I was privileged to spend 6 months with him ’74-’75 when the country was called Zaire] As a devoted surgeon he treated everything from common illnesses & tropical diseases to the Ebola virus & AIDS. He also, at risk of his own life, had treated gunshot and arrow wounds, during the Rebellion in ’64. As a devoted Christian, his heart was for preventative medicine and healing in a region of darkness desperate for care.
It was Dan’s experience early in ministry that all his effort was being poured into curing the sick yet, in his words, “There was something missing in the medical model.” Physicians are trained to deal with physical health problems; healing the body. Clergy are trained to deal with spiritual health needs; healing the spirit. He remarked, “Yet there is a tremendous gap in-between; that of healing the soul (heart or psyche).” To Dr. Fountain, Jesus Christ was the model for how we should approach people in need of healing.
In African culture the physical, emotional and spiritual aspects of the person are less dichotomized and more connected than in American culture. Consequently the approach to healing is different and more naturally addresses the individual in need as a whole person. However, the challenge for our culture in the West is to get all three professional disciplines – medical, psychological and spiritual – working together as a team.
At that time the African bush hospital of 400 beds in Vanga, Congo, serving a population of over ¼ million people, discovered early on that a team approach not only had to be taken, it was the most efficient way of providing Christian holistic health care. In particular Mrs. Matala, a spiritually gifted seminary graduate trained in clinical counseling and pastoral care, over the years had proven to be an invaluable member of the hospital staff team and had a critical role in the healing of even the most hopeless cases. For instance with AIDS patients at the hospital, where at that time there was no known “cure” for the body, death was inevitable. However, many patients were “healed” when treated as whole people (physical, emotional & spiritual) living out their remaining days truly whole.
For Dr. Fountain a verse key to this concept is found in Proverbs 14:30 NIV, A heart at peace gives life to the body, but envy rots the bones or in the TEV, Peace of mind makes the body healthy, but jealousy is like a cancer. Emotional and spiritual ailments can bring sickness to the body. That is a matter of scientific fact, yet we still tend to keep or treat them separately. Jesus would have us see them as part of a whole. Dan prophetically stated, ”Until the world sees that Jesus heals today, our churches are going to be empty.” And I might add, today our hospitals, clinics and offices are full.
The challenge for Christians right now is to work together as a team across denominations and across professional disciplines, as Christian doctors, counselors and clergy to treat the whole person, to raise awareness, educate, and practice what Jesus Christ modeled for us in healing. The challenge for Christian churches is to facilitate such activity and to involve other members of the Christian healing community as we develop healing ministry teams, hold healing prayer services and generally seek to minister to those in need through weekly intercessory prayer gatherings. We are not only to seek and to save the lost but also to seek and to heal the sick. Together, lets see to it that in the name of Jesus Christ there is not “something missing.”
—RWO/MAST
Comments by Ric Ochsner