When referring to the first line of the Lord’s Prayer “Our Father who art in Heaven” Charles Allen author of God’s Psychiatry and a Methodist minister who did not believe psychiatry should be limited to the medical field said, “Jesus tells us to pray. If we had only these six words we would have the Lord’s Prayer. The other sixty words Jesus gave in the prayer are by way of explanation. Learn really to pray that first phrase and you need go no further.”
Dr. Neil Douglas-Klotz shares a similar sentiment in his book The Hidden Gospel: Decoding the Spiritual Message of the Aramaic Jesus. The word for pray in Aramaic is shela. He says that shela can mean to incline, bend toward, listen to, or lay a snare for. By way of its Hebrew root it involves creating a space so that we may experience the sacred. He tells us that the very first word of the Aramaic version of The Lord’s Prayer – Abwoon – contains the whole of the prayer. He says, “by intoning this word, we receive spiritual nourishment from the Source” and that it “creates new life in each moment.”
If we accept that spirit, mind, and body are intricately connected and we believe that we can affect our spiritual well-being through prayer, we might conclude that our mind and body would naturally also benefit from prayer. According to Dr. Douglas-Klotz, this understanding was not at all foreign to the people of Jesus’ time. He says, “Aramaic presents a fluid and holistic view of the cosmos.”
Because of this, in the ancient Middle Eastern culture the arbitrary boundaries between mind, body, and spirit fell away. This insight into our holistic nature is something we need to consider re-embracing and re-integrating as it may very well have enormous repercussions on our mental and physical health.
Prayer in the Clinical Setting
As reasonable as this might seem and as comforting as prayer may be to some, there is a fundamental problem associated with it. Although prayer can stand on its own, people associate it with organized religion. To many, religion is controversial and has a rather negative reputation in that it is linked to churches, organizations, and radical fundamental groups that emit an image of control and literalism. This is unfortunate because sacred traditions and their spiritual technologies, such as prayer, meditation, and confession, were actually meant to assist individuals identify with their divine origin and provide healing comfort in times of distress. Rather than control us, they were meant to set us free.
When we look at the numbers, we can see that the majority of people will most likely align with the latter position. Recent findings indicate that a great number of people around the world place their trust in a higher power and claim to be affiliated with some form of religion. Furthermore, most of those belong to an organized place of worship, and an even larger number integrate spiritual practices into their lives. This information tells us that most would welcome spirituality being integrated into their health care and it would be sensible for physicians to incorporate their patients’ wishes into their treatment.
Dr. Harold Koenig, a medical doctor, gives six specific reasons why physicians should address their patients’ spiritual needs. Summarized these six basically tell us that many patients are religious and want their doctors to be aware of their background. They use religion and spiritual practices to deal with stressful events. If they are isolated from the religious community, the medical setting can serve as an alternative place for addressing their needs. The patient’s religious affiliation and spiritual practices can influence medical decisions and care. The participation of the medical team in the patient’s spiritual practices can influence outcome. This may seem like a lot of involvement on the part of the doctors, but if we reduce it to simple prayer - creating a space for the sacred to be experienced - we can see that what is being asked of the medical community is perhaps not unreasonable.
This simple act of being fully present in spirit would send the patient an encouraging signal that the doctor’s care extends beyond the standard boundaries of sterile medical care.
Still, there is yet another common criticism of using prayer as a therapeutic treatment. The article “Prayer as medicine: how much have we learned?” tackles the argument that “there is no known plausible mechanism.” In other words, scientists ask if prayer is really a valid method of healing if we can’t explain exactly how it works. I believe Dr. Douglas-Klotz would say yes. In The Hidden Gospels he tells us, “The Gospels report Yeshua saying many times that the major factor in the success of healing was a person’s faith” and prayer is, after all, an act of faith. But faith is not measurable so how can science approach this seemingly intangible practice?
Fortunately, studies reveal that prayer is in fact finding its way into treatment and that the results are measurable and encouraging. Current research indicates that prayer is a viable, biologically non-invasive supplement to treatment that is effective independent of the religious and spiritual practice of the individual that is praying. Prayer might not replace pharmaceuticals and surgery in some cases, but it may provide comfort and speed up recovery. This discovery is important because there is a critical need to understand that we have another tool at our disposal when confronted with sickness.
How Does Prayer Work
The authors of “Prayer as medicine: how much have we learned?” propose mechanisms that might give us some insight into how prayer might influence healing. One such mechanism suggests that prayer triggers a relaxation response. This response in turn slows breathing, slows the heart, lowers blood pressure, and slows brain wave activity. These are all measurable in a clinical setting. Further research reveals that this state of reduced stress can alleviate insomnia, muscle spasms, migraines, and chronic pain. A Harvard study showed that nursing home patients that engaged in spiritual practices such as prayer and meditation were happier, functioned better, and lived longer. Other proposed mechanisms suggest that prayer is an expression of positive emotions that exert a positive impact on well-being.
Another - and more controversial mechanism - focuses on prayer being “a channel for supernatural intervention.” This is where science justifiably raises its hand again and objects. It claims this mechanism goes beyond naturalistic explanations and enters into the supernatural, but this is in fact the reason most turn to prayer. According to the study, individuals that pray believe “in a divine being that transcends the natural universe and hears and responds to prayer.” Patients and their families may believe that the reason their health improves is attributable to God answering their prayers while others attribute the recovery or improvement to the positive effect hope has on our physical and mental well-being. Either way, should science discredit the effects of prayer, faith, and hope just because we don’t quite understand how they come together to benefit the mind and body?
Dr. Larry Dossey, a medical doctor and leader in the field of integrating the scientific with the spiritual says, “prayer does not need science to legitimize or justify it.” In fact, he feels that science “debases and violates whatever it touches.” He proposes that instead of bringing God into the laboratory, we bring the laboratory to God and request and invite the cosmos to reveal how it works. Prayer is the spiritual practice that can be thought of as being with God or being attuned with God. If we want to understand how this form of attunement and communication between the Creator and His Creation work, we might have to step back and simply accept that the mechanism might only be revealed by God and not discovered by scientists.
In The Spirit Of Cooperation
In defense of science, as of late, it has been more willing to study prayer and is increasingly able to measure the results that prayer produces. We should be appreciative and receptive to the scientific communities open-minded consideration and the enlightening data it is producing. And scientists, on the other hand, need to see the issue from the side of the believer. Ideally, they would work together to shed light on this mysterious practice.
In times of illness, when our very existence and survival seem to be threatened, prayer may primarily become a petition or a form of supplication, and it is in asking for help that hope manifests outwardly. While scientific evidence that prayer works is not a prerequisite for the petitioner, scientists justifiably want more than a patient’s word. They want hard facts, as their profession understandably demands. We all benefit from their research. Even the faithful do.
Christians familiar with the teachings of Jesus know that he advocated we pray frequently. As the faithful pray, they remember his words, “Ask, and it shall be given to you; seek and you shall find; knock, and it shall be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; and he who seeks finds; and he who knocks, it is opened to him” (Luke 11:9-10). One might think we are hardwired to seek contact and communion with the Divine and this mechanism is especially activated when we are ailing and in distress. Science is slowly backing up that the petitioner is indeed experiencing relief, physically and mentally.
Even with great faith, prayer is not always enough treatment. When people are very ill, they will turn to allopathic medicine. However, because conventional medical treatment has its limitations, the challenge for both patient and doctor lies in integrating prayer into a field that is dictated by the influence of hard science. Keeping in mind the complexities of spirituality, medical models that allow spirituality into the patient’s healing process propose physicians treat patients as a whole person. They need to consider creating a healing environment that is collaborative and focused on working within the framework of the patient’s spirituality.
Dr. Stephen Sinatra, a Catholic cardiologist says that when you include prayer in your life, “You may become more open to life, more flexible, more centered. You may find it easier to resolve your problems and cope with stressful situations." While it is encouraging to see more doctors approaching their patients with the holistic understanding of a shaman, it is also good to see that science is willing to take a closer look at prayer and its health benefits.
Future studies may never reveal exactly how and why prayer works, but identifying measurable benefits might reveal why people have intuitively turned to prayer throughout history in relation to their health. Scientific studies may give us perhaps increasing understanding of this ancient and sacred practice and they may also reveal glimpses of the One to whom the faithful pray.
Even though the process and outcome of prayer is essentially experiential, we may gain some scientific insight into how God responds when we invite Him into a dedicated sacred space, acknowledge Him as the Ultimate Healer, surrender to His Will and "take refuge under the shadow of His wings" (Psalm 36:7).
References
Allen, C. (1953). God’s Psychiatry. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House Company.
Barron, R. (2011). Catholicism: A Journey to the Heart of the Faith. New York, NY: Image Books.
Dossey, L. (1993). Healing Words: The Power of Prayer and the Practice of Medicine. New York, NY: HarperCollins.
Dossey, L. (2000). Prayer and medical science: A commentary on the prayer study by Harris et al and a response to critics. American Medical Associates, Arch Intern Med, 160, 1735-1737.
Douglas-Klotz, N. (1999). The Hidden Gospel: Decoding the Spiritual Message of the Aramaic Jesus. Wheaton, IL: Quest Books.
Douglas-Klotz, N. (1990). Prayers of the Cosmos: Reflections on the Original Meaning of Jesus’s Words. New York, NY: HarperOne.
Elgart Paik, J. (2000). No One an Island: The Geography of the Whole Patient. American Medical Association, Medical Student JAMA, 484 (13), 1704.
Kliewer, S. (2004). Allowing spirituality into the healing process. The Journal of Family Practice, 53(8), 616-624.
Jantos, M. & Kiat, H. (2007). Prayer as Medicine: How much have we learned? The Medical Journal of Australia, 186, (10), 51-53.
Lieberman, B. (2005, July 12). Tap into the Power of Prayer. Retrieved on November 26, 2011 from http://tlc.howstuffworks.com/family/power-of-prayer.htm
Walsh, R. (1999). Essential Spirituality: The 7 Central Practices to Awaken Heart and Mind. New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.