A Dangerous Healer: A Meditatio in Montpellier

Healing is a dangerous thing. Most of us might be quick to recognize it but doctors, therapist, and yes, even pastors, often perform tasks that can both help and harm. I was reminded of this reality in a discussion led by one of Marianne's friends, Serge Bernard. Serge is a social worker who works with a very particular community of those who are deaf-blind. These are individuals who experience both deafness and blindness simultaneously and therefore are confronted with a unique set of challenges and issues. As Serge speaks of this community, however, what becomes clear is that this group does not define itself as being handicapped. They do not understand their condition as one which needs to be healed. In fact, they not only communicate with one another regularly but also acquire a range of sensitivities and abilities that sound, well, almost like something from a comic book. They can tell if the lights are on because they feel the heat in the room from the bulbs. They can sense and discern different vibrations in the floor and what they signify. One man Serge knows could even tell that he had made a wrong turn in a car trip of 500 km. In other words, many of them do not experience or suffer from alienation, disability, or lack of personhood. At least no more than you or I experience even with two eyes and two ears that work. To put it another way, most of these people don't feel disabled or diminished. This fact, however, is placed in stark contrast to the position taken by most doctors who have argued that infants with such conditions should receive painful operations to correct their deafness without parental consent - even if this alienates the child from his or her parents. Even worse, other physicians have argued that such a condition should allow women an easy abortion because such an existence is simply too awful to contemplate. What comes through Serge's talk, however, is that the doctors describe this group in ways that appear to have no grounding in their own experience as human beings.

Serge's discussion has haunted me and reminded me of the myriad difficulties faced by those of us who care for people with difficult, complex, even chronic illnesses, challenges, diseases, that defy our best prayers, practices, and medicines. What follows are some rambling thoughts, maybe intellectual graffiti, that has crossed my mind as I consider Serge's talk and its implications for me as a pastor.

Healing is about restoring persons not fixing illnesses. Often when I am confronted with someone who is struggling I remind myself of this by simply repeating, "This is not a problem to solve but a person to love." The distinction may seem trivial but it is at the heart of God's mysterious transforming work. We can all to often forget that well people can feel great anguish and alienation while those who are sick or struggling can not only find peace but serve others and live fulfilling lives. I love the quote from Patch Adams, the doctor who made great strides in offering generous medical care for those who were impoverished or terminally ill, "You treat a disease, you win, you loose. You treat a person, I guarantee you, you'll win, no matter what the outcome."

When healing professionals focus on a problem and not the person, we can quickly lose sight as to what is ultimately important. We can become frustrated by our lack of results wrongly reversing our disappointment upon the very person who has come to us for help. I am often delighted by the person who first comes for help - willing to listen, share and dole out an ample amount of advice. The second time will find me much the same way - happy to help. By the fourth or fifth time, however, I can become disenchanted even angry with such individuals, secretly harboring the belief that he or she is unwilling, complaining, or even faking. Their difficulty becomes my failure and, like the doctors mentioned by Serge Bernard, I want them gone. This frustration is due to the fact that I focus on the supposed problem and fail to see the person before me. Serge and Patch Adams are right. The person is the one that deserves our focus and attention and it is with his or her personhood that true healing is ultimately found. This means that those who are sick or so called disable can be healed even while maintaining their original state. If healing is fundamentally about restoring one's life to love God and love others then we can approach the person with a range of care often missed by focusing solely upon the specific concern. This reality was made all the more clear to me in seminary when a student who was deaf wrote into the school newspaper thanking the many people who asked to pray for him but asking them to stop. He remarked that he didn't suffer from deafness but remained part of a community, a culture, a language that he was quite proud of and stated his firm conviction that one of the many languages spoken around the throne room of heaven in the book of Revelation would be sign language. In other words, he wished everyone to know that he was not sick, sad, alienated or diminished. He was - healed.

There are a lot of issues going on in this blog which simply can't be unpacked here but I certainly welcome your questions or comments. It has taken me a long time to publish this blog simply because I feel like I have not tied up all the ends that I should have. Nevertheless, for my own thinking, I have written a prayer that I intend to use in my own encounters with those who need healing which tries to acknowledge the multifaceted and complex reality that I have tried to lay out for you so far. Some of you may be asking, "If what you've written is true then why pray for healing at all?" Well, I would respond, we should always pray for healing - yes, even miraculous healing, but be mindful that such a miracle can come in ways we never expect because we are not praying that problems will be solved but that persons will find their lives made whole in God. Here is my prayer - feel free to offer helpful changes or criticisms:

Prayer for Those in Need of Healing:
To the God who is healer
we give thanks.
To the God who gave us
NAME OF THE ONE BEING PRAYED FOR
to care for we give thanks.
Out of your compassion
and through your church
we ask that you would
provide all that s/he need
to be whole in body, mind and spirit.
So that s/he can love you, her/his neighbor, and herself/himself.
We pray that your kingdom would come,
your will be done
on earth as it is in heaven.
And we pray for the courage and grace to see it
when it does.
Amen.