Does God cure (4)

When it comes to accessing the effacacy of prayer, it amazes me how serious people can take this as an issue.


Searching on the web, it's not difficult to see scholars (mostly in the west) try and perform well-structured studies and trials to examine the "prayer effect". To us, as taught in Bible, praying is not merely asking for interventions, we praise, we confess we communicate.

Even among intervention, it would be hard for us to even falsify the very statement "God intevenes." But afterall, the easiest part of it to be quantitatively and objectively accessed by scientific methods, will be praying for cure.

As my friend Andrew has pointed out in my last post, we need to seperate the morale-uplifting (or placebo) effect in prayer from the result of divine intervention. With this, scientists underwent randomised-controlled-trials. Putting a number of patients randomly into 2 groups, one with interaccessory prayer (prayed by someone with the individual not knowing). The process of randomisation and blinding will thus, theoretically, eliminate the placebo effect and the problem of background differences.

Starting from the 80s, numerous studies were performed. The results were deemed highly variable, some claim benefits, some concluded harm, while most of them remained statistically insignificant.

Here comes the follow-up questions.
1) With God (a freewill-possessing being) involved, are prayers assessable by RCTs, and are the results repeatable?
2) Does effacacy of prayer have a dose-response relatationship - ie. will the effacacy improves as we pray more, either by frequency or number of prayers?
3) Let's say we proved God's action on cardiac diseases, do we have the confidence that we arrived a positive finding in all other diseases - if not, why on earth an almighty God has such a particular taste on healing?
4) If we compare prayers effacacy to antibiotics on patients with infections, is it justifiable to conclude in this way: Penicillin is superior/inferior to prayer as therapeutic means, doesn't it sound weird?

Does God cure (3)

Sincerely I appreciate the reply from Breakthrough, I can see wholeheartedness and encouraging thoughts in it.

Let me prime a little bit more on this very question I brought about.

It was few months back, when I was still a busy medical student burying myself in piles of books preparing for exams.

While in one night, when I saw a HUGE acne grew right on my forehead, a thought raced through my mind: Why dont I pray for its healing? Even though I don't believe it will disappear out of nowhere, why not praying for an at least accelerated healing?

Then the question came. Can we or have we ever try accessing the effacacy of prayer?

Since the start of the year I ran the habit of reading weekly medical journals - just to update myself on the current state of the art management going through the field. Half of the contents are usually Randomised Controlled Trials. The prinicles of these trials are pretty much like the Controlled experiments we did in high school science, the difference being we try to recruit a certain number of individuals, and to eliminate their background differences - we randomise them into treatment group & control group. This virtually makes drugs (or prayer) being the only examinable component.

Of course I don't have the ability to run a large trial. I attempted to run a small Case-series on myself.

From Janurary onwards for 5 months, there were in total 8 ances grew on my face. Alternately I pray for them (sincerely), and jotted down their duration to heal. Here comes the result.

Days to heal for Prayed ances: 4,6,6,8, mean=6d
Days to heal for Unprayed acne : 5,6,5,5, mean=5.25d

This is a pretty retarded experiment - sample size is small (ances are uncommon entities to me, and I dare not to talk my roommate into the trial, he will definitely send me to psychiatry ward immediately, haha), and there is no definite objective measurable endpoints. Anyway, let's put these aside, at least from the results, I don't see drastic improvement.

This elementary work kicked off my passion on this very topic, and I shall come to it later.

Does God cure (2)

Here comes the reply.

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親愛的James：

多謝你也來信問及禱告和醫治。事實上，近年來有不少人在佈道會中分享他們禱告醫治的經歷。可是，我們如何得知，上帝聽到我們的禱告，便醫治我們呢？是不是我們禱告，祂就必定會醫治我們呢？那些終身傷健人士就怎麼辦？這都是值得思考的問題，也謝謝你提出來一起討論。我欣賞你對禱告的認真態度，不願意盲目地禱告，而我更欣賞你願意跟上帝建立一份緊密的關係。我相信，祂是知道你這份心意的，而且祂也會覺得很高興。

請讓我先分享聖經對禱告醫治事蹟的一些記載。雖然上帝可能會透過不同的方法去醫治我們的傷患，但正如聖經記載，祂亦可能要求我們勇敢地面對疾病和死亡。例如祂回應猶大王希西家的禱告，治好他的重病和加增他十五年的壽數（列王記下二十章1~11）。然而，祂卻對沒有醫治使徒保羅身上的「刺」（儘管為此事，保羅曾經三次祈求過上主，見哥林多後書十二章1~10），只對保羅說；「我的恩典夠你用，因為我的能力是在人的軟弱上顯得完全。」（林後十二章9）

同是向同一位深愛著我們的上帝祈禱，希西家和保羅卻有不同的經歷，我想原因在於上帝給予他們的是不同的人生計劃。由於上帝不一定會在我們禱告以後就醫治我們，而兩個表面上相似的人，背後的人生前設也不盡相同，很難判斷兩個「被實驗」的人相關的條件是不是相同，所以我們很難單靠對照實驗（controlled experiment）和分析實驗數據，看看上帝有沒有回應我們的禱告和醫治我們，來推敲祂是否真實。

另一方面，上帝是如何醫治我們的病患呢？普遍人認為，當上帝醫治我們的疾病的時候，「神蹟奇事」必然會發生。普遍人更認為，基督徒見證的「神蹟奇事」必然違反自然定律之事，因而並不可能發生。事實上，早於十八世紀中，英國哲學家休謨（David, Hume，1711-1776）已經提出「自然定律」（natural laws）這觀點。這觀點亦得到部份邏輯實証主義（logical positivism）學者的認同。

可是，從聖經對神蹟的描述來看，神蹟並不一定是什麼「違反自然定律之事」。當然，有時上帝會容讓一些十分奇妙和難以解釋的事情發生，甚至是超過我們所理解的「自然定律」，使人無法否認這是上帝奇妙的作為（例如耶穌叫死人復活），而這亦是奧古斯丁（Augustine）的理解；但祂亦可以透過人類社會的醫療科技，叫我們的病患得痊癒。因為上帝是萬有的主，能夠透過一切的方法，成就祂的旨意。而有時，疾病只是整件事的佈景，上帝更關心的往往是人患病以後，對上帝的看法有沒有改變？對身邊的人事物、對世界的看法有沒有改變？是否更貼近生命的主的心腸？

當然，基督信仰的核心並不單單在於疾病得醫治。因耶穌基督的死和復活，凡相信祂的人都會在將要來的新天新地裡得到永遠的醫治，即是一種針對罪和死亡的醫治。說到這裡，這讓我想起耶穌基督在客西馬尼園的禱告：「然而，不要照我的意思，只要照祢的意思。」（太二十六章39）為了我們的過犯，耶穌基督獻上愛和順服至死的禱告，清楚展示出禱告並不在於實現我們的意願；相反，藉著禱告，我們學習倚靠和跟從上帝，實踐祂的旨意。盼望你能在理智和情感的交織中，藉著禱告，更明暸上帝的心意，跟祂建立一份緊密而深厚的關係。


Q師傅 上


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Does God cure?

Well I guess most of you have heard of Breakthrough - the Christian NGO which devotes itself for teenage work. I am quite a personal fan of theirs, and some months ago I posted a theological question on their website, I didn't hope for a reply, but then, though late, here it was posted on their wall.

This is what I asked, I shall post their reply in the next post.

And you can see the original post here:
http://www.uzone21.com/umentor/display.ctrl?letterBoxId=6325

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Nowadays, we Christians quite often pray for something and wish God to make it true. In particular I want to focus on the point - "pray for cure".

Not uncommonly we heard stories of Christians claiming that God has cured his/her diseases and now become healthy again. Yes indeed the disease was cured, but can we attribute the cure to God's action?

I have two disturbing questions.

1) In fact, we can perform Randomised Control Trials (this is how effacacy of new drugs are tested) to examine God's action on disease. One patient group with nothing + Another group with others praying for them (which they don't know), then we observe for any change in disease outcome, quite scientifically. I can postulate that the results would be similar in two groups. If so, what can we say?

2) Seems the testimonies at church always focus on 內科 diseases (like cancer, pneumonia), does anyone dare to pray for a person with amputation? I can bet on my life that the amputated leg will never grow again no matter how hard we pray. Some try to explain by that God would act against the natural laws he set, but reversing a growing cancer is so much beyond natural laws too - just that we can't see it. How can we explain our faith in believing God will cure cancer, but at the the same time seeing a never-healed-amputee?

* I hate it when christians answer by saying "we cannot examine God". Yes I agree, but if God is actually doing something, by no way He could escape (and I believe He doesn't need to) from the experimental trials, because we are just showing the reality from statistics.

Thank you very much for your reply, I do not aim to challenge, but I really wish I can pray without blind faith, and get a closer relationship to God, both rationally and mentally.

Regards,
James


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(To be continued)