Advances in healthcare have led to increase in worry over one’s own well-being, wasteful spending, and a lack of concern for the well-being of others in our community. Indeed, we have come to view health as a commodity to possess and control. Commodities run out; thus, the fear of loss causes us to focus only on what we have and can maintain, rather than on ensuring everyone has enough.  Cutillo urges us to view health and healthcare from the margins, with those individuals who are often unable to afford and thus acquire healthcare. By so doing, we can resist the flow of healthcare as only a multi-billion-dollar industry and pursue justice in the distribution of healthcare at the local level. Moreover, instead of keeping medicine and faith apart, Cutillo argues for a complementary relationship, using Christianity as a means “to explore how we pursue health and practice healthcare” (p. 16). Indeed, this is the purpose of the book.

The book is divided into four parts: The first part discusses how individuals have come to see health as something to control; while the second part suggests that medics need a new way of seeing the patient. Part three addresses the fear of death and how we can view dying differently, and the final section offers a way forward to viewing healthcare as a gift that should be shared within the wider community in light of the intersection of medicine and faith.

Unrealistic Expectations

Bob Cutillo

Cutillo shows how even from the Genesis account, we have the proclivity to want to control our circumstances. Although God has declared all creation good, Adam and Eve sought more—the knowledge of good and evil. Since then, humans have had to make decisions based on what they understand of good and bad. We don’t want what is bad, and because society deems sickness and disease as bad, we try to control outcomes so that we can avoid them at all costs. In turn, we become anxious about those outcomes. Cutillo points out that because God is active in the world, he “is able to incorporate even the things we assume bad into a greater plan [that can] change the way we pursue health and face sickness” (p. 68). Thus, we don’t have to waste our energies in worrying about our health but focus on living.

Disembodiment

Medical students are trained to see the body in parts, but by breaking the whole into parts, they can lose sight of the whole altogether. When healthcare practitioners dissect the human patient into discrete parts, they no longer see the needs of the human before them, only their disease. Moreover, the propensity to tick the heuristic box of symptoms to diagnose disease avoids the altogether larger issue of how the individual is in other contexts of being and disallows the uniqueness of individuals to assist in both diagnosis and remedy. The result is that we separate the body from the soul.

With the rise in obesity among adults and children globally, it is not surprising, perhaps, that American Christians struggle with obesity and its resulting health problems. This culture of allowing oneself to go and ignoring one’s vitality is deeply embedded in the church; however, the premise of this book is that healthy habits are part of the moral life, and by practicing these habits, Christians can live a more faithful life with God. Health isn’t just a concern for the overweight, however. Humans also suffer from chronic illnesses unrelated to nutritional deficits. Dobson’s work acknowledges that chronically ill persons still desire to live healthful lives and flourish in their spirituality to every degree possible. This book explores ways in which Christians can achieve holistic flourishing through practicing health as a habit. The author explores and interprets what Thomas Aquinas has to say on the topic of health as a habit in his Summa Theologiae.

Title page from a 1596 edition of Summa Theologiae.
Image: Wikimedia Commons

The book is divided into two parts. The first part (chapters one to eight) is the theoretical framework laying out health as a virtuous habit to be pursued. Relying on Aquinas’s writing on the virtues and health and his appropriation of Aristotle’s teaching on the virtues, Dobson shows how we can view health as a virtuous pursuit with the end (telos) in God. Chapter seven, in particular, zeroes in on the practical application of healthy habits that lead to a flourishing (eudaimonia) of individuals in their relationship to self, others, and God. Chapter eight considers why believers should cultivate habits of health. The goal of healthy living isn’t for the sake of health itself but, more importantly, for the sake of God. In other words, “the love of God becomes the end (telos) of health practices.” Health as habit is defined as the ethical intention and effort to live lives that lead us deeper into love with God and neighbor. Dobson asserts that Aquinas believes Christians have a responsibility to practice healthy habits.

I spoke with the Pennsylvania Society of Chaplains in Carlisle, Pennsylvania on October 11, 2016 about my ministry work with mental illness, patients, and staff in 3 psychiatric hospitals for 28 years with what I call “Pneumatic Medicine.” Pneumatic Medicine is the combination of prayer with medical and psychiatric expertise. I have discovered that the power of prayer is remarkable in a psychiatric ward. Many patients have a spiritual awareness that you do not see in other hospital settings. The profound recognition of prayer and for the patients to pray for others offers healing to their minds and lives (James 5:16, “Pray for one another that you may be healed”). Though I pray for many patients, I also ask if they will pray for me. I have heard the most beautiful and caring prayers come from people who may be depressed or schizophrenic.  Sometimes I have to look up and see if this was the same person who asked for prayer. And, I have never been turned down for a prayer in 28 years in the psychiatric hospital. That is what I mean by Pneumatic Prayer—Holy Spirit inspired prayer.  #pneumaticmedicine

The stigma of mental illness is receding but needs more attention. Thanks to the efforts of famous people such as Sheila Walsh, Brook Shields, Jim Carey, and many others, we are revealing our own issues with mental illness. I have personally noticed in the churches which I have served as a pastor, that when I mention depression or mental illness in a pastoral prayer or sermon, inevitably someone calls or makes an appointment to talk with me about their struggle with manic-depressive problems or other mental health issues. #endthestigma

This is a good article. Reading it made me feel as though someone is finally saying in public what I have heard said in private far too many times over the course of my research. Shame and false guilt lead many of us to stay silent about the mental health issues which affect 1 in 4 Americans/Brits.

This article states it clearly, ‘One might assume that the Church would be at the forefront of providing resources and actively engaging those who are battling depression, anxiety and a host of mental illnesses-but this is generally not the case.’ The call to listen, help and walk with others is clear. The call to remember that, ‘given the right set of circumstances everyone is vulnerable to mental illness’ may be controversial in many of our churches, but it is a call which we are required to listen to. This is as much for the sake of those of us who are well as those of us who are not. Pam and Butch Frey’s great experience in pastoral care shines through in their clear articulation of a fundamental issue.  This is an article worth reading.

Reviewed by Deborah Joy Allan

Editor’s note: For more on Joy’s research project investigating Pentecostal/charismatics and depression, look at her blog: http://www.pentecostalsanddepression.wordpress.com

Andrew Perriman, Faith, Health and Prosperity (UK: Paternoster, 2003 / USA: Gabriel Resources, 2004), 214 pages.

It is not difficult finding faults with the modern faith movement. For many people, in fact, it seems to have become something of an obsession. One does not need a theology degree to demonstrate how scriptures have been taken out of context, compromised or misconstrued in the effort to secure an absolute basis for the believer’s right to experience pleasant circumstances, prosperity and full bodily health (on this side of heaven!). What is required, I believe, is some Christian charity, a good deal of patience, and a willingness to understand rather than to condemn, if the rift between the faith movement and main-stream evangelicalism is to be healed (cf. 1Th. 5:19-21; 2Tim. 4:2-3).

Unfortunately, many of the so-called “pop-apologists” of our time seem to know only one word for classifying errors and excesses in their polemics—the singularly divisive and frequently misapplied appellation of “heresy.”¹ In addition to this, they are often caricaturists. Choosing a good piece of apologetic work over a bad one has itself become an exercise in discernment! My own exposure to Word of Faith teaching, however, has left me with a more ambivalent, less clear-cut impression of its spiritual health that will not submit to a ringing endorsement or a blanket condemnation. I am glad I am not alone in that. In a 316 page report entitled Faith, Health and Prosperity, Dr. Andrew Perriman provides a needed balance in the debate over the Word of Faith movement which will appeal to more conciliatory Christians who, though troubled by the faith movement’s mistakes, would want the option of affirming some of the good things that it has to say.

Faith teachers force us to look again at some of the traditional assumptions about poverty and piety; confront us with the radical possibilities of faith; and challenge us to expect much more from a generous and abundant Father-God, who made earth as well as heaven, body as well as soul, and is willing to bless us so that we can be a blessing to others. Nevertheless, in their enthusiasm for “the good things in life,” many would say that they have seriously distorted the fabric of Christian teaching, falling head over heels into an obviously “over-realised” eschatology that downplays the scriptural themes of suffering and hardship; promoting an individualistic doctrine of prosperity that disregards important differences in situation and calling; reducing the believers reliance on and relationship with God to the operation of a legalistic system of spiritual laws; and pushing biblical faith to an irrational and presumptuous fideism that radically disconnects our perception of God’s “truth” from “the facts,” encouraging believers to say “what they know ain’t so.”² And just what are we to do with some of the stranger bits of theology the faith movement has come up with—the “JDS” doctrine,³ or the “little gods” theory, for example, that have so upset evangelicals across the globe?

Andrew Perriman endeavours to sort through these issues, calmly disentangling “the rampant Russian ivy of error” from “the delicate wisteria of truth” (217), as well as challenging evangelicals with the possibility of a more balanced appropriation of some of the Word of Faith movement’s emphases. Written on behalf of the UK Evangelical Alliance and bringing substantial biblical scholarship to bear on the debate, Perriman’s report is an authoritative critique that seeks to praise as well as rebuke, encourage as well as criticise, and learn as well as teach, trailblazing “a path towards constructive dialogue and reconciliation” (15).

Reviewed by W. Simpson

Notes:

¹ I am not suggesting we should never call anything heresy. But when the word is used so often, and for things we need not disfellowship over, it becomes less meaningful—though it seems to retain its power to divide! A more sophisticated system of classification is required. eg. Bowman, Orthodoxy and Heresy: A Biblical Guide to Doctrinal Discernment.

² I am referring here to the faith movement’s practice of confessing as a present reality the thing being sought for by faith.

³ JDS stands for “Jesus died spiritually.” The acronym refers to the faith movement’s doctrine that Christ had to die spiritually as well as physically, go to hell and experience a spiritual rebirth in order to secure our redemption.