Rev. David Bruner, Spiritual Director of the Center for Spiritual Living, San Jose, inspired this piece by asking on Facebook whether if you got glasses or took a pill it was an indication of a lack of faith in the spiritual science that we practice. The CSL community at large chimed in a thousand times over “NO! Medicine is part of God. Doctors are part of God. Just because you got glasses or took a pill, doesn’t mean you don’t have faith.”
I found myself alone in issuing qualified “yes” to his question, and that I wanted to say a LOT more about it than is usually in a Facebook comment. So this is that.
Certainly God is all there is, there is no place where God is not. Therefore doctors and medicine and medications and durable medical equipment are all part of God–that is inarguable. That means that a choice to wear glasses or to have surgery or to take a pill is at all times could very well be a faithful choice.
However:
While God is all of medicine, medicine is not all of God. God/love/life/energy/light is all there is the entire cosmos. Therefore every single thing that exists, including medicine, including doctors, is part of that. It is impossible to be outside of God. But the converse is not true: modern medicine is not all of God. So if I want to bring the full power of all of creation to bear on my healing (and why wouldn’t I?), I might have to venture outside of modern medicine.
A lot of medicine treats symptoms rather than effectuating a cure. While some of us still marvel at the cures that medicine has effectuated for diseases like polio and syphillis, there are a lot of diseases, or at least symptom clusters, for which medicine may not have a cure, but may just alleviate symptoms, such as migraine headaches, insomnia, and a lot of things that cause physical pain.
When I use medicine to treat symptoms, I may miss an opportunity for total healing. If a little red light on my car dashboard appears that says “check engine,” I take the car to the mechanic to see what is happening. If there is a problem with the engine, I generally do not ask the mechanic to turn off the “check engine” light, I ask them to fix the engine. If I am getting a pill to treat symptoms without following these symptoms as arrows pointing in the direction of my healing, I miss an opportunity. Are those symptoms uncomfortable? Do I ever treat symptoms in order to relieve myself from that discomfort? Absolutely I do. However, I need to be aware that when I do that, I miss an opportunity.
Symptom bypass can be as damaging as “spiritual bypass.” As spiritual scientists, we are increasingly wary of “spiritual bypass,” which is going straight to prayer without first taking an opportunity to feel feelings and be with what is coming up for us. Taking pills on a regular basis so that I will not feel symptoms is another form of bypass whereby I miss that opportunity to learn what I have to learn.
My body is a very intelligent system designed to restore me to wholeness. My favorite kind of physicians are osteopaths (DOs) rather than allopaths (MDs) because MDs are trained to look for disease whereas DOs are trained to look for health. While both kinds of doctors can write prescriptions and do surgery and everything that modern western doctors do, DOs function from an assumption that is aligned with spiritual truth: my natural state is wholeness. My resting state is health. My body is intelligent all the way down to the cellular level and so every symptom in my body is there to point me to wholeness, to health.
So if I combine a visit to a doctor who really is trained to support wellness, wholeness, with prayer or spiritual mind treatment, I am more likely to actually be restored completely to health, rather than to paper over symptoms.
Medicine does not have even symptom treatment for a lot of troubling physical conditions. There are millions of people in the US and the world who are in chronic physical pain without a real treatment plan that could effectuate cure and without even real symptom alleviation. Many are dependent on opioids which they need to be able to function at all but which give at best a kind of half life. There are also a stunning number of diseases or “syndromes” (which is what doctors call a cluster of symptoms that they don’t fully understand and don’t have a cure for) like Irritable Bowel Syndrome, fibromyalgia, rheumatoid arthritis, crohn’s disease, lupus and more where millions of people, predominantly women, are in massive debilitating discomfort for years without any real hope of cure or change.
When I go to a doctor without seeing a practitioner first I miss an opportunity for total healing, or at least sweeter, easier, better healing. In the Centers for Spiritual Living, we have licensed spiritual practitioners (including ministers) who are trained to know the truth for me when I cannot know it for myself. If I go to a practitioner before or as I have surgery, before or as I choose chemo or radiation, they can help me follow the arrows of my symptoms to wholeness. They can know wholeness for me and health. If I must choose to cut, burn or poison myself as the best I can think is possible for my health, their consciousness can bring me the most competent, loving, short, effective version of that choice.
If I have an awesome God that is all powerful, then why wouldn’t I consult that God even before I consult a doctor? Given that I have an awesome God that has created every single thing in the known and unknown world, including doctors and medicine, that means that that Divine Intelligence knows the cure to all diseases and all symptoms long before the doctors and the scientists do. Long before scientists discovered antibiotics, it was known, it in Divine Intelligence–it was equally true that it would work 1000s of years ago. Long before scientists discovered the microbiome, we had billions of bacteria in our gut that could play a role in our health. What else is possible? What else does Divine Intelligence know that is not known yet by our doctors or medicine? What might my cells or microbiome know that I don’t know? What might they be able to tell me?
I am open to all that is available to me for complete healing. I have used spiritual tools to restore the ability of my knee to walk miles and carry a backpack. I have also had surgery on both my knee (I now feel that was unnecessary) and my wrist (apparently very necessary). I do it all with the help of the all powerful, all knowing force that I call God.