From Chapter 19—Faith Healing. © 2020 by Emory Lynn.
What is going on with faith healing to make it seem like people are genuinely being helped? Are there natural explanations for what is happening? Neuroscientists are peeling back the mysteries of the mind and brain, including the numerous ways the mental self can affect the physical self. Through neurological processes that are just beginning to be understood, brain and nervous system biochemistry can boost the feelings of pleasure and well-being, inhibit the transmission of pain signals, inhibit the perception of pain in the brain, and even lessen the level of concern about pain that is perceived.
The most common symptom of those seeking relief through faith healing is pain. Pain is a pervasive health problem that can be caused by physical injury, disease, illness, depression or emotion. While pain may have a real physical cause (temperature, pressure, tissue damage), its recognition by the brain is a subjective process that can be altered in many ways by electrochemical processes.
Pain signals are transferred electrically within neurons (nerve cells) of the central and peripheral nervous systems and the brain. A signal travels through the cell nucleus and out through a long extension, called an axon, to a miniscule gap between neurons called a synapse. The signal must be transferred across the synapse chemically by the release of molecules called neurotransmitters. Synapses act as the control switches in the body’s nervous system and neurotransmitters serve as the juice to activate the control switches. Neurotransmitters can enable or inhibit a signal, depending on its molecular composition. The human body has many types of neurons and many types of neurotransmitters. Currently at least 60 different neurotransmitter molecules have been identified.4
Neurotransmitters operate in a complex manner to effect and modulate communication between neurons that are linked throughout the body by synapses. This is a fertile area of study in neuroscience. Some discoveries that have already been made:
- Gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) is a common inhibitory neurotransmitter that can reduce signals from nervous system pain receptors. GABA also functions to reduce anxiety and improve mood.
- Enkephalins are neurotransmitters that inhibit pain signals in the spinal cord. They are also active in parts of the brain that stimulate feelings of well-being.
- Endorphins (endogenous morphines) inhibit pain signals in the brain stem. In particular, beta-endorphins act as a natural analgesic to reduce the perception of pain in the brain. Endorphins also affect the release of dopamine in the brain, which increases the feeling of well-being.
- Dopamine is one of the two so-called pleasure neurotransmitters (serotonin is the other). Feelings of pleasure result from dopamine flooding through the reward pathway—a neurological network that functions to reward behavior necessary for well-being and survival. Dopamine has also been shown in some neurological studies to inhibit pain signals.
- Serotonin affects mood (a complex phenomenon) and can reduce feelings of anxiety and depression.
- Norepinephrine acts as an antidepressant, possibly because of a resultant increase in dopamine.
Our bodies have a remarkable system composed of descending neuronal pathways that can block or gate the transmission of pain signals ascending from the spinal cord to the brain. This is one of several neurological systems that are believed to respond to placebos. A placebo is an inactive substance or procedure without any intrinsic remedial value that is prescribed or given to reinforce a patient’s expectation of getting well.
The blocking of pain signals at the spinal cord and the release of the hormone adrenaline can enable a person to perform surprising feats of strength and endurance when confronted with a stressful situation. We’ve all heard stories of severely wounded soldiers being able to carry a comrade to safety, only to collapse afterward; and stories of accident victims being able to lift objects much heavier than they could normally manage.
The types of disease and illness that faith healers focus on have symptoms that respond well to placebos. The placebo effect can result from confidence in a doctor or medical professional. In medical studies recipients of a placebo often got better even when they were told they were receiving a placebo! In faith healing the effect is initiated by great expectations and confidence in the faith healer, coupled with a desire to please the people who are rooting for a healing.
Different people respond differently to placebos. While there may be no standard profile for the person that readily responds, the sufferers who seek faith healings are strong candidates. Take physical pain and/or emotional feelings of anxiety, depression or desperation; throw in great expectations for help by the faith healer; and finally, include a desire to avoid disappointing the healer and the people who are expecting a miracle, and you should have a major candidate for a pronounced placebo effect.
Placebo effects are usually short lived. Followup investigations by Randi’s team uncovered many sad incidences of people whose “healings’ had worn off quickly, and all too often had resulted in worsened conditions, even death, especially when the faith-healers’ victims quit seeing their doctors or quit taking their prescribed medicines.
However, it is possible for a placebo effect to be prolonged. A person’s improved mental state can have long-term physical benefits. A placebo healing might be the remedy for a psychosomatic illness. A healing in the mind’s eye may be all that is needed to expunge an illness that resides in the mind’s eye.
Was Jesus a Placebo Healer?
And his fame went throughout all Syria: and they brought to him all sick people that were taken with divers diseases and torments, and those which were possessed with devils, and those which were lunatick, and those that had the palsy; and he healed them.
— Matthew 4:24
After establishing the probability that Jesus was an actual person who became the Messiah Christ through legend, the question of how he built a reputation as a healer needs an answer. Faith was an important part of Jesus’ healing ministry. When faith was not evident in the people around him, he focused on teaching rather than healing. The sixth chapter of Mark tells us that the emphasis of Jesus’ ministry around his hometown of Nazareth was on teaching, because the locals did not believe in his healing ability. They knew Jesus as a common laborer from his days spent working for his father in the building trade. Mark 6:5-6: “And he could there do no mighty work, save that he laid his hands upon a few sick folk, and healed them. And he marvelled because of their unbelief. And he went round about the villages, teaching.”
From the Bible we see that when his followers were filled with faith, Jesus could function as a faith healer. Might he have been a faith healer along the lines of modern practitioners? Many aspects of the gospel accounts of his ministry make plenty sense in light of this possibility. While Jesus’ faith-based approach to healing might have been comparable to that of modern faith healers, he clearly did not seek to get rich in the process and live a life of opulence. Such an un-Christian motive was not a trait of Jesus. Jesus could have genuinely believed he was healing through the hand of God without understanding the natural, neurological processes involved.
Jesus interacted personally with those he sought to heal. Intimacy between the healer and sufferer, combined with faith and a desperate desire to get well, are key ingredients for placebo effects. That would have been no different from modern-day faith healing. Also, the itinerant nature of Jesus’ ministry was similar to the traveling crusades of modern faith healers. Jesus’ and his disciples would move on after their work was done in one location, leaving much less opportunity to witness any healing relapses that would have occurred. It would not be surprising that the disciples also gained a reputation as miracle workers. They acted in concert with Jesus during the healing sessions, performing as a miracle-working team.
I mentioned in Chapter 5 that the miracle stories in the gospels do not comport at all with the disciples unanimously turning their back on Jesus in his eleventh hour. Could it be that before Jesus’ crucifixion, the disciples had not actually witnessed the crème de la crème miracles claimed by the gospels—the raising of the dead, walking on water, feeding thousands with a few fish and loaves, the transfiguration of Jesus, Moses and Elijah high on a mountain, etc.? Those miracles would have been both awe inspiring and fear inspiring and would have clinched Jesus’ godly nature. But a healing ministry based on psychological reactions by the sufferers—not so much. The really impressive wonders would be added later in the evolution of the Jesus-to-Christ legend. Myth is commonly woven around a thread of truth.
Recall that around Jesus’ time, Apollonius of Tyana, Simon Magus, Hanina ben Dosa, Honi the Circle Drawer and others were widely thought to be divine miracle workers. Magic and sorcery they could perform. Their real miracles were add-on stories spun by a naive populace.
Notes:
4. Jeanette Norwood, Understanding the Brain, (The Teaching Company, 2007), Lecture 10, Course Guidebook p 42. Note: There are at least 60 known neurotransmitters plus neuromodulators. The distinction between neurotransmitter and neuromodulator is slight and typically ignored except by neuroscientists.
