Can faith healing combat diseases?
TODAY good health and the health business is one of the fastest growing in the world. Where ever you go there is a marked increase in health infornation and education, health products, health institutions and so on. With the Internet providing loads of information people are getting more knowledgeable on health issues.
Anti-ageing is a hot trending topic in our globalized world. Yet according to Candy Gunther Brown, one of the most frightening aspects of globalization is the increasing threat of diseases, a threat that functions on two levels.
First, diseases spread more rapidly in an interconnected world. In the wake of decolonization, political instability, warfare, famine, and disease have reached epidemic proportions in many countries. Because of the global marketing of agricultural and animal products and the international air travel of infected individuals, sickness can no longer be considered a local problem. Diseases such as AIDS, the Zika Virus, SARS, Ebola and mad cow disease are aggressive, encroaching, and know no geographic or national boundaries.
Second, the fear of diseases is potentially even stronger than the actual risk. Widespread access to information about diseases, particularly through unfiltered internet sites and popular books and films that intentionally pander to fears, raises specters such as a globally catastrophic bird or swine flu pandemic. Diseases may in reality defy all boundaries, but it seems still more boundless in the realm of the imagination.
For the great majority of peoples living in the two-thirds world, especially in growing urban areas where high population densities and unsanitary living conditions facilitate the spread of disease, poverty and povertyrelated infirmities are everyday realities that make daily survival uncertain.
Globalization raises but does not always or even often satisfy hopes for the availability of new technologies, resources, and cures for diseases, poverty, hunger, and social strife. Despite advances in scientific medicine and globally disseminated reports of medical miracles, even basic medical care remains unavailable or prohibitively expensive for as much as 80 percent of the world’s population.
It is precisely in those regions of the world where poverty and sickness seem most overwhelming and where traditional religions and biomedicine alike have seemed insufficient in meeting practical, everyday needs that faith healing has grown the most rapidly.
One of the leading landmarks in the prominent suburban area of Luyang Kota Kinabalu is an institution known as Glory Christian Centre or GCC for short. If you ask members of GCC, they would automatically claim that they are a church. Yet if you are looking for the traditional trappings of a church building like a church tower or a spire where GCC is actually located you would be deeply disappointed.
You would find instead a huge modern building complex that does not display any attributes of a traditional church but more like a commercial centre.
Yet that is not the only unique thing about Glory Christian Centre. On any given Sunday when GCC holds their weekly service there is always a possibility that GCC is instantly transformed into an ad hoc health facility that deals with a host of sicknesses and diseases such as cancer, heart disease, arthritis, migraine, all kinds of injuries etc.
Now just in case you start raising your eyebrows get a hold on here.
GCC does not transform itself into a modern hospital or medical facility with doctors and nurses as we know it. Instead it becomes a facility for faith healing and divine miracles. No drugs are prescribed, no medical instruments are used and there are no medical personnel involved even though there in the congregation may be doctors or nurses in the midst of their meetings.
The leader of the meeting and the Chinese interpreter will go into a litany of inspiring hymns and songs together with accompanying musicians before sicknesses or heath conditions which those in attendance are believed to be suffering from are called out, especially those who are suffering from serious or terminal sicknesses such as cancer or heart disease etc.
Then sick people or those who have any needs are called to come forward for more intense prayers by church helpers stationed at the front. This goes on for a considerable period of time and then just as quickly as the facility was transformed into an alternative medicine facility it is returned back to the church mode and everyone is dismissed from the service for that Sunday.
I am not a formal or registered member of GCC but I began to ref lect on the fact that GCC although not being moulded on a traditional church template or heirachy may in fact hold the answer in its own to the threat of an increase in sicknesses globally.
GCC in 22 years of existence with its proclaimed charter of being a city church deals every week with a multitude of cases of people plagued by all kinds of ills not only physically but also mentally and emotionally.
It offers a treatment that costs nothing in financial terms but can yield some amazing or even miraculous results. I think this template is a good one to follow as many people are now facing a host of problems in modern life, including rising medical and other cost of living.
Let me now tell you an event that personally happened to me when I attended GCC last Wednesday.
Early last September 2015 in the first week or so I was plagued with a very sharp pain in my left leg at the joint area. It happened just after using a trolley to push books. I may have twisted something as a result I thought.
The pain was excruciating and eventually swelling set in.The pain could be felt not just on my skin but the bone itself. As a result of the joint pain my foot began to swell due to edema until I could not wear my shoe.
Subsequently I went to the physio and the swelling of the foot and the edema subsided. The pain in the joint area also decreased after I took Ibuprofen pills but it never left for 6 months until last Tuesday night.
In the begining mobility was very difficult. I even used a walking stick. Eventually and slowly I didn’t need it anymore but the pain, though reduced and bearable, never really left. I used to walk a fair bit before this suffering condition (about 8km a day) but I had to immediately stop.
I avoided stairs and if I used stairs, it was one step at a time worst foot forward first. Getting up after sitting down was discomforting and sitting down after standing had to be undertaken with caution.
Carrying heavy things or loads were always to be be avoided and mobility was there but not in a bouyant style and instead in a cautious mode. Driving or doing anything with the right leg involved a degree of pain abd tiredness usually followed.
And the knee guard was a requisite apparatus for me. I would always use the knee guard except at home and never left home without it. It became a favourite possession of mine almost like a mobile phone. I loved strapping it on and never felt safe or comfortable outside the house unless I had it on. Towards the end of last year I attended a medical talk for doctors and I met a very high ranking doctor whose preliminary assessment was that I had a kind of arthiritis which could not be healed It was going to detoriate in the course of time.
I was scheduled to see the doctor for tests but missed the appointment. So the pains continued. On last Tuesday 16th February 2016 at 8pm with my knee guard on I was told there was a faith revival meeting at GCC which is under the leadership of Senior Pastor Dr. William Vun. The speaker for the night was a prominent Singaporean, Pastor Kong Hee from City Harvest Church Singapore. During the service Pastor Kong Hee began to pray for sick people and told everyone to place their hands where ever it was they were sick ie heart, cancer, skin diseases etc.
He didnt say anything about joint pain or legs etc. Anyway I just placed my hand on my right leg as a matter of formality so to speak. I didnt expect anything just a routine response when someone prays for the sick at conventions or meetings. We were standing for long periods and i did feel tired but suddenly I felt like some pressure of the pain was gone.
I touched the area of my leg and it felt like different. I started moving my leg around and bending it something I had avoided for nearly 6 months. There was no knee jerk pain to stop bending or moving. I pulled out the knee guard. I could still feel the sore part where the bone met the skin but it was more like tiredness pain instead of constant pain.I began to be more mobile with my right leg and after the service I had the option of using the escalator,the lift or the stairs to leave the GCC Building Complex.
I chose the 3 flight of stairs and instead of injured foot first i went down like other normal people.There was no discomfort to inhibit my mobility though I walked carefully. In fact my legs had forgotten how to walk like a normal person so it took some getting used to.
Four days have lapsed since my experience yet I don’t feel the pain or discomfort in my right leg. Notice I have avoided any adjectives or conclusions such as I have been healed or who healed me etc. I am trying to report facts without drawing conclusions leaving that to the reader
Yet the experience I had has made me rethink on matters of faith and the function of a church in a modern high pressured global society like the one we live in where everything moves at an incredible speed and pace. Could the template of GCC operating as a spiritual cum faith healing institution reveal an answer besides and in addition to traditional medical institutions and modern instruments like telemedicine as another effective weapon in our nation to combat and protect against the ravages of disease in our ever increasing global but dangerous world? Wats app your comments to 0142438685 TO BE CONTINUED