Faith and Healing: A Forum

Sloan: Well, all our experience in some way derives from the brain--everything we experience, from meditation to eating cheese. So in some way, it's rooted in the brain. The concern I have is that science operates in a reductionist way, and if you try to understand a spiritual experience or a religious experience from the science perspective, ultimately you are going to reduce it to the coursing of neurochemicals in the brain. And while that may be satisfying to a scientist, it's anathema to a theologian, which illustrates the limits of science. There are some questions for which science can't provide an adequate answer.

So, Rev. Handzo, how do you give that coursing of neurochemicals meaning? If you are counseling a patient, someone who has received a diagnosis of terminal cancer, what do you say?

Handzo: The secret is, we say as little as possible. There's nothing you can say. I mean, that alludes to this whole theological question of why does this happen--and we simply do not know. I agree with Dr. Sloan: I don't think that I want to know why God does it that way. Maybe God has nothing to do with it. I'm not sure any of those things are things I want to know, being a person of faith.

My job is to help them discover the meaning for themselves. What is the meaning for you? An example of that: I remember a mother of a child with cancer who said, "God is going to heal my son." Well, the doctors knew that God wasn't going to heal her son--I still held out--but eventually she came to the understanding that God was not going to heal her son. She said, "Well, you know, I didn't listen to God well. God has another plan for my son, a greater plan." For her, the fact that she could feel that God was still in control and understand that what God does is good--that was enough.

Sloan: So this is an issue that is periodically in the news. What do physicians--what does the health-care system--do for the patient if the mother assumes a religious stance that interferes with treatment?

Handzo: I think ethically we as a society have some duties to people who are unable to make judgments for themselves, and we have to make some judgments, right or wrong. And so I think we've done the right thing in saying sometimes, for whatever reason it is, whether it's faith or psychopathology or whatever, people who have responsibility for minor children don't make right decisions, are not fit to make right decisions --I don't care why--and the state has an interest in preserving that life.

Just as free speech has a limit, freedom of religion has a limit. There are limits in our society. And that's the way we've set society up.

Newberg: I'll be idealistic for a moment. I would love to see the practice of medicine be a team event. In a hospital setting, you can have a team where you can bring in somebody from pastoral care to talk to them about that, you can bring in a social worker to deal with the social issues, a therapist if need be. And then just as you hope that they as a family are going to make a decision, you as a team can make a decision, and then that way you have the best way of optimizing what I think are really the four dimensions of the person--the biological, the social, the psychological and the spiritual. I think we as a society, and the medical profession in general, need to really think through these issues, because it would be great to function as a team, to really take care of the whole person and to heal that person in whatever way that means.

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