The Baha'i Studies Listserv
David Friedman wrote:
I brought this issue up some time back. If I'm not mistaken, it was
agreed that mental illnesses/disorders can be cured through prayer.
Everything in my experience has been that prayer doesn't work for
this. I've got an anxiety disorder and I gave up praying for it a long
time ago. It's difficult to imagine the chemical balance in my brain
magically correcting itself and me becoming a medical miracle just
through prayer. Does anyone know of any Baha'is who have managed to
cure themselves through prayer? If anyone here has managed to do so,
please say a prayer for me. If God didn't want to answer my prayers
then maybe He'll listen to someone else.
Hi, David:
IMO, there are two issues involved here which are often confused.
Certainly, God can, if He wills, cure or remedy any condition. Prayer is
one means of asking for His assistance. However, God's grace is not the
same as positive thinking. No matter how strongly I may believe God will
do something, there is no guarantee that He will act according to my
wishes.
In Christian Science, in all, or most, of the New Thought churches
(Unity, Religious Science, Divine Science, etc.), and in the "word of
faith" movement within pentecostalism, strong belief and God's actions
are regarded as one and the same. That is no accident, since both New
Thought and the word of faith movement were, through Emma Curtis Hopkins
and others, significantly influenced by Christian Science.
There is developing evidence that anxiety disorders, along with many of
the other conditions categorized in both the Diagnostic and Statistical
Manual of the American Psychiatric Association and the World Health
Organization's International Statistical Classification of Diseases and
Related Health Problems, have significant neurological causation. As an
autistic activist and self-advocate myself, I frequently find myself in
the position of having to explain this data.
--
Mark A. Foster, Ph.D. * 25 domains: www.markfoster.net SED: www.neurelitism.com
"... the modern challenge is how to live with uncertainty. The basic fault lines
today are not between people with different beliefs but between people who hold
these beliefs with an element of uncertainty and people who hold these beliefs
with a pretense of certitude." — Peter L. Berger, sociologist
__________________________________________________
You are subscribed to Baha'i Studies as: mailto:[email protected]
Unsubscribe: send a blank email to mailto:[email protected]
Subscribe: send subscribe bahai-st in the message body to [email protected]
Or subscribe: http://list.jccc.edu:8080/read/all_forums/subscribe?name=bahai-st
Baha'i Studies is available through the following:
Mail - mailto:[email protected]
Web - http://list.jccc.edu:8080/read/?forum=bahai-st
News (on-campus only) - news://list.jccc.edu/bahai-st
Old Public - http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]
New Public - http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]
