Prayer does not heal the sick, study finds

[Sandman]

Bertrand Russell's speech.

Good stuff.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Arrian


Whereas I, a very un-spiritual person, do see value there historically... perhaps political history, in the particular case of Canaan. It's not likely that we can read the text and know with any certainty "what really happened," but it makes for interesting discussion... and you never know what archeologists are gonna dig up!

-Arrian

I dont see limited historical value cause Im spiritual = i see limited historical value cause ive studied some of the history.

The archaelogists, as near as I can tell, show there were late bronze age city destructions (though not at Jericho and Ai) . Which could have been many things, including invasion, rebellions, accidental fires. But what they almost certainly were NOT was the result of an invasion by a people of 600,000 coming from Egypt, of ultimately Babylonian ethnic origin.

Such a big departure from Egypt, all at once, would likely leave at least some hints in the egyptian historical record. Yet theyre not there. The logistics of crossing Sinai with a group that size(if you exclude the biblical miracles) are impossible. The folks who settle in the highlands in this period, where Judges places the Israelites, are not culturally distinctive from other Canaanites. (theres some dispute about the pottery, and house style, but the former in particular does not indicate a new people, I believe the consensus now is) Theres nothing particularly egyptian or babylonian about the culture of the "newcomers".
The early Hebrew language appears to be identical to Phoenician/Canaanite. The Hebrew names for G-d seem to come from the Canaanite pantheon.

The most likely solution is that the early Hebrews WERE Canaanites, who settled the highlands, possibly in flight from corvee labour in the Canaanite cities, possibly with an admixture of a few escaped slaves from Egypt, and a few steppe nomads. What made them distinctive from the Canaanites was their social structure and accompanying social ethic, and their religious beliefs.

[Spec]

Originally posted by SlowwHand


Just because you aren't privy to the whole story...
If you work, and only conduct yourself properly when you know the whole story, you won't be there long.
Sometimes there's not time to explain all to you, sometimes it's a "need to know" scenario.

God or business will truck on, with or without you.

I'm probably an idiot for asking but, wth are you saying? I really dont get your post.

Spec.

[DinoDoc]

To make sense of the morass of data, the NIH commissioned a series of papers, published earlier this year, in which scientists attempted to definitively assess the state of the faith-and-health research. Lynda H. Powell, an epidemiologist at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, reviewed about 150 papers, throwing out dozens that had flaws—those that failed to account for age and ethnicity, for example, which usually affect religiosity. In one respect, her findings were not surprising: while faith provides comfort in times of illness, it does not significantly slow cancer growth or improve recovery from acute illness.

One nugget, however, “blew my socks off,” Powell says. People who regularly attend church have a 25 percent reduction in mortality—that is, they live longer—than people who are not churchgoers. This is true even after controlling for variables intrinsically linked to Sundays in the pew, like social support and healthy lifestyle. While the data were culled mainly from Christian churchgoers, Powell says the findings should apply to any organized religion. “This is really powerful,” she says.

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/3339654/site/newsweek/

Good stuff.

[Arrian]

Now that is interesting.

-Arrian

[Arrian]

Interpreting disease as retribution for sin has its roots in the Bible—Miriam and King Uzziah were struck with leprosy after offending their God—and it continues to haunt many patients today. Molly Winterich, a nurse at Rainbow Babies and Children’s Hospital in Cleveland, often hears parents question God, especially in the dead of the night, when fear runs rampant. They’ll ask: “Why would God do this to an innocent child?” and “What did I do wrong?” Those questions, and the belief that their prayers somehow failed their children, can lead to self-reproach, despair and even physical decline. Kenneth Pargament, a psychology professor at Bowling Green State University in Ohio, studied the religious coping methods of almost 600 patients with diseases from gastrointestinal disorders to cancer. Those who thought God was punishing them or abandoning them were up to 30 percent more likely to die over the next two years.

From the same article...

-Arrian

[Provost Harrison]

Originally posted by Jon Miller
I mean, consider lightning. At 500 BC, it was Zeus throwing thunderbolts, at 1760 AD it was being studied as electricity. In 500 BC it was supernatural, at 1760 AD it was science.

Poor analogy. Lightning was known to exist since the dawn of mankind, because it is seen and heard, and probably got associated with gods because of its grandeur. Prayer is just a makebelieve concept, however...

[DinoDoc]

I might have picked up the blurb abut the woman with diabetes and hypertension who ate what she wanted placing her fate in God's hands.

[lord of the mark]

rabbi bernard fox on petitionary prayer

http://www.mesora.org/RabbiFox/toldot64.htm

[Arrian]

That's a good bit too, but I really liked the vicious circle aspect of the one I posted.

-Arrian

[lord of the mark]

Reconstructionist Judaism on prayer

If Reconstructionists don’t believe in a supernatural God who hears and responds to prayer, then what’s the point of praying?"

There is more to prayer than asking God for favors. Although people may be surprised to see Reconstructionists praying using traditional descriptions of God and God’s role in the world, prayer has a vital role to play in the life of a Reconstructionist congregation and each Reconstructionist Jew.

The Hebrew word for praying, "l’hitpalel", is a reflexive verb--that is, it applies to oneself, not to one’s actions toward the outside world. L’hitpalel means to look inside of yourself. This suggests that even when prayers end with God, they begin with us. We don’t know whether prayer can change God. We know that it can often change us.

Prayer reinforces values and creates community. In addition, prayer acknowledges that human beings, at least individually, are not the most powerful force in the universe. In other words, prayer helps keep us humble!

Prayer gives us an opportunity to deepen our spiritual lives, to increase our connection with God and to notice spiritual moments when they occur. Prayer is a spiritual practice that helps us become more aware of what we are thankful for, and what we are longing for.

Prayer also keeps us linked to our history. When we say the Shabbat kiddush over the wine, for instance, we are saying much the same prayers that our ancestors have said in the same situation for nearly two thousand years. That is a very powerful connection.

And lastly, prayer is a way that we can come together as communities. In times of celebration, or in trying times, we look to our community for group support. During the silent Amidah the entire congregation faces the same direction and prays together soundlessly, as individuals but in a group –this is truly a moment that expresses the intimacy of community. By praying together we share sacred time, connect with other Jewish communities around the world, and best of all, we get to sing together!

[lord of the mark]

Rabbi Shlomo Riskin, on prayer

Torah/Commentary: Parashat Beshalach -- (Exodus 13:17-17:16)


Commentary on the Weekly Torah Reading for 15 Shvat, 5760 (January 22, 2000)


by Rabbi Shlomo Riskin


EFRAT, ISRAEL, Yom Revii (Fourth Day - "Wednesday"), 12 Shvat, 5760
(Christian Date: January 19, 2000) (Muslim Date: 12/10/1420), Root &
Branch: Action and Prayer. How does Judaism orchestrate these two
often contradictory directives? It has often been said that when one acts,
one must act as if everything depends on us, and when one prays, we must
pray as if everything depends on G-d. But what does this mean in
theological terms?

This week's portion presents a terrifying picture. After Pharoah has
supposedly freed the Israelite slaves, the Egyptian charioteers
relentlessly pursue them. If they continue their flight, the Red Sea will
drown them. If they stay put, the chariots will crush them.

The Bible records: "Vayitzaku, and they cried out in prayer" [Exodus
14:10].

Rashi, the primary commentator adds: "tafsu omanut avotam", "they grabbed
onto the artistry of their ancestors", a poetic reference to the prayers
established by Abraham, Isaac and Jacob whose "art" is apparently the "art
of prayer".

Moses then confronts G-d, who we should think would be desirous of prayer
and whose response is therefore rather strange:

"Why do you cry out in prayer for Me? Speak to the children of Israel and
let them start moving" [Exodus 14:15].

Here Rashi is even more explicit than in the previous verse. He comments,
"...This teaches us that Moses too stood and prayed. G-d said to him, 'It
is not the time now, when Israel is in danger, for you to engage in lengthy
prayer (l'ha'arikh batfilah)'" [Rashi on Exodus 14:15].

Rashi is telling us that the Almighty is not chiding Moses and the
Israelites for praying. He is rather chiding them for their overly lengthy
prayer, for their prayer without action in a situation which calls for both
prayer and action. All of life requires a combination of prayer as well as
action, a realization that history is the unfolding of a magnificent
partnership between human action and Divine intervention.

There is a fascinating Talmudic passage which may well be the source for
Rashi's condemnation of lengthy prayer devoid of action:

"Rabbi Yosi said: once I was travelling on the road and I entered one of
the ruins of Jerusalem in order to pray. Elijah...appeared, and after I
finished my prayer, he said to me, 'My son, why did you go into this ruin?'
I said 'To pray'. He said 'You ought to have prayed on the road'. I
answered, 'I feared that a passerby would interrupt me'. He said 'You
ought to have prayed a short prayer'. I learned three things from him:
One must not go into a ruin, one must pray on the road, and when one
recites a prayer on the road one recites a short prayer" [Babylonian
Talmud, Tractate Brachot 3a].

In effect, Elijah, the herald of Israel's ultimate redemption, is teaching
R. Yossi, a Talmudic sage who is suffering the aftermath of the destruction
of the Second Temple, the true act of Jewish prayer: stay on the road of
action towards redemption, do not get side-tracked by wallowing in the
ruins, pray while you are engaged in achieving your goal, and when you pray
on the road make it a short prayer so that there is adequate time and
energy for human initiative.

The Talmudic passage continues, illuminating one of the most popular and
poignant of our prayers, the Kaddish: "I heard in the ruins a divine voice
mourning like a dove and saying, "woe to my children, because of whose sins
I have destroyed My house". And (Elijah) said to me, 'Not only then, but
whenever Israel enters their synagogues and study houses, and responds 'May
His great name be blessed' the Holy One blessed be He shakes His head in
assent and declares 'Happy is the King who is praised in such a manner'".

The reference is to the Kaddish prayer, a central feature of our liturgy
and a liturgy recited by mourners at the grave-site of their loved ones.

"May (G-d's) name become great and holy," it begins, referring to the
prophetic work of Ezekiel and Zeharia who teach that as long as the world
is not yet redeemed, as long as tragic suffering and death remain an
integral part of the world's landscape, G-d's name and essence are
diminished, G-d is not yet manifest in the fullness of His greatness and
sanctity.

Hence G-d's name is yet to become great and holy and that achievement of
redemption depends in no small measure upon our return: our return to our
land, our return to morality, our return to our G-d of ethical monotheism.
The Talmudic passage just cited pictures the Almighty as mourning when the
Israelites merely pray on the road, turn their ruins into Synagogues and
study houses and recognize their role in making the G-d of justice and
compassion manifest throughout the world.

What we gather from this parallel is that there are times when lengthy
prayers are simply not suitable. What then does G-d want? The Torah tells
us: G-d wants us to keep moving, to take the step, to start the journey.

Further evidence linking this theme of prayer and action is found in two
giants of Jewish thinking --Maimonides and Nahamanides.

Turning to Maimonides, in the very opening halacha (law) in his section on
prayer, he writes, "To pray is a positive commandment, as it says, 'And you
shall serve the Lord your G-d'" [Exodus 23:25], Laws of Prayer, Chapter 1,
Halachah 1].

Examining the section in the Torah from which Maimonides quotes, we
discover that the verse appears in a sequence dealing with conquering the
land of the Amorites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Canaanittes, the
Hivites and the Jebusites, and a warning not to bow down or worship their
gods, "...but you shall utterly overthrow them, and break into pieces their
pillars. And you shall serve the Lord your G-d" [Exodus 23:23-25].

Maimonides is teaching us that prayer must be linked to the very concrete
action of combating the evil of idolatry in the world.

Nahmanides has, as his very source for prayer, a verse placed in the
context of obligatory warfare against a nation rising up to destroy Israel:
"And when you go to war in your land against the nation that is
oppressing, then shall you sound the alarm with the trumpets and you shall
be remembered before the Lord your G-d, and you shall be saved from your
enemies" [Numbers 10:9, and Nahmanides' Strictures on Maimonides Book of
Commandments, Positive Commandment 5].

In our own times we can see an example of this tension between prayer and
action in the following vignette. The city of St. Petersburg was blessed
with a saintly scholar as its rabbi, Rav Isaac Blazer, affectionately
called Reb Itzele Petersburger. But one day a rumor spread that he was a
Zionist, and a delegation announced that he was to be fired for heresy.

The community leaders argued, do not our prayers recited thrice daily --
"...Blessed art thou O' G-d, builder of Jerusalem" -- declare quite
explicitly that any return to Zion must depend solely on G-d! How dare Reb
Itzele attempt to build Jerusalem with his own hands - and with the help of
non-religious Jews at that!

Rabbi Itzele greeted his accusers with a smile, "You're right," he said,
"but then what about you Reb Shmuel," he said to the Judge (dayan) of the
city. "Me", the judge responded, aghast at the suggestion that he too was
a heretic. "I'm not a Zionist".

Countered Reb Itzele, "But when your daughter recently had an asthma
attack, didn't I see you take her to a doctor, a non-religious Jew at that!
And do we not pray thrice daily, 'Heal us O G-d, and we shall be
healed...Blessed are you O G-d, who heals the sick among your people
Israel'".

And then Reb Itzele turned to Reb Moshe, the president of the congregation,
"You're also a heretic. Didn't I see you keep your business open till ten
o'clock last night? And yet you also pray three times a day, "Blessed are
you G-d who blesses the years with good sustenance".

Apparently, as in health and sustenance, prayer can only begin after we
have done whatever it is possible for humans to do. What G-d is teaching
Moses and Israel must be the rule for all challenges of
life!


Shabbat Shalom from Efrat,
Rabbi Shlomo Riskin

[lord of the mark]

A Prayer for Healing
Shema
My simple faith had died

some time before

while (the idea of) raising the dead

was (for me) a deception for fools and children

buried in the ground.

But, as when my tiny daughter

had become a plucked and scared bird

in the corner of her bed

covered by the rough hospital blanket—

My cry trembles once again.

As in the monotonous mantra

I rehearse for the thousandth

Time

The Shema.

My lips don’t move.

My voice isn’t heard.

But ‘His Name’…and so

forth I

bless silently in a whisper

silently.

Still closing my eyes.

As when kissing.

I examine my memory.

Give it signs.

Offer conditions.

Limp on.

Rehearse.

Tune the pitch like a violinist

before a concert.

Refine my voice at “Echad -- One.”

Concentrate on strange thoughts

(Is Lord our God an object

or a subject?)

I subject God to a test:

Can He

save you.

[Trans. William Cutter]

The words, by Malka Shaked, an Israeli poet, describe a familiar human experience. You are a rational, sophisticated person, a skeptic who sees religion as the purview of children and fools. But suddenly you are cast into a strange and terrible place: your child is sick, small and helpless in a hospital bed. And suddenly you find yourself whispering a prayer, whispering it over and over again without really knowing what you are saying, whispering it even as your logical mind rebels against the act. Shaked’s poem, called “Shema,” reminds us that prayer has a visceral hold on us at moments of extremity. We plead for someone to save the one we love, and we find that remnants of faith, surprisingly, survive “in the crevices of our hopes” [William Cutter, Thera-poetics: Lyrics and Prosody in the Chaplain’s Library].

Why do we pray for the sick? It is a mitzvah, a sacred obligation, the halacha says, for us to visit the sick. But the mitzvah is not complete “ad sheh-bikesh rachamim alav – until we have prayed for the sick person” [Tur, Yoreah Deah 335]. Not just rabbis but all Jews are asked to pray for those who are ill; it is not just our compassionate presence at the sickbed but our prayers that are needed.

We can well understand why this law would have been included in a medieval Jewish law code. Back then, we say, of course they believed in the efficacy of prayer; back then, without understanding the mechanisms of disease, they believed that our prayers would move God and result in a cure. The whole idea of praying for the sick is touching but naïve, based on a simple-minded view of the universe.

It’s interesting, therefore, to discover that the idea of praying for the sick is a theological problem already in the Talmud. A famous passage in the Mishnah [Rosh Hashana 1:2] says that all of us are judged by God on Rosh Hashana and our fate is sealed for the year. But if illness and recovery are decreed from the outset, why bother praying for the sick?

The Talmud [RH 16a] presents two approaches to this question. Rabbi Yose disagrees with the Mishna. He says that it isn’t true that God’s judgment is pronounced just on Rosh Hashana and is irrevocable thereafter. “Adam nidon b’chol yom,” he says. “We’re not judged just once a year. People are judged every day.” Rabbi Yitzhak offers a different kind of argument. “Supplication,” he says, “is good for a person whether it is offered before the decree is pronounced or after it is pronounced.”

We have here two views concerning the efficacy of prayers for the sick. Rabbi Yose says that such prayers “work” only if there is some possibility of influencing God to bring about healing. Prayers for healing are thus aimed at God; their purpose is to cause God to intervene in the patient’s recovery. Rabbi Yitzhak, on the other hand, believes that “supplication is good for a person” – even if the decree has already been sealed. Prayers are not for God’s sake, he seems to be saying, but for ours. They can be helpful, comforting, heartening, even when an illness has gone so far that the sick person cannot be cured.

This Talmudic debate lives on when we ask ourselves nowadays for whose sake we pray, and what we hope to gain from our prayers for the sick. Are we asking for something from God, or just seeking to unburden ourselves, to place our concerns before God and our community? Is our prayer mostly a message of concern we send to the sick person, intended to encourage our friend or loved one who knows that we are praying for him or her? Can a prayer for healing “work” if the sick person does not know that we are praying?

Some theological questions are purely academic; some cut you to the quick. Listen, for instance, to another passage in the Talmud: “Rabbi Meir used to say: ‘Two people take to their bed suffering equally from the same disease…One escapes death and the other does not. Why…? Because one prayed and was answered, and one prayed and was not answered.’ Why, asks Rabbi Meir, why was one answered and other not?” [RH18a]

Rabbi Meir’s poignant question is asked in every generation. It hovers over hospital beds, and kitchen tables, and silent rooms where someone lies awake and alone in the dark. It will not go away.

Despite the questions, we go on praying for the sick. We say or sing or whisper the words, sometimes skeptically and sometimes tenderly and sometimes desperately and sometimes choked by tears. Let me offer a few contemporary perspectives on what it can mean today to say a prayer for healing.

Rabbi Jacob Petuchowski, who taught liturgy at HUC, the Reform seminary in Cincinnati, points out that many of our Jewish petitionary prayers conclude on a note of praise. For example, listen to the prayer for healing as it appears in the traditional weekday Amidah: “Heal us, Adonai – then we shall be healed; save us – then we shall be saved….Bring a refuah shleyma, a complete recovery for all our ailments, for You, Adonai, are our Sovereign, the faithful and compassionate Healer. Praised are You, Adonai, who heals the sick of Your people Israel.”

Petuchowski asks us to notice that this prayer not only asks God for healing but also praises God’s healing power. So when we say such a prayer, he says, it should focus our awareness on how that healing power is manifest in the universe. All around us, in fact, healing is taking place every day: wounds are knit together, fevers fall, infections clear up, tumors shrink, diseases are conquered, damaged organs are repaired and even replaced.

For Petuchowski, this prayer is less about asking for divine favors than about awakening our own minds to appreciate the body’s miraculous restorative and regenerative energies, and the skilled hands of medical caregivers who are the instruments of healing in our world. As he points out, the prayer for healing, and all the petitions in the Amidah, are written in the plural, not in the singular. Thus, simply by saying them we are lifted out of the narrowness of our own despair. He writes: “The individual…learns to look upon himself as part of the whole faith-community of Israel….In the process, the individual Jew begins to see his own needs from a larger perspective – a perspective which enables him, even in moments of personal distress, to praise God as well as to petition God, to thank as well as to plead.”

Petuchowski takes a rationalist approach to the idea of praying for healing. Rabbi Irving Greenberg focuses on the emotional power of such prayer. For him, a prayer offered on behalf of the sick, or by the sick person himself or herself, is an act of connecting directly with the eternal source of comfort and love. Commenting on a verse from Psalm 32, Greenberg says this: “’one who trusts in Adonai will be embraced by hesed, by lovingkindness’ [Ps. 32:10]. The truth is: when you are sinking, when you are totally wrapped up in your own fear and pain, it is still possible to break out. God’s loving presence surrounds you at all times; God shares your pain as only an infinite consciousness can. God feels your hurt, kisses your wound compassionately. The divine steadfast love enfolds you even when the longed-for miracle does not come.”

Rabbi Greenberg’s words are neither naïve nor simpleminded. They are grounded in the belief that a sick person can be lifted out of fear, pain and isolation by offering or hearing words of prayer – ancient, sacred words that link the lone individual to a reality beyond the self. When the medical arts have reached their limit, prayer remains to sustain the soul -- to remind us, if we allow ourselves to believe it, that we do not suffer alone. It is possible, even in the midst of illness, to sense that you are cared for, that you are held in the embrace of a God whose love encompasses you forever.

“When my first wife was utterly ridden with cancer cells,” writes Martin Marty, “when my first wife was utterly ridden with cancer cells, emaciated and all, I wouldn’t have dreamed of asking, ‘Oh God, reverse these cells and give me a healthy-bodied spouse again.’ That was simply out of the range of this mode of conversation. What she and I prayed for was that love would be stronger than death, that nothing would separate us from the love of God, that we would be given strength for the day when it came – and when it came, we had it.”

And perhaps that is ultimately what the prayer for healing is all about, and why our rabbis tell us that no visit to the sick is complete without a prayer. We pray when we have done everything we can and there is nothing else that we know how to do. We pray when our own resources are exhausted and we need another source of strength. We pray as an expression of human love and attention, in the hope that pain and solitude can be eased. We pray in the hour of extremity, so that we can go on to face whatever we will have to face. We offer words of prayer when those are the only words we have left.

Rabbi Steven Moss, a chaplain at Sloan Kettering Hospital, writes this: “I recall once being asked to pray Psalms for a seven year old boy who was in a coma. As I prayed the ancient words, I knew I was not sure of the reason as to why I was praying. Was I asking for the child to come out of the coma and live a vegetable-like existence? Was I praying that the child would miraculously awaken from the coma and be totally cured of cancer? Or was I petitioning God to mercifully take this child’s life? In truth, I was asking for all three answers, as well as for none at all. For, by this act of prayer, I was not saying to God that I wanted one answer over the others; for each, in human, real-life terms, had its own difficulty. By this act of prayer, I was doing the only thing I knew to do at this desperate moment, which was to place this boy’s existence in God’s presence, through my presence of love and care for this child.”

[Elok]

Originally posted by Gibsie
This is all really silly. Even if the religionists were to "win" the argument, all that would prove is that God is actually a total ***hole who decides how much aid to give to people based upon how many people worship him. Feel free to argue that this is the case, however, in which case you're basically arguing that prayer is a protection-racket. Now on your knees or you'll all suffer!

.....

Uh, no. Beliefs on prayer are complex and varied. I myself am on the fence about prayer, personally, but the protection-racket metaphor is only applicable to the beliefs of a fairly thin swath of fundie nuts. Continue this strawman crap, and I just might be forced to assume all atheists support book-burning and state-enforced discrimination against believers, like....ahem...a certain polytubbie does.

And I've said it before, Russell's arguments are deeply flawed. Not jumping to the conclusion that correlation = causation is a pretty obvious principle to follow. Most of the violence was done in the name of religion, therefore it was religion's fault. Never mind the various social, cultural, political and economic problems of the ages in question. Or the fact that history since the Enlightenment is ripe with examples of atrocity in the name of secular ideologies. And, while the misbehavior of the medieval Church (Inquisition, Crusades, et cetera), is clear proof of religion's evil, the inspiring faith of MLK, Liberation Theologians in Latin America, missionaries providing basic supplies and services at considerable personal expense and risk, the Salvation freaking Army, Jonathan Swift, abolitionists and temperance workers, et cetera...well, that's purely coincidental. Not that most of those existed in Russell's time, but we've still got plenty of knuckleheads spreading the tired word.

[Ben Kenobi]

As everyone knows, petionary prayers have to be accompanied by charitable donations or they dont count Clearly the conditions were not correctly specificed, apparently due to lack of proper a priori theorizing.

Thanks for the laugh, LOTM. Good luck with these folks.

As for me, I do not pray as much as I ought. I have had some of my prayers answers, (a few really big ones too), and plenty of them have not, (which is probably a good thing!).

I also don't see prayer as just petitionary, it can be so much more.