Why Shouldn’t Christians Use Such New
Age Holistic Health Treatments as Homeopathy and Therapeutic Touch?
Alternative and/or New Age medicine
continues to exert a powerful influence in American society and in some segments of the
church as well. Testimony and further refinement of statistics supplied in a joint hearing
of the House Subcommittee on Health and Long-Term Care in 1992, given by Dr. John Renner,
M.D., head of the Consumer Health Information Research Institute in Kansas City, Missouri,
showed that: Of the 630,000 M.D.s in America, 6,300 to 12,600 M.D.s engage in purely quack
activities. An additional 12,600 to 31,500 M.D.s use some kind of unproven alternative
technique in their medical practice. And further, 31,500 to 63,000 additional M.D.s
occasionally use an unproven alternative technique.1
Besides thousands of medical doctors who employ
alternative methods, there are thousands more holistic practitioners who use them
exclusively. All this has impacted the church. Two popular alternate treatments that some
Christians now use are homeopathy and therapeutic touch. Therapeutic touch, for example,
is ignorantly used by many evangelical nurses. Why do we recommend against such practices?
Let’s briefly examine both these methods to see.
Homeopathy
Homeopathy is now a $250 million a year business in
America. Homeopathic substances are marketed in drug store chains and in multitudes of
health food stores. What is homeopathy?
Classical homeopathy is the name of a treatment that
alleges it can cure almost any imaginable illness from ulcers, heart disease, and migraine
headaches all the way to hiccups, nervous conditions and diaper rash. It was developed by
Samuel Hahnemann around 1796, a maverick medical doctor who was also a mystic and follower
of the noted 18th century medium, Emanuel Swedenborg. Hahnemann claimed homeopathy cured
illness in a unique manner. He taught that substances which caused illness, like
poison—when shaken and diluted with water to extremely small amounts, such as one
part poison to a trillion parts water—became powerful medicines. In fact, homeopathy
makes the incredible claim that the greater the dilution of a substance which causes
illness, the more powerful that mixture becomes as a medicine. This has resulted in
homeopathic potions being so diluted that often not even a single molecule of the original
substance remains in the mixture!
How did Hahnemann believe his medicines would heal?
He claimed they were powerful because they allegedly went to the true source of the
physical or emotional problem. Thus, they did not initially affect the impaired condition
of the physical body, which was only a symptom. Rather they attacked the true cause of the
illness, an "imbalance" in the vital force, or the inner spiritual nature of the
body.
Medical science has found Hahnemann’s theory to
be ludicrous. In fact, of scores of New Age health treatments, homeopathy is probably the
one most opposed to modern medicine. In our book, Can You Trust Your Doctor?
(available from this ministry), we presented eight logical and scientific errors Hahnemann
made in creating homeopathy, and we document why his methods reject medical science so
radically. We also showed why the testimonials of alleged cures are not credible when they
are examined critically. Further, we indicated why scientists are correct in stating that
almost all homeopathy functions in accord with the placebo effect and that cures on
animals and infants do not nullify their conclusion. Homeopathy also has a significant
relationship to the occult. Like some other occult traditions, it assumes the diluted
substances actually affect the spirit, which then in turn affect the body. Also, many
homeopaths use occult devices such as pendulums or engage in occult practices such as
astrology, dowsing, and spiritism.
In brief, homeopathic cures originate in
non-homeopathic sources and are either psychological or occult in nature. Those who trust
in homeopathy would save themselves a good deal of time and money, would avoid the
possibility of occult entrapments and would escape possible adverse psychological and
spiritual consequences if they abandoned this unscientific and potentially dangerous
method of treatment.
Therapeutic Touch
If you are ever in the hospital, you may discover
your nurse asking permission to perform a treatment on you known as therapeutic touch.
This is where she passes her hands along and a few inches above your body. Therapeutic
touch is a form of psychic healing now practiced by at least thirty thousand nurses in
America—and thousands more in other countries.
Incredibly, it is also accepted in scores of
hospitals. It was developed by spiritist Dora Kunz, president of the occult Theosophical
Society, and a nurse by the name of Delores Krieger. Krieger combined Dora Kunz’s
occult approach with other Eastern beliefs, such as manipulating "prana" or what
is thought to be "mystical life energy" within the body. Therapeutic touch thus
claims to work in a very simple way by channeling psychic energies from the therapist to
the patient for healing.
But despite its popularity and use in many
hospitals, therapeutic touch is obviously not a scientific practice. In reality, it is an
occult form of healing and should be labeled as such. For Christians, both because of the
scientific facts as well as the biblical warnings found in Deuteronomy 18 against occult
involvement, therapeutic touch is neither a safe nor innocent medical treatment.
Christian nurses especially should reject its use.
In our book, Can You Trust Your Doctor?, we document the occult basis of this
treatment and show how the inputting of occult energies can have serious emotional and
spiritual consequences. What this means is that no matter how persuasive and comforting a
nurse advocating therapeutic touch may be, we advise patients and hospitals to reject this
technique because it is not a legitimate medical method of healing, but an occult
practice.
FOOTNOTE
1. Personal discussion with Dr. John
Renner.
For more information, see our Resource Catalog: Can You Trust Your Doctor?.
|
