Do you claim to have experienced or witnessed something supernatural?
I am currently planning a book on supernatural claims and practices within the Christian church. I will be focusing on a number of phenomena, including the following:
1. Glossolalia, more commonly known as speaking on tongues/other languages
2. Words of knowledge or predictive prophecies.
3. Healings.
I wish to hear from anyone who genuinely believes they have experienced – or knows someone who has experienced – one or more of these phenomena. I am particularly interested in healing claims and I’m hoping to investigate a number of claims for my book.
Healing claims are more difficult to assess than is often thought. In many cases we are presented only with healing testimonies, and often straight after the supposed healing event. However, in order for a genuinely persuasive healing claim to be made much more is required.
Firstly, we need medical confirmation that the person had the condition they claim to have been healed from. Regrettably many people have claimed healings for ailments they were never actually diagnosed with, but perhaps simply believed themselves to have. Moreover, when brought up on stage in front of an expectant crowd, a very natural human reaction is to play to the audience, even if that means stretching the truth a little about the severity of one’s ailment, and thus how dramatic one’s healing is. A person’s understanding of their own condition is often different from that of a medical professional.
Secondly, we require medical confirmation that a person no longer suffers from the ailment. Testimonies within minutes of a claimed healing are often misleading. The nature of many conditions – particularly pain related conditions – is that they can, through the power of suggestion (the placebo effect), go away during the highly charged atmosphere of a healing crusade or worship service. The person genuinely feels their back pain has gone, only to find it return a day or two later. The literature is full of examples of people thinking they are healed at the time only to discover later that they were not. This sometimes takes a rather insidious twist, especially in the presence of a theology that says a person can lose their healing through sin or lack of faith. In such cases not only does a person fail to experience genuine healing, but they must deal with often profound guilt, blaming themselves for losing a healing they never had. I remember a particularly tragic case of this in a Pentecostal church I attended in my early twenties. A couple who attended the church had a hard time because the woman had cancer. However, after being prayed for they believed she was healed. She continued to have symptoms of cancer, and the doctors continually told her she still had cancer. However, they simply refused to believe it, because they had swallowed a theology that said these symptoms were a satanic deception intended to make them lose faith and therefore lose the healing. But medical confirmation that a person no longer has a condition is crucial to any purported genuine healing.
Thirdly, note that not all healing claims are equal. For example, praying for a person with arthritic pain in her knees that goes away during a prayer meeting is not equal to a broken leg fusing within seconds. The former is far more consistent with what we know about the natural characteristics of arthritic pain, whilst the latter is highly anomalous and thus a better candidate for a genuine healing claim. I am particularly interested in healing claims where what has occurred is highly anonymous and against the grain of what we know about that illness. Praying for one’s cold to go away and finding it go away after 2 or 3 days would not be terribly impressive as a healing claim! Or, take a more extreme case such as cancer. The majority of cancer sufferers undergo treatment such as radiotherapy and/or chemotherapy. Moreover, in all likelihood virtually all cancer sufferers are prayed for by someone. We also know that many cancers will go into remission. This is a natural fact about cancer. Therefore, that some go into remission in the period of time after prayer has taken place is not necessarily surprising. However, there could of course be exceptions to this. Some people claim to have the “gift of healing,” and it would be significant if it could be shown that an overwhelming number of people they prayed for recovered, particularly if the recovery is from a form of the illness that is highly unlikely to go into remission. So, even though cancer can go into remission, it would strike me as significant if it just happened to go into remission right after a given person prayed for it to do so, and if this happened in a high proportion of cases.
I am interested in investigating any such claims as part of the research for my book, though please be aware that my approach will be analytical and investigative.
My own position with respect to divine healing is an “open but cautious” one. I am a Presbyterian who previously spent around 15 years in Pentecostal and charismatic churches. I believe God can heal anyone he chooses but I am initially sceptical of healing claims because I’ve witnessed so much that later turned out to be false. I have several articles on this website explaining my general scepticism of healing claims, but I would like to investigate specific claims in more depth.
I appreciate this can be a sensitive area for many people, who may not be entirely comfortable with sharing medical details with a stranger, however, all claims will be treated in the strictest confidence and no individual who comes forward will be identified in any subsequent book or articles.
Anyone who wishes to present a healing claim for investigation should make contact in the first instance by leaving a comment (which won’t be published publically).
Stephen J. Graham
stephenjgraham 