• Editor’s note: “Spiritual leaders answer” is a weekly column inviting Kaua‘i’s religious and spiritual leaders to share their doctrines’ perspective on a suggested subject. Every Friday, a topic is printed, inviting a response. Submissions are edited for content and
• Editor’s note: “Spiritual leaders answer” is a weekly column inviting Kaua‘i’s religious and spiritual leaders to share their doctrines’ perspective on a suggested subject. Every Friday, a topic is printed, inviting a response. Submissions are edited for content and length. Submitting a piece does not guarantee publication due to space limitations. Thoughts or suggestions for future topics are always welcome. Next week the suggested topic is sharing. The topic at the end of the column is for the following week.
Kahu James Fung
Lihu‘e Christian Church
I recently watched “The Burning Plain,” a movie illustrating the problems that can haunt a person their entire life when unresolved guilt from the past is not healed. There are wounds to our soul that time cannot remedy — that are embedded issues having tremendous impact on how we face the future, handle challenges and deal with relationships. When things aren’t going well in our lives, sometimes, it’s not merely the case that we need to try harder or that something needs to be fixed. The remedy might have to do with the healing of the soul.
In the Bible there are many instances of Jesus applying this wisdom. It has to do with understanding the unity of mind, body and spirit. Healing is an art that begins with a fundamental understanding that human beings are not merely intricate and exquisitely constructed biological/chemical machines. We are a spiritual, mental, physical expression of God’s miraculous creation. When something goes wrong we cannot merely fix it the way you’d fix a car by taking out a broken part and replacing it with something new.
The Christian faith teaches how valuable the therapeutic power of prayer is and the liberating release (forgiveness from God) that comes through true contrition of the heart.
Dr. Robert P. Merkle
Retired clergy person
United Church of Christ
Healing forces are at work in all creations at every moment throughout all time. Each one of us is being healed from moment to moment. Trillions of individual cells are at work within our bodies, performing their appointed tasks, in an attempt to enable us to live healthy lives, and doing all of this work without requiring our awareness, supervision or appreciation.
When a bone is broken or an abrasion or cut is made to our skin, these forces come immediately to our aid. When we fail to engage in responsible physical exercise, these forces come to our aid. When we live in an atmosphere polluted with toxic air, or toxic thoughts, or toxic intentions and desires, these forces come to our aid. In each case they work to heal the effects of the things we have introduced that interrupt the healing process.
We do not need to pray to God in an attempt to get God to heal us. God is always working, full time to heal us. We need to pray to change ourselves, so we can allow and not interrupt or block the healing that God is always doing.
When healing does not occur, the fault may be neither God’s nor our own, but the result of the fact that we live in an atmosphere in which too much pollution exists. Some things can be healed only in an atmosphere of “ceaseless prayer and fasting.”
Mollie Osborn
Christian Science Church
After a horseback-riding accident, X-rays showed I not only had broken my back in three places, but I had an incurable arthritic condition and my backbone was slowly disintegrating. The doctors said it would take six to eight weeks for the broken back to heal, but nothing could be done about the arthritic condition. Against their advice, I went home. We lived on a farm and had three young children to care for. A friend brought me a copy of “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures” by Mary Baker Eddy to read. I knew nothing about Christian Science and was fascinated by the new ideas presented in the book. I’d been searching for several years and felt I’d found “the pearl of great price” that Paul speaks of in the Bible. The last 100 pages are filled with testimonies by those healed by reading Science and Health. In two weeks I was pain free and felt I too was healed. I resumed my normal activities.
We had planned a winter vacation to the Caribbean and decided to go. Three weeks after the accident I was playing tennis and water-skiing. On our return, our doctor, learning of this, insisted I be x-rayed again to see what damage I’d done to my back. He made an appointment for me to meet with the hospital’s chief surgeon the beginning of the fifth week. When I entered his office, he had the both sets of x-rays on a lighted screen and said, “no one would believe these x-rays were of the same person. There is no trace of injury.”
This healing occurred in 1972 and has been permanent. I have never again had pain or discomfort in my back. Reading “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures” completely changed my life. Since that time, our family has successfully relied entirely on God for healing.
Topic for two
weeks from today
• Will you speak to us on leadership?
• Spiritual leaders are invited to e-mail responses of three to five paragraphs to pwoolway@kauaipubco.com.
• Deadline each week is 5 p.m. Tuesday.
