Joseph Smith encountered an emerging science, called phrenology. The basic idea was that the shape of one’s head, prominences and dips in particular areas, could tell you about the personality of an individual. At first he was enthusiastic about this new development, and even went to have his cranium measured. (These specific measurements have been used in attempts to authenticate a purported photograph of Joseph Smith.) But after a while, Joseph felt that the science was bogus, and he abandoned the idea altogether.
While I am the first person to complain about the mainstream medical establishment in America, not only for its practices, but for its undergirding philosophy, I still feel it is closer to the mark than many alternative medical theories. Joseph Smith abandoned phrenology, but many of the saints still clung to it. I see similar trends today.
Why the powerful draw of alternative medicine? Sometimes it works. Often, though, its appeal derives from pride instead of evidence. When something is based on rules that reside beyond the limits of truth, anyone can be an expert. Some members of the Church today (in my community, at least) would rather be experts in dubious and unproven fields than in difficult, unforgiving reality. They sidestep admitting we “do not know the meaning of all things” (1Ne. 11:17). This is sad, because a frank admission of ignorance is the first step toward learning something new. I remember desperately thrusting a Book of Mormon toward a college co-ed on my mission, but her arms remained unmoved. She calmly decline my attempts to lead her anywhere, stating that she thought she should be able to figure faith out on her own. She was attending college with a frank admission of her amateur status, learning temporal, physical, and scientific truths from experts. Yet the concepts that most college professors admit are beyond their reach—eternal truth, the meaning of life, the purpose of existence, the nature of God—this undergrad thought she could tackle those verities alone. Again, a lack of any experimental foundation for a concept camouflages our ignorance, and everyone is suddenly an expert in their own eyes.
Joseph Smith taught many keys for discerning where information comes from—God, man, and the devil were the three potential sources he enumerated. Just because something seems miraculous (literally, “a little mystery that makes you puzzle at it”) does not necessarily mean it is from God. There are two supernatural forces at work, one good, the other evil, and discernment is needed to judge between them. One key Joseph gave for discerning between good and manifestations is truth—was any truth communicated by the manifestation? “The Holy Ghost is a revelator,” he taught. If something comes from God, new information will usually be imparted along with whatever is manifested.
“Energy healing” (and other alternative medicine theories) seems to be a popular dalliance among some members of the Church in my area. Even the intangible things of the gospel, such as faith and the Spirit, are commended to us on an experimental, experiential basis by the Book of Mormon. “Experiment upon the word,” Alma teaches. There will be results you can feel, even if the experience transcends language a bit. Energy healing and its LDS proponents, on the other hand, have failed to present me with compelling evidence for the practice. I believe that “many great and important things” are yet to be revealed, and that my lack of understanding does not invalidate a principle. (No one has the foggiest notion of how gravity, for instance, works, but that does not keep it from being real.) However, “by their fruits ye shall know them” still rings in our ears down the corridors of time—we are to test spirits, doctrines, philosophies, and medical procedures, as well as their practitioners, against the yardstick of revealed truth, and by their long-term outcomes.
My first run-in with energy healing had to do with crystals. It was set up very much like a Tupperware party—a the promotion was made inside a home. I do not know whether the pretty and polished stones presented actually conferred the benefits the woman claimed. One crystal suspended by a chain was supposed to spin one way if you held it over your hand and your “energy” was “negative,” the other way if it were “positive.” I saw the crystal spin, but it would have been more impressive if the crystal were suspended from something more fixed and stationary than a human hand. I told the woman pitching these ideas and materials that one of my legs is slightly shorter than the other. She claimed it due to an imbalance that could be cured through some kind of energy work as I lay on a massage table. (Another alternate physician whose discipline is closer to reality, a chiropractor, also claimed that my spine was merely misaligned, and attempted to realign it through popping and stretching me on a table. It did not work. One leg is still slightly different in length than another.) As I drove with the daughter of the enthusiastic sales woman to fetch the table from her home, I asked about the crystal dangling from her neck. “Oh, this is just a bit of jewelry.” The mother was a believer; the daughter was apparently ashamed, but perhaps dutifully wore the crystal anyway to please her. I ultimately declined to have my back fixed through energy healing.
While I did not see anyone manifest great fruits of superhealth, or even any significant change in the health of the woman whose home hosted the energy crystal presentation, I did however watch her divorce her husband for no apparent reason years later, and rend the hearts and confidence of her children, and nearly destroy her family.
“Is any sick among you? let him call for the elders of the church; and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord: And the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up; and if he have committed sins, they shall be forgiven him” (James 5:14-15). Notice that the Lord’s prescribed method for administering to the sick is an ordinance, which can affect the soul, not just the body. What keeps this procedure from being hocus-pocus? The blind man Jesus healed with clay and water might have splashed mud and any other liquid on his face a thousand times; the main thing that made it a cure was the commandment of the Lord to do it.
There is no rational reason on earth to believe that cancer or any other internal malady should yield to the application of oil, the laying on of hands, or prayer. But I have seen it work with my own eyes. Understanding how it works is not the main key; rather, the key is to rely on priesthood power, and have faith in the Lord. In the experience I witnessed, both the one giving the blessing, and the one receiving the blessing, felt the power of God; both received direction from the Spirit, one to know what to say in the blessing, the other to know through what was said to do with the health conferred by the Lord via the blessing. So the gift of renewed health was not merely for the consolation of vanity or building abs of steel—it was to make a servant of the Lord useful to those around her. Peter jumped out of the boat to walk on water after he saw the Savior do it; we Latter-day saints prefer to strap on our metaphorical water skis (in many ways, not just looking to cure disease). We rely on the arm of the flesh, the power of day planner; we want to use some device we can control, something that seems more cunning or flashy, or at least something we can comprehend.
I like vitamin supplements. Who knows if they have helped much, but I like them. A girl facing a particular cosmetic health challenge took some supplements from me, held them in her hand, and silently asked her body if they were OK to eat, and waited for it to answer before she washed them down with a swig of water. Later she ate a bunch of junk food. Was the voice that vetted the vitamins the same one that demanded she eat the unhealthy food? I knew that she knew from personal experience that her cosmetic problem would go away when she stopped eating sweets, but she wanted a way to keep eating junk food and be healthy. Eventually she asked for a priesthood blessing. I never felt worse about giving a blessing in my life—the Spirit was not with me in it—and I have regretted doing it since. We both should be tuning in to the Spirit more, instead of listening to peer pressure, or other voices.
A more recent example of far-fetched medicine has been proffered to me by a dear friend, also a member. He has been telling me that negative energy, emotions, whatever you want to call it, can imprint on substances, that the substances will actually “remember” or retain the negative nature of what they passed through. For instance, water may become defiled with toxins, and then be strictly, completely purified from those toxins, and yet not do its job of quenching thirst in the body effectively because of residual negative influence from the toxic substances. Common sense seems to indicate that to remove all impurities from water is to remove all harmful side effects of those impurities, but the idea is that the water must also be healed of its memory of contact with bad things by coming in contact with good things, flushed through some system of glass beads or whatnot. I do not have the heart to challenge this friend’s belief in energy memory of food and water, partly because he has offered so much help to me in recent months with some severe bone injuries. He has recommended minerals necessary for bone repair, and even brought by ingredients for making yogurt to improve my calcium intake while lowering milk’s sugar content. Know them by their fruits; visiting and caring for the sick is a definite fruit of a real servant of God. I just wish I could get some discernible evidence on the water treatment idea. If it works, I am OK with it, even if I cannot understand why it works. If it does not work, what harm could it do? A waste of time and money, unless it provides psychosomatic benefits.
However, despite all his attempts to be a proponent for spiritual and physical health, this good friend still eats junk food, and shares recipes for such foods with all his friends. Of course, the recipes are made from much better ingredients than most brownies and cakes. But the most salubrious dessert is not as good for one’s health as fasting, or skipping dessert. The reason God puts so much good stuff in fruit is to keep the sugar from killing us, and if you avoid sweet stuff, you will not need so many vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, and the like. (Eskimos eat no vitamin C, but they never get scurvy, because their diets are completely free of carbohydrate. Do we need more vitamin C, or less sweet stuff? Are we being healthy, or just applying poison and antidote simultaneously?) My dear friend takes many steps to improve his health, while still clinging to the stuff that keeps him a little bit overweight. He is a very healthy guy, but a shrink in his waistline from the absence of sweets would extend his life far more than the perfect combination of nutrients.
Whether blessing the prescribed way or some alternative, these examples of members listed above all have something in common: we are all wealthy people with free time. “...they that will be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition.” Paul gives the cure for this condition in the verse before it: “And having food and clothing, let us be therewith content” (1Tim. 6:8-9). “Fix it till it’s broke” is the sardonic axiom that seems to apply to America, and we North American members of the Church, discussed above. Poor people never seem to get snared in this kind of folly—they are too busy being health, farming, walking, looking at nature, spending time with family, to worry about their health. Commercials on TV (I actually watched a little in a hospital a while ago) seem to be of two kinds: 1. Foods that damage health, and 2. pills that treat the symptoms of eating all that rubbish. Brigham Young said, “You get up in the morning and have...everything you can possibly cram into the stomach, until you surfeit the system and lay the foundation for disease and early death....Work less, wear less, and eat less, and we shall be a great deal wiser, healthier, and wealthier people than by taking the course we now do.” (Discourses of Brigham Young, p. 187).
The only proven way to extend lifespan in lab rats is caloric restriction—feeding them two thirds of the calories they would like to eat. There is every indication human bodies work the same way. This is the easiest, cheapest cure of all—nothing. Of fasting, Isaiah says, “...thine health shall spring forth speedily...the Lord shall...make fat thy bones: and thou shalt be like a watered garden, and like a spring of water, whose waters fail not” (Isa. 58:8, 11). This treatment and prevention for disease may work, but it is not nearly as glamorous as magical crystals that ostensibly let you eat junk food and be healthy anyway.
“...cease to find fault one with another...” (D&C 88:124). I do not delight in criticizing people, and I have deliberately tried to obscure the identities of those involved in the follies I personally witnessed and recited above. This is no proclamation of my emancipation from similar follies and vices; I merely wish to extend a general warning about what I see as a symptom of low faith, high wealth, free time, and the desire to transcend other mere mortals by possessing secret powers and knowledge. This kind of thing can gull anyone who is in the wrong place, spiritually. It seems fitting here to enumerate some of my own foibles, and exhibit some humility to cover the halitosis of my accusations.
As I have looked squarely into the mirror of introspection, I have realized that I do not eat solely for fuel or building materials to support my body. If those were the only reasons I ate, I would be the healthiest person I know. Instead, my eating patterns revolve around shutting off my brain. Fructose impairs cortex function, just like alcohol. It is designed to do this because in nature, fruit sugar signals our bodies that winter is coming. Cortex is where our willpower is located in the brain, and dampening willpower makes us likely to stuff ourselves and fatten up before winter. So the long-standing addiction I have to carbohydrates has less to do with a sweet tooth, and more to do with dodging the uncomfortable realities of life. Even without sweets, a full stomach draws blood away from the rest of the body (i.e. the brain) for digestion. Essentially, excess food helps to sweep away my hard thoughts (and hence, feelings) about life, rather than deal with them. Food can be an agent of procrastination. If I would take the time to amend my life and fill it with emotionally satisfying things and relationships, food would lose most of its appeal.
My friend (who wants to purify water energies) defined addictions as a dependence on something besides the Lord. I like this definition, more good fruits on his part. If we want improved health, do we lean on the Lord, or a burgeoning medicine cabinet, a pharmacy, and an army of witchdoctors? If life is empty, do we fill it with carnal stimuli, like food and alcohol, or do we rely on the Comforter for comfort? It is easy to make the mistake of believing the Lord’s admonition to Adam to live by the sweat of his brow was an invitation to focus solely on our survival or make it our main goal. Even President Packer, who often counsels youth to keep harmful substances out of their bodies, admits that maintaining health is ultimately “a losing battle.” My experience has been that the Lord heals, but the doctor collects the fee. The Lord will keep us alive, or make us sick, or take us home to heaven, all according to His plan and timing for us. The point of life is not to spend it trying to live forever, but to prepare to meet God when it is over, however long or brief our lives may be. Those who seek to save their lives lose them, but those who serve God will be preserved. (An extreme example is John and the three Nephites.)
God may not care that much about keeping us alive, or whether our understanding of medicine is all that accurate. Our bodies do not just have the capacity to die; they are designed unavoidably to die. The ultimate cure for all diseases is the resurrection, and everyone will get that permanent fix in any case. Not everyone will be spiritually healed, however, and that makes it a more pressing issue. "...fear not even unto death; for in this world your joy is not full, but in me your joy is full. Therefore, care not for the body, neither the life of the body; but care for the soul, and for the life of the soul" (D&C 101:36-37). There are armies of people on the other side of the veil who need to hear the gospel, and our death here may send us to them there. Our knowledge of medicine or experience with healing miracles may be limited. But our simple understanding of the gospel, saving truth, can be perfect, provided the Spirit is our teacher.
Part of preparing to meet God is learning to discern where influences and ideas are coming from, and choosing the good from the bad. Another part of that preparation is learning to rely on the Lord, to trust Him even when we might be tempted to sell our souls for a little physical healing.
Part of preparing to meet God is learning to discern where influences and ideas are coming from, and choosing the good from the bad. Another part of that preparation is learning to rely on the Lord, to trust Him even when we might be tempted to sell our souls for a little physical healing.
