Russel Jenkins, fifty-two, stepped on an electrical plug at home in 2006, cutting his foot. When the wound failed to heal, he sought treatment from a homeopath and later died from complications. A vascular surgeon said Jenkins would have had a 30 percent chance of survival if he had sought proper medical treatment even just two hours before he died. His mother was devastated: “To lose my son is devastating, absolutely. But the way he died. I just can't come to terms with it when I know all it needed was a phone call for a doctor or ambulance, for antibiotics and my son would be here today.”8
In 2009, a baby died in Japan from a subdural hematoma due to vitamin K deficiency. The mother sued the midwife who had been caring for the baby because the midwife allegedly had taken it upon herself to give the baby a homeopathic supplement rather than the vitamin K supplement she was supposed to administer.9
In the United Kingdom, homeopaths have drawn fire from the medical community for recommending their water over conventional antimalarial treatments. “We've certainly had patients admitted to our unit with falciparum, the malignant form of malaria, who have been taking homeopathic remedies—and without a doubt the fact that they were taking them and not effective drugs was the reason they had malaria…. [T]hey could die,” said Dr. Ron Behrens, director of a travel clinic at the London Hospital for Tropical Diseases.10
Medical science has come far in recent centuries. The human life span has been extended significantly as a direct result of science-based healthcare. Magic water may seem appealing at first glance. Look more closely, however, and it becomes clear that it's a waste of time and money. Yes, modern medicine is imperfect, but for those who value proven results it's the only game in town.
GO DEEPER…
Ernst, Edzard. Healing, Hype, or Harm? A Critical Analysis of Complementary or Alternative Medicine. London: Imprint Academic, 2008.
Goldacre, Ben. Bad Science: Quacks, Hacks, and Big Pharma Flacks. New York: Faber and Faber, 2010.
One of the saddest lessons of history is this: if we've been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We're no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It's simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we've been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.
—Carl Sagan
The best thing about being a writer is that you have a good excuse to place yourself in unusual places with interesting people. Tonight I'm a mere twenty feet away from Benny Hinn, perhaps the most popular faith healer in the world today. I'm surrounded by thousands of his devoted fans in an open-air football stadium. They have come expecting this little man with a big stage presence to call down miracles from heaven, and he's about to deliver.
Hinn stalks from one side of the stage to the other. The white suit and white shoes glow against the black night sky behind him. Hinn's over-engineered hair never falters in the strong breeze. He closes his eyes tightly and begins to sing:
“Hallelujah…Hallelujah…Hallelujah…Hallelujah…”
The slow, one-word song is remarkably dramatic. Each word seems to penetrate the believers who begin praying, mumbling, chanting, and screaming. Many reach up to the sky, some flail at it almost as if trying to claw their way up to heaven. Hinn continues the slow-paced one-word song:
“Hallelujah…Hallelujah…Hallelujah…Hallelujah…”
The effect is stunning. It feels hypnotic—maybe it is. Some of the people in the audience begin to twitch. One woman falls to her knees and begins to convulse as if she is receiving jolts of electricity. Although I'm a skeptic filled with doubt about Hinn's ability to provide or facilitate supernatural cures, I can't deny the impressive emotional power of his presentation. It's a potent psychological cocktail of music, religious belief, and hope. It's not difficult to understand how people are swept up in the excitement of Hinn's performances.
Suddenly Hinn freezes on stage and whispers into the microphone: “The Holy Spirit is with us now. It's time to claim your healing.” Random shrieks rise and fall in the audience. Several believers “speak in tongues,” the incomprehensible “language” some say God inspires them to speak. Suddenly Hinn screams: “God heals today!” His eyes close tight and he extends an open hand toward the audience. “Some will feel electricity. Some will feel heat all over their body. Some will feel vibrations. Take your healing now.”
This seems to me like a clear case of the “power of suggestion” in action. Hinn wants the evening to go a certain way, so he tells his primed and willing audience precisely what they are supposed to experience. And they do as they are told, so far as I can tell. An interesting aspect of a Benny Hinn faith-healing event is that the “healings” take place at this point, not later when believers are sent up on stage to be touched by Hinn. According to Hinn, God actually heals people while they are still in their seats. They only come up on stage in order to get some sort of final dose of the Holy Spirit. Most outside observers, I would think, miss this important distinction. On his television show, for example, it is presented as if the healing happens on stage when Hinn touches people. Of course this works well for Hinn because it allows him to describe himself as little more than a humble master of ceremony, while at the same time everyone sees people collapsing and writhing on stage after his “anointed touch” which suggests that he has great healing powers.
For those who have never seen Hinn's “touch” in action on his television show or clips on YouTube, it's a sight to behold. It shouldn't surprise anyone that his ministry rakes in many millions of dollars per year because he really does put on an unforgettable show. After the “healing” by God takes place, Hinn calls for those who were healed to come forward to possibly appear on stage. This is key to the process because those who come forward are self-selected believers who are already at a high level of excitement and satisfaction because they think they have just been healed. This virtually guarantees that Hinn won't get any duds on stage. As people arrive at the side of the stage, Hinn's workers conduct quick interviews to determine who gets on stage with Hinn and who doesn't.
The crowd's excitement peaks when people are sent out to be touched. Hinn asks most of them what God has healed them of. On this night a wide variety of ailments were wiped away, including AIDS, cancer, arthritis, diabetes, chronic eczema, and one heart problem. The workers feed believers to Hinn rapid-fire from both sides of the stage alternatively. They do this at high speed, as if there is some time limit or deadline to meet. The frantic pace adds to the excitement. A woman tells Hinn she has been addicted to drugs for many years. Hinn touches her face. Immediately she shakes violently and collapses into the arms of one of the “body catchers” who stand behind the believers. “She has been freed of the addiction demon!” declares Hinn. The crowd explodes with cheers. It's odd that the woman would have such a dramatic reaction to Hinn's touch because the supposed actual cure from addiction already took place fifteen or twenty minutes ago. It's also interesting to note that anyone who displays an above-average physical reaction to Hinn's touch is immediately lifted back up on their feet so that the preacher can knock them down again with his powers—or, technically, God's power that travels through Hinn's fingers. The audience goes wild over these double and triple doses of the “Holy Spirit.”
Amid the falling bodies and frenzied crowd's screams, Hinn repeatedly states that he is not doing the healing, that it's all God. Of course, this does little to diminish the obvious image being sold here, that, no matter what he says, Hinn is very special. I don't know about you, but when I touch people they don't go into convulsions, faint, and become twitchers on the ground. But I'm sure this professed deflection of credit and humility plays well with the audience who might otherwise suspect that he is a little too godlike for their tastes. “I have nothing to do with this,” says Hinn. “I am even more amazed than you are.” Then he promptly returns to dropping people on stage with his fingers. Sometimes he knocks believers down with a mere wave of h
is hand from several feet away.
I carefully observed Benny Hinn in action and saw nothing to suggest that he might really be a conduit to a god or otherwise possess magical healing powers. Everything I witnessed can be explained as nothing more than the expected behavior of people who were predisposed to play along with a carefully choreographed performance that has all the tried-and-true elements of faith healing that have been in practice since the first prehistoric shaman hung out a shingle. Hinn is very good at what he does and he is able to tap a deep well of religious passion and conviction that is thousands of years old. The audience was a self-selected group who wanted to see Hinn. Then a small subset of that crowd was selected for the onstage antics. They came with expectations and Hinn was smart enough to cater to those expectations precisely. Did anyone get healed of a serious medical condition? Of course not, and I suspect Hinn knows this. If he (working as God's humble middleman) really did have a hand in curing people of AIDS, cancer, arthritis, and diabetes that night he would have demanded, and deserved, front-page coverage in the New York Times the next morning. He also would have clinched the Nobel Prize in Medicine.
With such an ability to heal, Hinn no doubt would feel morally obligated to visit hospitals day and night. I hear they have lots of sick people in need of healing in those places. Faith healers often say or suggest—cruelly, in my opinion—that if a healing doesn't occur, it is the fault of the sick person because she or he lacks sufficient faith. I heard Hinn say more than once that one's faith is the key to successful healings. But if Hinn is worried about wasting his gift on the undeserving, there's an easy way around the problem. He can simply share his anointed touch with the more than twenty-five thousand babies who die in extreme poverty every day in the developing world. If his supernatural delivery system of divine healing can overcome AIDS and cancer, then malnutrition and dysentery should be easy. Surely neither God nor any preacher would begrudge lifesaving healing from a one-or two-year-old baby for lack of faith, right? But no, Benny Hinn seems to prefer to hop from stadium to stadium where he is greeted by thousands of preconditioned believers who know the routine—and have money to give.
So what is the reality behind this popular claim? Can prayers or the touch of some special holy person actually heal? Yes and no. There may be some positive benefit experienced by some people as a result of faith-healing efforts. But there is no reason to jump to the conclusion that a god or supernatural forces are the reasons. It can more sensibly be explained as the placebo effect or the excitement that makes people feel better temporarily. Sometimes it is likely a coincidence that people get better soon after they participated in a faith-healing event. Remember, we all recover from the majority of injuries and illnesses we get in our lives—whether or not a preacher touched us. The placebo effect still is not fully understood, but some people do improve simply because they believe that they are receiving treatment for their problem even though they are not. It's worth noting, however, that the placebo effect does not restore missing limbs or instantly close wounds. It is remarkably similar to faith healing in this regard. By the way, why don't gods and professional faith healers heal amputees, anyway? It's a fair question, especially given the many thousands of children who have lost limbs in car accidents or by stepping on landmines. There is even a website dedicated to this mystery.1 No, faith healing only seems to work on internal problems we can't easily see or types of illnesses that often heal independently with or without faith healing.
Faith healing almost certainly does not work the way millions of people believe it does. If prayers and faith healers had really been curing serious health problems for thousands of years, we would be certain of it beyond all doubt by now. It should be simple to measure: Are those people who are touched by faith healers in these ritualized events healthier and do they live longer lives than those who are not? To date, no one has ever been able to prove it.
Keep in mind when thinking about faith healing that it's nothing new. Faith healing has been around at least since the Stone Age. The only significant differences between Benny Hinn and a Paleolithic shaman are clothing allowance and a television show. Faith healing is a claim we can confidently reject as almost certainly not valid because it is so audacious in its claims and so utterly lacking in proof. If one healer, one specific type of prayer, or one religion really and truly healed people as dramatically and consistently as preachers like Hinn claim, then humankind certainly would have noticed it by now and all seven billions of us would have rushed to it. We don't see millions of desperately ill Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, and animists flocking to Christianity because Christian faith healers claim they can cure cancer, AIDS, and other serious illnesses. And we don't see Christians and Jews with cancer running to animism or Islam because of the long traditions of supernatural healing associated with those belief systems. As with many other unproven beliefs, proponents of faith healing have unjustified confidence in their claims because they ignore the equally passionate and sincere claims of people in contradictory belief systems.
In addition to the big Benny Hinn production, I also attended two small faith-healing services. One starred a woman who said she met Jesus, who gave her special powers and sent her on a mission to heal people. She “laid hands” on many people that night, including a very sickly old woman whom she declared to be healed. I photographed this and wrote an article about it for the newspaper I worked for at the time.2 I learned that the old woman died a week later, but I was instructed by my boss at the newspaper not to do a follow-up story.
Another healing event I attended was by far the worst. After a lengthy sermon that was nothing but a series of the most shallow clichés imaginable punctuated by random Bible quotes, the preacher called for anyone to come forward who was suffering back pain. A few people raised their hands, and the preacher chose one. The man walked to the front of the church without limping and he did not show any signs of being in pain. The preacher promptly sat him down and declared to the rest of us that the man's back hurt because he had one leg that was shorter than the other. It just so happens that I had read about this common scam. I was shocked because I was under the impression that it was outdated and nobody used it anymore. Apparently they do, however, as the preacher lifted the sitting man's feet, shook them and then either aligned them in a way that made his legs appear uneven by about an inch or two or pulled one shoe off just enough to make the feet misalign. This is not difficult to do, no matter how long or short the legs are. The audience was invited to come up close and inspect the asymmetrical legs. The preacher then shook them and realigned them again so they were even. I couldn't believe what I was seeing. It was so transparent and embarrassingly bush league. This guy was no Benny Hinn. But, to his credit, he pulled it off. The audience oohed and awed as if they had just seen Lazarus raised from the dead. That experience made me wonder just how bad a faith healer has to be before people refuse to believe. But it turns out that the most enlightening faith-healing session I would ever witness would be the one in which I was the one getting healed.
THEIR PRAYERS LIFTED ME OFF THE PAVEMENT
Cruising fast through the streets of the Cayman Islands on my bicycle, I had a Bob Marley tune playing in my ears and no worries on my mind. Without warning, however, a careless driver pulled out of a parking lot and we collided. I don't remember the launch or the landing, but I do recall the flight. It may be my edited and embellished memory speaking, but I really do remember feeling like a superhero as I soared over the hood of the car. I managed to plant a hand on the hood, which stabilized my flight just enough to allow me to execute a fast one-handed cartwheel. It was a smooth move, to say the least. An Olympic gymnast would have been impressed. I only had to flip my body around, stick the landing on the other side of the car, and take a bow. Unfortunately, my moment of supreme physical grace degenerated into the dorkiest belly flop in recorded history. My feet had rotated too far under me during the cartwheel, and I crash-landed hard. To this day I cringe thinking about it.
After a brief nap on the warm asphalt, I looked up through a haze to find several very large Jamaican women hovering above me. They circled around like a tight formation of Zeppelins, blacking out the stars like an eclipse. And then it got weird. They began shouting:
“Lord, heal dis boy!”
“Come Jesus and help ‘im now, please.”
“In Jesus name we pray!”
Apparently the women had rushed over from their evening service at a tiny church across the street and were eager to practice what they had just heard preached. Still flat on my back, bruised and bleeding, I began to feel special. Everybody likes to feel loved. Even though they didn't know me, these kind women came to my rescue. They even brought a god with them to help. I was flattered.
As they continued to pray for my divine healing with increasing passion and volume, I became highly motivated to get up on my feet and reassure them that I was going to be OK. So I did. I hopped up, dusted myself off and thanked them for their concern. I didn't realize it until later, but this gave me deeper insight into the way many people likely feel when they stand before Benny Hinn or some other faith healer. People aren't stupid; they know how the script is supposed to go. Who wants to be the party pooper, the creep who disappoints everybody by not getting healed? This becomes especially powerful if a preacher ties one's level of conviction to the success of the healing. It puts the blame on the person rather than the god. I am sure that this “pressure to perform” plays a big role in faith healing. I'm not suggesting that everyone who takes part in a faith-healing session is faking, but the urge to go along and not let people down is powerful. I know because I felt it that night in the Cayman Islands. There is also the inevitable adrenaline surge most people will get in such a situation. That alone can be enough to make a bad back feel better momentarily, for example. I recall interviewing a World War II P51 Mustang ace who told me that adrenaline in combat could always be counted on to make any pain or discomfort vanish—at least for a while. In short, until someone can prove that faith healing works, it makes no sense to believe it does because there are many simple explanations for what is really going on. Unlike some other irrational beliefs that might only waste time and money, this one is a clear danger to people. Sure, it may offer comfort, maybe even temporary relief, to some who believe in it. But is it worth the risk? Terence Hines, a professor of neuroscience, offers a stern wakeup call for anyone who may think faith healing is harmless:
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