Modern Health Care vs. Biblical Health Care

Modern Health Care
In 2004, Americans spent $235 billion on prescription drugs. This does not even take into account the billions of dollars worth of over-the-counter medications many people take without a second thought. Clearly, drugs are the treatment of choice for the American medical establishment.

Many drugs were created based on the healing properties of herbs, but like Frankenstein’s monster, the alterations have made them more harmful than beneficial. In order to patent a drug, the molecular structure of the original plant must be changed, which makes it into something unnatural and foreign to our bodies.

The English words “pharmaceutical” and “pharmacy” have a cautionary etymology. The Greek word pharmakeia has the following meanings: medication, a spell-giving potion, a poison, by extension magic, sorcery and witchcraft. It is generally translated in the New Testament as “sorcery.” Originally, pharmakeia was applied to unclean things, such as potions made with herbs and roots, as well as animal parts, other items (sometimes including excrement), and mixed using spells. While the significance of this origin may be debated, the facts about the deadly effects of modern pharmaceuticals cannot be: various studies indicate that between 140,000 and 200,000 people die each year because of “adverse reactions” to drugs, making doctor-prescribed pharmaceuticals the third leading cause of death in the United States. In addition, 50% of antibiotic prescriptions are for conditions that they cannot possibly help, and the Office of Technological Assessment of the U.S. Government states that 95% of drugs on the market have not even been proven to work!

Surgery, the cutting and removing of diseased body tissue, is the other “remedy” that traditional medicine usually embraces. When required for trauma care - the repair of broken bones and torn tissue – surgery can be invaluable. Unfortunately, surgery is used for much more than that today. In 2001, the top 50 medical and surgical procedures were performed 41.8 million times in the U.S! Consumer health advocate Charles Inlander (http://www.peoplesmed.org/charlesb.html) estimates that 10 – 20 percent of all surgeries (that’s more than 4 to 8 million every year!) are unnecessary, including fully 90% of all hysterectomies, 50% of Caesarian sections, 50% of prostate removals and 33% of heart by-pass surgeries. (http://www.thedenenbergreport.org/article.php?index=380) The lowest estimate of the number of deaths in hospitals from malpractice, generally unnecessary or botched surgery, is 44,000 annually, and probably is closer to 98,000.

Then, even if you survive the drugs and the surgery, you still have to fight off the infections that plague hospitals. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report that 20,000 people die each year in the U.S. specifically from hospital-acquired infections. An additional 58,000 people contract infections that contribute to their deaths. That’s 78,000 people who die in U.S. hospitals each year because of infections they contract while there. And these statistcs are based on information that is public record. Imagine what the real numbers are!

Surely there must be a better way! Surely it is not God’s plan that Christians get sick and die of the same common diseases that everyone else in the world has, nor that the same medical procedures that fail to cure disease in non-Christians also fail believers.

Acquiring Alternative Convictions
Christians are becoming desperate for answers to their health problems. They are starting to look for alternatives to the traditional medical options of surgery and medication – methods that are more like God intended His creation to use. Nude examinations, drugs with harmful effects, invasive diagnostic tests and radical surgical treatments seem to be far from “the way it was created to be.”

Kinesiology, herbology, homeopathics, acupressure, chiropractic and energy medicine are options that many Christians are beginning to explore and embrace as more consistent with their understanding of biblical principles. But other Christians (usually ones without any major symptoms yet) claim that these alternatives are occult. Kinesiology, often called muscle testing, is perhaps the modality with the greatest benefit, but attacked the most. Wisdom is essential, and Rev. Mark Virkler and Dr. Reuben T. DeHaan have attempted to set a kind of standard that you can use to gauge any alternative modality, evaluation procedure or therapy you may be exploring. http://cwgministries.org/Free-Christian-Books-and-Articles.htm
Specific link of interest: http://cwgministries.org/books/RestoringHealthcare.pdf

Can you explain modern science?
We are quick to judge some things we don’t understand, but have no problem accepting others. If an inability to explain how it works is going to be the criterion for judging alternative modalities, it seems only fair that the same standard be used in other areas. For example, how many of you can explain how a hologram works? A hologram is a digital (computer) image that can be projected with the use of light and mirrors to appear as an exact replica of the original. If you think about the fact that the replica of any object, including a person, can be projected and used to deceive, does that not seem wrong, evil, even occult? If you showed a hologram to a person from a tribe deep in the heart of Africa, I guarantee he would think it was a spirit of some sort. But I guess he is just ignorant because he doesn’t understand that this is science, not witchcraft. We who are educated don’t call it “spiritual,” even if we don’t understand how it works. Why is that?

How about the wonders of computers? You can use a laptop running on a battery and connect to the World Wide Web with no wires at all. You can download an image and even print it without hooking any wires from the laptop to the printer. You can take a digital picture of an uneducated person living in the jungles of South America and download it to your laptop or printer without any wires and show that person his own image on the screen. Even if he is totally irreligious, he will likely think it is some sort of spiritism. Why? Because he is ignorant of how it works. We can send a man to the moon, fly reconnaissance aircraft faster than the speed of sound with remote control, put probes on the skin that detect lies and heart activity and so many other wonders that most of us don’t understand at all. It is science, so we don't question is. So why do we judge some of what we don’t understand, but not all of it? Why is some of it evil and some of it acceptable?

Some folks don’t think it’s valid until the government approves it.
Are you waiting for the validation of the same government that will not let your kids pray in school, that openly lies to your children about how the world was created, that teaches homosexuality as a choice? These are the people you want approval from? Let’s be consistent now. If the government is so against God that they want to take “In God We Trust” off your money, why would you as a good Christian care what the government has to say about much of anything?

Why aren’t there any university tests?
Generally speaking, testing is paid for by parties that have an interest in a certain result. The goal is to prove the effectiveness of a product that they can then market and make a serious return on their investment. Who would benefit from proof that kinesiology really works? No one. If anything, the people with the money to gain in drug sales and surgery sabotage the efforts of those doing testing.

Most judgment is rooted in fear and ignorance.
People don’t take the time to really study neurology and quantum physics in order to understand the possibilities of the body beyond blood tests and CAT scans. Universities where advanced neurology is studied believe in kinesiology and electromagnetic medicine without question. There is so much validated science proving the energy that makes kinesiology possible that those of us who comprehend it simply shake our heads at those who ridicule it in ignorance. Those with understanding view the people that judge electromagnetics with the same pity the African tribesman got when he saw the hologram and ran off screaming that there was a ghost. It wasn’t a ghost; we simply fear what we don’t understand.

That is the kind of ignorance being demonstrated by those who judge energy in the body as some sort of New Age theory or occult belief. I don’t care if you are a medical doctor or a super-righteous Christian, your ignorance does not make something occult or evil, and you should not judge what you do not understand. To speak against a potential of the body is to speak against its Creator. What will you do if you are wrong about these alternative modalities? What will you tell God when He asks why you dissuaded so many people from using non-harmful therapies and protocols that could have saved them from exposure to the drugs and surgery they were forced to resort to, that the Bible clearly calls witchcraft? (See above.)

Guilt by Origin
Just because the Asian people gave it the name "Chi" before we were able to scientifically prove it existed does not make energy New Age or occult. Some people claim that alternative health modalities were developed by Taoists, spiritualists, or practitioners of some other meditation that is not Christian. Does that mean that we will use nothing unless we have proof positive that its inventor was a Christian? Will we buy no product from any company that is not owned and operated totally by Christians? On the contrary, if we believe the Scripture, we will believe that all things are created by God. The origin of something is not the issue, but rather how we use it is and whether the Lord is glorified through it.

It must be occult!
“I don’t understand the science behind it, therefore it must not be scientific. If it is not scientific, it must be spiritual. Since I haven’t been taught that it is in the Bible, it must be from the devil. Therefore, it must be occult!” Thus go the thought processes of too many Christians. But God was very clear in His description of spiritual activities that were forbidden to his people:

"There shall not be found among you anyone who makes his son or his daughter pass through the fire [human sacrifice], one who uses divination [fortune-telling], one who practices witchcraft [controlling by spell or ritual], or one who interprets omens, or a sorcerer [uses supernatural power over others through the assistance of evil spirits], or one who casts a spell, or a medium [one who communicates with the dead], or a spiritist [one who communicates with the dead], or one who calls up the dead. "For whoever does these things is detestable to the LORD; and because of these detestable things the LORD your God will drive them out before you. You shall be blameless before the LORD your God. For those nations, which you shall dispossess, listen to those who practice witchcraft and to diviners, but as for you, the LORD your God has not allowed you to do so. Instead, he will raise up for you a Prophet like me, an Israeli, a man to whom you must listen and whom you must obey.” (Deut. 18:10-15 NASU)

There is nothing in this list of forbidden practices that even remotely resembles kinesiology or energy medicine or any of the other alternative health modalities that are available to the Christian. It is only our prejudice, fear and ignorance that force us to label what we don’t like or understand as being from the devil.

If you are ready to step out of your safe cocoon of knowledge and would like to understand the beginnings of energy in the body and see the studies that have been done, you will want to read the article "The Nature of Reality and the Origin of Matter" by Dr. Reuben T. DeHaan. Many of your questions will be answered and your fears put to rest in this excellent, informative article which explains the energy of the body

Back to top