Scientific and Pastoral Perspectives on Intercessory Prayer

An Exchange Between Larry Dossey, MD, and Health Care Chaplains

Larry Van De Creek

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781317971238
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Medical Theory, Practice & Reference

Many people agree that prayer is a central feature of spiritual life. But what is prayer? Scientific and Pastoral Perspectives on Intercessory Prayer: An Exchange Between Larry Dossey, MD, and Health Care Chaplains explores common questions and concerns about intercessory prayer, or the act of praying for the benefit of others, from several different points of view. Chaplains, priests, ministers, and clergy in the health care profession will learn how prayer is examined from sources other than traditional Christian views, such as parapsychology. From Scientific and Pastoral Perspectives on Intercessory Prayer, you will learn what prayer means to some chaplains and to their ministry and how prayer can make drastic changes in the lives of your parishioners, patients, and their families.Written by eight chaplains, the articles in this text are in response to an essay by Larry Dossey, a nationally known physician who speaks and writes about prayer. The contributors to Scientific and Pastoral Perspectives on Intercessory Prayer discuss his points of view on intercessory prayer, which are based on quantum physics. You will learn if this area of physics can make a difference in how you practice your faith, how you worship, and what you think about or expect from prayer. Scientific and Pastoral Perspectives on Intercessory Prayer examines several other topics related to prayer, including:

• discovering whether or not intercessory prayer is truly different from other methods of meditation
• exploring the relationship between intercessory prayer and meditative or praise prayer
• linking prayers and their results to the expectations or intentions of those who engage in them
• differentiating between an intercession and a wish
• deciding for yourself what constitutes evidence or proof when discussing the aspects of prayer
• how our opinion of prayer relates to how we think about the universe and about God Since Scientific and Pastoral Perspectives on Intercessory Prayer focuses on the cooperation between science and theology, you will discover that, in many instances, people believe that the power of prayer should be taken seriously. This text also shows you how the questions and functions of prayer are shared by everyone, despite religious differences or methods of praying. Encompassing research and personal experiences, Scientific and Pastoral Perspectives on Intercessory Prayer will help you answer questions about religion and its role in the lives of parishioners, patients, and clergy, as well as provide you with evidence to the positive and healing power of prayer.

Respondents

The Laboratory of Religious Experience: A Response to Larry Dossey

John T. VanderZee, DMin, BCC

John T. VanderZee is affiliated with Bloomington Hospital, Bloomington, IN 47402.

A friend and former employee of the hospital where I work was recently admitted with a serious exacerbation of a chronic lung ailment. Although he has had many hospitalizations this was the sickest I had ever seen him. Struggling for every breath, he could hardly speak, and his fingers were beginning to turn purple. His two daughters were at his bedside. Trying unsuccessfully to conceal their fear and concern, they asked me to pray for him. My friend could only nod his concurrence. After a period of silence I prayed that the Spirit of God bring calm and peace with each new breath he took.

A scant 30 hours later I came into the patient's room and found him sitting on the edge of his bed and eating dinner. He greeted me enthusiastically while his wife and daughter beamed with delight. "It was your prayer that did it, chaplain," his daughter said. "Within a few hours after you left, Dad's breathing calmed down and he got a good night's sleep."

I mumbled something about this being God's doing and that I was a mere instrument, while a flood of contradictory feelings washed over me. I felt embarrassed and heroic, bemused and justified. I remember thinking how naive and childish was her conception of prayer, and how typical of so many people who regard answered prayer primarily in terms of prompt responses to precise requests. The incident spurred me to think more deliberately about my own attitudes regarding prayer, and its role in pastoral care.

Similarly, Dossey has raised some very important questions about how and why hospital chaplains engage patients and families in intercessory prayer. Is prayer a pastoral function which the chaplain feels "an obligation" to discharge, or "a purely religious performance in response to expectations?" Is prayer an activity that can truly effect healing, and might even be valued in partnership with medical intervention?

Dr. Dossey correctly challenges us in health care ministry to "take prayer seriously," because more and more people are doing just that. The field of pastoral care is slowly shifting partly in response to the current captivation with spirituality in our culture. "Spiritual care" is beginning to replace "pastoral care" as the substance of what we chaplains do, and prayer seems to be viewed increasingly as our central function.

I wholeheartedly agree with Dr. Dossey that not only prayer in general but intercessory prayer in particular is a vitally important activity for the pastoral care giver. Kenneth Leech rightly maintains that "we are seeking to be ministers of healing and reconciliation through the power of God which is released through the prayer of intercession."¹ While God certainly has the wherewithal to heal and reconcile in the absence of our prayer, we presume that God is also content to heal in response to or in concert with our entreaties on behalf of others. Intercession, so understood, "is a literal standing between, an act of reconciliation, . . . a priestly work in which Christ allows us to share."¹

Dr. Dossey calls us back to a position of integrity and intentionality regarding intercessory prayer. Unfortunately, he asks us to do it, I think, for the wrong reason. He asks us to take prayer seriously not because it is still the most effective means to convey to hurting people the healing presence of God, but "because of what science is discovering" about prayer.

Now that spirituality is chic and prayer in its varied forms is gaining acceptance, it should not surprise us that the efficacy of prayer has now become a growing focus of scientific experimentation. Dr. Dossey endeavors to show us how this is a good thing, and why we should be eternally grateful to science for finally providing us with the proof of what we had long begun to doubt if not deny.

I have the same discomfort with Dr. Dossey taking such pains to show scientifically that "prayer works" as I do with the highway billboards that smugly splash the same message. Do we want to encourage people to pray because we think they will get what they pray for a good part of the time? Or do we believe prayer is good and even healthful because prayer is communion with God, and God desires the fullness of life and health for us? Dr. Dossey appears to be less interested in prayer as a way of coming to know and be known by God, and more in prayer as a potent, under-utilized change agent.

Occasionally it is worthwhile to ponder the wise old adage, "be careful what you pray for, you might just get it." But a rephrasing may be even more prudent: "Be carefiil that you recognize in faith the answer to prayer when and if it comes." A critical question raised by prayer efficacy research is how can we be sure of what an answer to prayer is if we were to stumble upon it? And if it were possible to know whether or not prayers are answered, is it really science that we should rely on to make that determination?

George Buttrick in his classic work, Prayer argues that science is an inadequate evaluator of prayer because its purview is "too external, too fractional . . . and too analytical."² Science, by definition, is forced to examine prayer solely within the framework imposed by natural law. Even the contribution of quantum physics greatly extends but does not transcend the bounds of natural law. Science is a poor judge of the efficacy of intercessory prayer because it is not very good at addressing the nuances of human intent. Moreover it is altogether disinterested in the whole question of divine disclosure. There is no better determinant of prayer's capability than the livedout existence of the pray-er.

Measuring prayer's ability to increase the rate of growth of micro-organisms in test tubes, or lessen the need that a patient might have for post-operative pain medication may spark curiosity. But there are other important things that prayer produces which are much more difficult to measure. We might well contemplate with Edward Bauman, "who can see the effects of the love made available when one person prays for another? Who can measure the courage that flows into a tired heart when prayer is offered for a loved one? Who can isolate all the forces in the new situation created by earnest and fervent intercession among friends?"³

Nevertheless, I felt myself cheering Dr. Dossey on as he evoked quantum physics in his defense of the supernatural effects of prayer. As science makes more and more discoveries, it also recognizes the vastness of the horizon of knowledge still to be touched. Prayer may be one such under-explored realm. As enticing as this may be to consider, I am not convinced that we in pastoral ministry have a significant role to play here.

This is not to say that there is nothing about prayer that merits scientific study. We have much to learn, it seems to me, about how and why and in what manner people pray in times of physical extremity or personal crisis. It would be fascinating to explore what answered or unanswered prayer means to different people. What might be learned from examining the prayer life of physicians or other health care professionals? How do the prayers of believing chronically ill people evolve as their disease progresses? Still, we need to be very careful about the conclusions and judgements at which we arrive from such studies.

Dr. Dossey invites us to contribute mightily to the healing endeavor by praying for patients because there is growing scientific proof of prayer's effectiveness. For the person of faith, however, communion with God has its own sufficient rewards. The real miracle of intercessory prayer is when the reality of God's grace and love is quickened in someone through the ministry of another. The transformed heart is the kind of healing that surpasses any material benefits that medical science could possibly measure. What Edward W. Bauman wrote almost 40 years ago rings true also today:

Up to the present time, the final and conclusive proof of prayer remains within the field of individual religious experience. We know that God answers prayer only when God makes [God's self] known . . . and responds only when we are sure of [God's] response in our own lives.³

References

1. Kenneth Leech. True Prayer: An Invitation to Christian Spirituality (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1980), 164.

2. George A. Buttrick. Intercessory Prayer (Nashville: Abingdon-Cokesbury Press, 1942), 85-86.

3. Edward W. Bauman. Intercessory Prayer (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1958), 31.

[Haworth co-indexing entry note]: "The Laboratory of Religious Experience: A Response to Larry Dossey." VanderZee, John T. Co-published simultaneously in Journal of Health Care Chaplaincy (The Haworth Pastoral Press, an imprint of The Haworth Press, Inc.) Vol. 7, No. 1/2, 1998, pp. 39-43; and: Scientific and Pastoral Perspectives on Intercessory Prayer: An Exchange Between Larry Dossey, M.D. and Health Care Chaplains (ed: Larry VandeCreek) The Haworth Pastoral Press, an imprint of The Haworth Press, Inc., 1998, pp. 39-43; and: Scientific and Pastoral Perspectives on Intercessory Prayer: An Exchange Between Larry Dossey, M.D. and Health Care Chaplains (ed: Larry VandeCreek) Harrington Park Press, an imprint of The Haworth Press, Inc., 1998, pp. 39-43. Single or multiple copies of this article are available for a fee from The Haworth Document Delivery Service [1-800-342-9678, 9:00 a.m. 5:00 p.m. (EST). E-mail address: [email protected]].

Response to Larry Dossey

Marsha Cutting, MDiv, BCC

Marsha Cutting is affiliated with the Department of Pastoral Care, Capital District Psychiatric Center, Albany, NY 12208.

I have not had the option of not believing in intercessory prayer for many years. When I returned to the church in my mid-twenties, it became clear to me that if nothing else, prayer changed the one who prayed, made her more aware of the needs of others and more open to possible ways of being useful. Then, while serving a small rural parish, I called upon a man who was hospitalized in a large teaching hospital. He and his wife were the parents of a parishioner. He had gone to his doctor with sores on his toes; his wife reported that he had been given ointment and sent home. When the pain from the sores became unbearable, he presented to the Emergency Department, where his diabetes was diagnosed and treatment for gangrene was initiated. Parts of one foot and then the other were amputated. Then one leg was taken off below the knee. This appeared to be more than his body was able to tolerate; doctors wanted to remove the other leg, but it was felt he was too ill to tolerate the operation. I visited him and his wife in the Intensive Care Unit, where he lay unresponsive to the world around him. His wife told me, outside the room, that the doctors had told her that he almost certainly would die, that only a miracle would save him. So we prayed for a miracle. In the weeks that followed, I suspect we both had moments when we wondered if death wouldn't have been kinder, but six months later, he walked into church for his eldest granddaughter's wedding on two prosthetic legs. As Larry Dossey notes, "People test prayer in their individual lives; and one's life is the most important laboratory of all." Disbelief, for me, is not an option; curiosity certainly is. One of my frustrations with the paper by Dossey is that his questions are not necessarily mine. I don't have problems with prayer in laboratories or prayer for other life forms, for example; all are a part of God's creation. I also have my own questions which Dossey does not address. In addition to the questions of the scientist about whether intercessory prayer "works," there is another set of questions raised by the theologian. After all, people who believe that a man who died nearly 2000 years ago can be present with us when we gather around a table which holds bread and wine really shouldn't have trouble with the idea that intercessory prayer could affect medical conditions. The theological questions include those about God's omniscience (do we need to tell God someone is in need of healing?), God's beneficence (does God need our appeals to act favorably in someone's behalf?), God's intentionality (why would God heal one person who was prayed for and not another?) and the relative merit of the intentions (should prayer determine the outcome of the championship basketball game for my school's team?). I will return to these after I discuss some of the issues Dossey raises.

The question of "testing" God deserves more serious consideration than Dossey gives it. There is, of course, a Biblical injunction against testing God (Deut. 6:16) which Jesus quotes while he is himself being tested following his baptism. The injunction has its origins in Ex. 17:7. The Hebrews have been delivered from the Egyptian captivity and are wandering in the desert. They are finding the transition from slavery to independence a challenging one; they mentally gaze back at the fleshpots of Egypt with vision blurred by the desert's dust and heat. God has provided manna and quails, but now water appears to be lacking. The people find fault with Moses, who reframes their obstreperousness as "test(ing) the Lord" (Ex. 17:2). After water is provided, with God's intervention, Moses indicates that they "tested the Lord, saying, 'Is the Lord among us or not?' " (Ex. 17:7). This question has not previously been raised, a fact which Rabbinic commentators have not missed. The eminent Israeli Biblical scholar Nahama Leibowitz quotes Rabbi Isaac Abravanel (Spain, 1437-1508) as defending the Hebrews thusly:

If they lacked dri...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Original Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• ORIGINAL CONTRIBUTION
• RESPONDENTS
• CURRENT CONTENTS IN THE LITERATURE OF INTEREST TO PASTORAL CARE
• Subject Index
• Index of Names and Titles