Spirituality, Health, and Wholeness

An Introductory Guide for Health Care Professionals

Henry Lamberton, Siroj Sorajjakool

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781136398391
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Medical Theory, Practice & Reference

Learn to respond effectively and appropriately to spiritual needs in a health care setting Spirituality, Health, and Wholeness: An Introductory Guide for Health Care Professionals explores the principles of spiritual care as applied to clinical practice. This book focuses specifically on the significance of spirituality in clinical settings with practical suggestions on how to apply these principles in the healing process. With chapters that begin with clear objectives and end with guided questions, this valuable textbook provides a framework that will aid health care facilities in addressing spiritual needs in a clinical setting and help faculty in mentoring students in the field. This practical guide will help you learn when and how to address spiritual issues in health care with patients for whom illness creates a crisis of faith as well as those for whom it provides support. Spirituality, Health, and Wholeness highlights not only the importance of health care professionals in providing emotional, mental, and spiritual care, but the necessity for them to address their own spirituality as well. The book includes the experiences and case studies of skilled authorities mostly from the Judeo-Christian or Judaic tradition who identify principles that they found to be important in working with patients from a wide diversity of spiritual traditions. Spirituality, Health, and Wholeness provides you with detailed information on:

• Ministryhealinga model of wholeness and healing that incorporates an integrated view of humanity through the four domains: spiritual, emotional, physical, and social
• the physiological impacts of humor and hope on mood, the neuroendocrine hormones, and the immune system
• spiritual coping with traumaan overview of the research literature and how to address the spiritual coping needs and concerns of patients
• the role of faith in providing meaning to physical illness and the importance of the role of the health care professional in first understanding, and then assisting the patient in their struggle to find meaning
• the key components of spiritual care to increase the efficacy of spiritual caregivers
• the bereavement process with regard to religious, cultural, and gender variations, and the role of the healthcare professional in providing support

This book shows you not only how to meet the spiritual needs of patients from a diversity of faith traditions, but how to overcome challenges to your own spirituality, such as difficult patients and patients whose cultural outlook is so different from your own it causes discomfort. Spirituality, Health, and Wholeness will help all health care professionals who want to bring spirituality into their medical, dental, nursing, occupational therapy, or physical therapy practice.

Part I: Theory

Chapter 1

Toward a Theology of Wholeness: A Tentative Model of Whole Person Care

Richard Rice

Objectives

1. To conceptualize “ministryhealing” as a combination of health care and spirituality designed to address the multiple needs of patients.
2. To describe a model of wholeness and healing that incorporates an integrated view of humanity through four domains (spiritual, emotional, physical, and social).
3. To describe the process of caring for and caring with people as distinguished in the ministry of Jesus Christ, and its link to professionals working in health care settings.

Introduction

“Christianity measures the stature of man more highly and his virtue more severely than any alternative view” (Niebuhr, 1941, 1964, p. 161). Essentially, we are creatures in God’s own image—made from the dust of the earth, yet capable of appreciating our creator and representing him in the world. As we actually exist, however, our condition is one of alienation and corruption. We are alienated from God, from others, from our environment, and ultimately from ourselves. We bear the damaging effects of sin in every aspect of our existence—physically, spiritually, emotionally, and socially. Every essential element of our humanity survives, but none in its original condition. To fulfill our destiny we need a solution to the wide-ranging problems that afflict us and lie beyond our capacity to solve. In a word, we need salvation. A Christian theology of healing, health, and wholeness thus regards the ultimate cause of illness as sin, the fundamental disorder that affects all of human existence, and views the attempt to overcome illness and restore life to its fullness as one aspect of God’s saving work in the world.

The purpose of this discussion is to develop a model of healing and health care that reflects this complex vision of human existence. A model is a metaphor designed to provide a pattern for thinking and/or acting.¹ It serves a heuristic or explanatory purpose, and simplifies and sometimes distorts the reality it portrays in order to render it comprehensible. In a helpful discussion of the topic, Ian Barbour describes a model as “a symbolic representation of selected aspects of the behaviour of a complex system for particular purposes. It is an imaginative tool for ordering experience, rather than a description of the world” (Barbour, 1974, p. 6). The model of healing and health care proposed here draws from the central strand of Christian tradition, the Jesus story, and applies it to the complex view of humanity developed previously. A wholistic view of human existence involves a wholistic view of human sin, and this requires a wholistic concept of salvation.

The German language often brings words together to form expressions that generate new, more complex ideas. For example, Heil, meaning “salvation,” joined with Geschichte, meaning “history,” yields Heils-geschichte, a well-known theological term that can be translated as either “history of salvation” or “saving history.” If we could do the same in English, a helpful expression for our purposes would be something like “ministryhealing.” We could use it to express the notion that healing and ministry belong together—to show that healing is a form of ministry and ministry is a dimension of healing. This conjunction also suggests something stronger. It suggests that when ministry and healing come together they form a new and distinctive activity—something similar to each of them, to be sure, but more than just a combination of the two.

“Ministryhealing” is more than health care as conventionally understood—the treatment of physical disorders. It is also more than ministry as conventionally understood—attending to the “spiritual” or religious needs of people, apart from their physical and socialneeds. It is also more than an attempt to offer the two side by side as parallel forms of service. Ministryhealing is the attempt to integrate all the endeavors that address human needs in a comprehensive, coordinated program of human care. It presupposes that human beings are a complex reality comprising physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, and social dimensions, and arises from the conviction that we cannot deal with any of these dimensions without taking all of them into account. Accordingly, we must consider the whole person, or the person as a whole, whenever we address any particular problem or concern. Illness is a “whole person” problem. It involves human existence in all its dimensions. Every physical problem has emotional, spiritual, and social ramifications, and every emotional, spiritual, or social problem has a physical impact. Ministryhealing seeks to be a ministry that heals and a healing that ministers.

Ministryhealing presupposes the characteristic activities of a health sciences university. There are forms of wholistic treatment whose primary interest is nontraditional—alternative forms of medicine. Whatever their value, they are not our present concern. We are interested in the ways in which the various aspects of scientific medical care can be incorporated within an approach to healing that attends to the needs of the entire person as understood by Christian faith.

To develop a Christian theology of healing this chapter will take the route appropriate to a Christian theology of anything: the life and ministry of Jesus. In Jesus’ life we see the model of ministryhealing, the ideal of whole person care. This is evident both in the care he gave and in the way he gave it. When Jesus ministered to people, he not only cared for the whole person, he cared with the whole person. Ministry was the central concern of his life; he poured his entire life into it. As the key text of the earliest gospel puts it, “The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many” (Mk 10:45). Accordingly, this chapter explores the ministryhealing of Jesus under two headings—care for the whole person and care with the whole person; it will show how each involves the essential dimensions of human life—physical, spiritual, emotional, and social.² The model for health care that Jesus’ ministryhealing suggests will then be outlined.

Ministryhealing in the Life of Jesus

A model for this approach to integrated-integrative care can be found in the ministry of Jesus, who addressed concrete human needs across the entire scope of our existence. His concern for spiritual well-being comes most readily to mind, especially when we think of his various sermons and discussions. His concern for physical health is vivid, too, in his miraculous healings. But even a brief look at his ministry reveals that all aspects of human life concerned him.

The overarching theme of Jesus’ preaching, according to the first three Gospels, was “the kingdom of God” or the “reign of God,” as the original expression is more accurately translated (see Mk 1:15). Jesus announced the coming of God’s kingdom. He urged people to prepare for its arrival. He told parables to illustrate its principles, and performed miracles to show what life in the kingdom is like. The miracles are obvious manifestations of his ministryhealing, and they bear a special relation to the kingdom of God.

As signs of the kingdom of God, Jesus’ miracles assure us, first of all, that suffering is opposed to God’s will. It does not belong in his universe. He seeks to eradicate it.

Jesus’ miracles have what scholars call a “proleptic” quality. They are present manifestations of a future reality. Jesus’ miracles show what life will be like when God’s reign is fully realized. When God’s plans for human beings are finally fulfilled, suffering will be a thing of the past. In God’s kingdom, we will be free from all the destructive elements that dominate and intimidate us now. There will be no disease, death, or demonic possession. The world around us will be safe. We will be free from hunger and want. Nothing natural or supernatural will threaten our welfare.

Jesus’ miracles show that God’s kingdom is not only a reality yet to come, it is present now in significant ways as well. In fact, it is the ultimate basis for the world we live in. Jesus’ miracles are windows on a deeper level of reality. They open our eyes to the ultimate order of things, and show that God is in charge now. Though blighted by sin, this is still “our Father’s world.”

Divine power is no less responsible for the food we eat daily than it was for the loaves and fishes that fed the 5,000 in Jesus’ Galilean ministry. Divine power is no less responsible for our continued health and recovery from illness than it was for the people jesus healed. His miracles show that “the ordinary is extraordinary.” They reveal that God is at work in the world in unspectacular, unsensational ways. To quote Ellen White (1943, pp. 112–113),

The Saviour in his miracles revealed the power that is continually at work in man’s behalf, to sustain and to heal him. Through the agencies of nature, God is working, day by day, hour by hour, moment by moment, to keep us alive, to build up and restore us.

Like lenses that enable us to see in darkness, the miracles of Jesus open our eyes to the incessant workings of divine power that lie all around us.

Properly understood, then, the purpose of miracles is not to generate enthusiasm for more miracles. It is not to fuel the expectation that God will do what we want him to if we find the right formula, or ratchet our confidence up another notch or two. Instead, their purpose is to awaken us to the reality of God’s presence in the world and the ways he constantly works to bless and benefit us. Miracles provide vivid demonstrations of the fact that God is always acting for our welfare.³

Jesus’ miracles also reveal God’s commitment to life in this world. The kingdom of God is not “otherwordly.” People who enter the kingdom are not transported from this realm to another. The kingdom enters the world and transforms it. The apocalyptic vision of the new earth, with God’s throne in the middle of the New Jerusalem, affirms the importance of human life to God. God dwells with humans, not by taking them away from this world to be with him, but by coming into the world to be with them. The kingdom of God affirms concrete human life in all its aspects.

With this general perspective in mind, let us explore the way in which Jesus’ ministry embraces all dimensions of human existence.⁴

Jesus Cared for the Whole Person

Physical

Jesus’ miracles affirm the value of physical health and provide a basis for endeavors to relieve suffering and heal the sick. Two-thirds of the miracles specifically described in the Gospels are miracles of healing—more if you count the three people Jesus raised from the dead and the demon-possessed who were ill as well. He cured blindness, deafness, leprosy, and paralysis. More accurately, he cured the blind, the deaf, the leprous, and the paralyzed, for his concern was directed primarily toward the victim, not the disease. Physical restoration was an essential part of Jesus’ ministry.

We also see Jesus’ concern for physical well-being in several of his so-called “nature miracles.” He stilled a life-threatening storm on the Sea of Galilee, and on at least two occasions he fed the hungry crowds that followed him into the wilderness. The feeding of the 5,000, one of the few miracles mentioned in all four Gospels, illustrates the interrelation of the physical and spiritual in Jesus’ thinking. It temporarily satisfied the hunger of a great many people, but the sermon Jesus preached shortly after, “The Bread of Life Discourse,” connects this miraculous provision of physical food to the spiritual food that Jesus brings to human beings as “the bread from heaven.” “I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh” (Jn 6:51). So, our need for physical nourishment symbolizes our need for spiritual food, and Jesus Christ is the source of both.

Jesus’ miracles affirm the importance of the physical. They also affirm the importance of what lies beyond the physical, and show that the two are intimately related. Man lives by bread, to be sure. But “man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God” (Mt. 4:4). This brings us to the spiritual aspect of ministryhealing.

Spiritual

We tend to distinguish physical and spiritual maladies and assign them respectively to physicians and chaplains, or ministers. But Jesus dealt with spiritual and physical needs together. The Greek word for “heal,” sōzō, also means “save,” so it nicely expresses the view that spiritual and physical restoration are aspects of one comprehensive experience. When Jesus described his work as salvation, he no doubt saw it as including both physical and spiritual dimensions. In fact, on one occasion jesus compared his work to that of a physician suggesting that he envisioned his ministry as a whole as a ministry of healing, or “ministryhealing,” to use our neologism.⁵

Jesus’ entire ministry was directed toward spiritual ends, of course. Its primary objective was to restore human beings to a proper relationship with God. As we have seen, he announced that the kingdom of God was imminent, and saw himself as its personal representative. He invited people to enter the kingdom and described the various principles of “kingdom life” in numerous sermons and parables. He indicated that the relation of someone to the kingdom of God depended on his or her personal response to his ministry.

Although all of Jesus’ miracles served a spiritual purpose as signs of the kingdom, a number of them made an explicit connection between the physical and spiritual dimensions of our existence. When four men brought a paralyzed friend to the house in Capernaum where Jesus was speaking and lowered him through the roof, Jesus’ first words to him were, “Your sins are forgiven” (Mk 2:5). Only afterward did he say, “Rise, take up your pallet and go home” (2:11). There are several ways to interpret this sequence, but it shows that spiritual and physical restoration belong together, not merely in the sense that they are natural companions, but in the sense that they are integrally connected. Without spiritual health a person cannot be whole, whatever his or her physical condition may be.

Another miracle that brought physical and spiritual healing together involved the man born blind (Jn 9). Jesus restored his sight both physically and spiritually. As a result, he not only came to see for the first time, but recognized and believed in Jesus, the Son of man. Once again, the physical and spiritual were intimately connected, and the physical served as a symbol of the spiritual.

The close connection of physical and spiritual dimensions of human existence supports what some people call a “sacramental” view of reality—the concept that the physical world we inhabit is the bearer of transcendent meaning. One implication of this connection is the significance that attaches to the human body. A human body is more than a collection of cells, more than a physical object. It is the symbol of the person. We are incarnate beings; we exist in bodily form. But there is a mysterious “more” to our existence, and it is inextricably connected to the physical. Consequently, nothing physical is merely physical. What happens to us physically affects everything else about us—our mental outlook, our sense of identity and ultimately our relation to God. The physical is the bearer of the spiritual. Physical features and actions convey meaning on the spiritual level, too.

The contact between the spiritual and the physical is perhaps most vivid in the various instances—half a dozen or so—in which Jesus cast out demons. Here again, we broach a topic that is complex and controversial,⁶ but one message from Jesus’ exorcisms is clear: spiritual powers have physical manifestations, and spiritual healing has physical consequences. In fact, healing means freedom from everything that dominates and depersonalizes us, and the restoration of every area of life where sin causes damage.

Emotional

The lines that separate t...