Christian Healing

By Christian Healing (CH) (synonym: Christian Healing Art) is understood, following the definitions of the Christians in Health Care (CiG), a way of dealing with illness and recovery that corresponds to the biblical image of man and God. This is the basis for the relationship between patient and doctor and also the classification of healing methods in distinction to esoteric methods or forms of therapy that come from a different ideological background.Christian healing is interdenominational and not bound to any denomination.Of utmost importance here is the acceptance of each patient to see him as a lovable human being, without judging his past or his own religious imprint, just as Jesus faced sick people at his time. The basis is therefore Jesus Christ, who came into the world as the Son of God and as the redeemer of our illnesses, sufferings and pains in spiritual, mental and physical terms (Genesis 1, Isaiah 53.4).Alternative healing methods

  • Those not provided by the practitioner (special spiritual healers…).
  • From the spiritual background (anthroposophy, cosmic energies, magic…).
  • Or certain rituals (mantras, trance, incantations, pendulums …).

Are to be solved and would be effective only through just such attributes, are not to be considered biblically based. Christian medicine applies, in addition to prayer for the sick, only alternative procedures that are either biblically based (phytotherapy as, for example, in Is.Sirach 38.4 ff) or are free of magical or cosmic influences. Thereby the harmony of physical treatment, psychosocial support and spiritual liberation up to the dying support are to be seen as holistic. Exemplarily some theses follow, which the CiG formulates strikingly for the Christian medicine (CH):

  1. There is no such thing as a value-neutral healing science! Every person – be it therapist or patient – is shaped by the healing science to which he entrusts himself. Behind every nursing, therapeutic or medical action is a human image, a “belief”.
  2. The Christian image of man is fundamentally different from all other views of man and the world: We are shaped in our society by different philosophies. These include, above all, materialism, rationalism, humanism, naturalism, the New Age worldview and the Christian image of man.
  3. The biblical or Christian anthropological understanding of disease and health challenges to rethink: the access to the understanding of disease and health opens up through the understanding of the broken human-God relationship, the need for redemption and healing of all creation and through the understanding of God’s giving love, which is granted to man through Jesus. Illness can be experienced and evaluated subjectively and objectively differently, even controversially. Illness can affect a person in his or her life to a minor degree or to a massive degree. Core health begins where man has personally grasped the salvation of God in Jesus Christ and lives in reconciled relationships with himself, with his fellow man and with the environment.
  4. The goal of CH is the whole – not the intact – man in the created order of God: man created in God’s image.
  5. Not man, but the Triune God is at the center of CH – from him come the salvation and gifts for the healing of man. This includes charisms as well as gifts according to creation, supernatural intervention of God as well as natural sources of healing.
  6. The design of the patient-therapist relationship in CH differs significantly from secular or other religiously motivated patternsChristian care, medicine and therapy understands itself as merciful “care” of man under the guidance of God.
  7. CH integrates elements of various therapeutic conceptsMedicines, healing methods, provided they do not contradict the biblical view of man or biblical truths. This includes elements of traditional medicine as well as folk and experiential medicine and others.
  8. CH is the art of fruitfully using the many helps and ways of God for healing. Specific elements of Christian Healing are included:
    • Intercessions for the sick
    • Biblical and prophetic diagnosis
    • God’s speaking in the disease situation
    • The word of God as the central remedy
    • Therapeutic pastoral care
    • Healing of the disease biography – disease processing.
    • Recognize and help remove obstacles to healing
    • Deliverance service – rejecting powers of disease
    • Healing prayer, anointing of the sick
    • Communion / Eucharist
    • Strengthening the “healthy
    • Christian end-of-life care, mourning work
  9. CH also has a scientific approachThere are now quite a number of scientific studies on the effects of prayer and intercession on the healing process of the sick, supernatural healings or preventive and therapeutic dimensions of a life reconciled with God.
  10. The practice of CH, the healing ministry, is an essential element for the renewal of the Church. Renewal in the church must be measured, among other things, by how Christians deal with the sick.
  11. The CH is not Protestant, Orthodox, Catholic, Anglican or Pentecostal …CH arises from the basic command of Jesus Christ to his disciples and thus to the whole Church!
  12. It is necessary to integrate and promote the ministry of healing the sick in the space of the Church of Jesus ChristThe need for such a structural change is also due to the fact that the “demand” for medical, therapeutic and health services will still increase significantly, but the trust in the established medical system is increasingly dwindling. The Church is called upon to set a clear, credible Christian alternative to the growing esoteric and New Age market.