Faith healing: More fiction than faith

In my life as a radio presenter, every so often my producer suggests that I do a show that stretches my imagination somewhat. He rightly believes that as a radio talk show host, I should be able to cater to every interest and make it informative and entertaining for the listener at home. He rips me away from my comfort zone of tackling politics, news and current events and throws me into the deep end where I am expected to navigate conversation through the morass of astrology, a litany of many other esoteric subjects and the subject of this piece: faith healing.

(CNS/Barbara Fraser)

My latest encounter was with an elderly lady who calls herself Minister Louisa, who practises in the southern suburbs of greater Johannesburg. She claims that among the “miracles” she has performed, she managed to cure a 27-year-old man of HIV/Aids and multiplied food to feed the poor.

I entered the conversation thinking that my audience—supposedly rational commentators, or couch commentators of an expected secular persuasion—would rip into her, criticising her for falsities and dangerous practices that put real people’s lives at stake.

In fact, at the outset of the interview, I pitied her slightly, assuming that my audience, and I, would launch a relentless “shock and awe” verbal campaign against her. Instead I seemed to find myself alone in my criticism of her practices.

So, as anyone else who walks a fine line between faith and rationality, I thought to myself: “Why am I so resistant to the idea that God could have chosen Minister Louisa as a vessel—as she claims—to heal the sick and feed the poor? Was Jesus’ ministry not based on these very acts, and during the process of canonisation, are the most common miracles not those of a healing nature?” It would therefore seem a little hypocritical of me not to accept that Minister Louisa could perhaps perform the very same “miracles”, or would it?

It is a very human trait to seek animate evidence of God’s presence. It is far tougher to believe in an ethereal being, seemingly disconnected from us, refusing to intervene in life’s strife of loneliness, illness, financial insecurity, crime and many other tragedies.

The belief in a loving God is shaken for every person at one point or the other; whether it is through the loss of a loved one, our own shortcomings or afflictions of a physical or psychological nature.

So if someone saunters along, claiming to heal illnesses and feed the poor, that seemingly absent God becomes real and present for many of us once more.

That is why I found myself alone in my scepticism of Minister Louisa; people yearn for a higher power that physically and materially intervenes in their lives.

Minister Louisa and many like her understand this most vulnerable chink in the human spiritual armour and “in exchange for some petrol money or a small fee” provide evidence of that present God by curing illnesses and casting out demons that stop you from getting that job that will save your family from starvation.

The real truth is that the only evidence I have of her efficacy and those like her, are the many tragic stories of terminally ill people spending fortunes, travelling great distances, all to meet a tragic end because “they did not have enough faith in God’s healing power”.

By claiming to be God’s vessel, people like Minister Louisa strip themselves of any culpability and place it on the shoulders of desperate people willing to do anything in search of a cure or treatment.

It is not that miracles do not happen, it is just that many lie and take advantage of our belief and hope in miracles. It is this that makes the vast majority of faith healers very, very dangerous people with little, if any, scruples.

Gushwell Brooks is a presenter on Talk Radio 702 and 567 CapeTalk, and on Radio Veritas. He also writes for The Daily Maverick.