On Medicine, Science, Faith, and Mindset - Part 2
Mind, open and closed
Chesterton once said, “Merely having an open mind is nothing. The object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid.”
I have a theory that we are only asked to close our minds on truths that challenge us to expand our understanding of the universe, our place in it, and God.
For example, “I am loved by God.”
This is a truth that I have chosen to close my mind upon. It opens a world of deeper understanding into myself and brings peace.
But a dangerous idea to close one’s mind upon would be this: “I do not believe in eating rice.”
This is a truth that does not expand my world. Indirectly, since I believe I have an allergy to rice, it may appear to do so. It relieves me of eczema at night, and occasional stomach-aches. But it is not important enough to turn into a belief, and when I heal of my allergy, I will still believe it wrong to eat rice. (We actually see this with many people in the Vegan community, who believe it is morally wrong to eat gluten. They have taken an approach to health, and made it their god.)
Even the belief, which I mentioned above, about the earth not being the center of the solar system because the earth actually revolves around the sun, has been challenged recently in the wake of Einstein’s theory of the Relativity of Motion.
Since all motion is relative, there is a theory gaining ground that it is possible that the earth, even though it revolves around the sun, is actually the center of the ever-expanding universe.
This belief, whether true or not, is not dangerous. And yet, it’s shocking, because we are so conditioned to believe that the earth is NOT the center of anything - except the moon’s orbit. Such an innocuous idea can seem dangerous, because it challenges our beliefs.
We Cannot Know: The Thing Itself
As a society, we need to breakdown the mindset that our understanding of something is the full picture - the thing itself. We are still at the stage that we know things only through their effects, not in themselves. We will never reach the point where we know things ‘in themselves.’ Such an idea is reserved for glorified humanity. And the problem is that acedemia in general sees itself, the modern man (& Womyn) as glorified humanity. They have imminentized the eschaton.
The Demonic
There is one last point I want to cover here, and that is the realm of the demonic:
Uncertainty
A prevalent question that haunted my mind for a long time was, “What if I do something in medicine that I don’t know is demonic? What if it was actually unscientific, and then I get possessed, or cursed, or displease God?”
This is a dangerous fear, most notably because it breeds inaction, but also for other reasons, which I will address in a moment. The other one similar to this is, “What if I recommend this thing that I like, but which I do not know if it is scientific, and I lead another person to something that is not of God? What if I bear the loss of their soul?”
My experience with the demonic
I’m going to be honest: even talking about this topic makes me uncomfortable….
….Writing that led me to release a peaceful breath.
I have been haunted by these fears all my life, and have had to intentionally sort through them. My mother was scrupulous about the demonic, namely because she had an encounter as a young girl. While playing with a Ouji board for the first time at a friend’s birthday party, when she was still in middle school, demons took hold of the letter piece and began to move it around the board without any of the girls touching it. It spelled out, “Die, Jenny.” Needless to say, my mother was terrified.
I know this is disturbing, but bear with me.
The girls were all scared, and told the mother of the house about it. But she just laughed it off. She did not believe things like that really happened, and most of the girls seemed to forget about it after that. But my mother did not.
She was scared, and she has continued to be spooked by that event her entire life. While she put her trust in the Lord in most matters, she failed to see where she was not putting her trust in Him in this one area: that she was very afraid of physical things that are associated with witchcraft, false gods, or satanism. She believed that by encountering such things, she would allow Satan influence on her household, family, and life.
Satan only has as much power over us as the power we give him
What my mom failed to realize, along with most Catholics, is that those things have no more power than we give them. They cannot influence our life directly, and certainly cannot veer it off the path that God has set for us. Only we can do that, through our own free will.
God told Satan, concerning Job, “Very well, all that he has is in your power; only do not stretch out your hand against him!” He says this to Satan concerning ALL of us. Satan’s power is limited.
By Jesus’s death and resurrection, He has given us powerful tools for fighting Satan. And we do have to fight him. I do not wish to be misunderstood, for he has power.
But so do we.
Ephesians 6: 11-17
“Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.”
To enter into the demonic, it must be with intentionality, or because we are living an ungodly life.
We cannot face witchcraft, or even the vestiges of it, without placing ourselves first under the protection of God. But once we have done that, nothing can come between Him and us. No matter the attacks, haunts, or curses that fly at us, God has us carefully concealed in Him, and he is INFINITELY more powerful than Satan.
Dancing and alcohol have been seen as automatically demonic
What I want to stress here has to do with the fact that, sometimes, things are labelled as automatically demonic, such as dancing, alcohol, Ouji boards, decks of cards, and dream catchers.
The problem with that approach is that no physical object is inherently evil. It is the human intention behind the object that carries evil inside itself, and adopts the object into its sphere of influence.
Just as a priest can bless water to turn it into a powerful sacramental, so a witch can curse an object to turn it into a weapon. However, Satan is far less powerful than God. God’s blessing is infinitely more powerful than the curse, and while we still may wage war with the witch and the object, the object cannot endanger our soul. It cannot even endanger our health, body, mind, or property, unless God so allows it.
So long as we are in a state of grace, receiving the sacraments consistently, and speaking with God daily, we are in no danger. In fact, we are in a state worthy of great rejoicing!
If, however, we treat an object as powerful in and of itself... if we see a Ouji board as capable, by the very presence of it, of conjuring evil against us, then we have allowed fear to rule our minds, and to cast out the peace of God. Ouji boards may have been cursed - it depends on who made them - but their real evil lies in the human intention of summoning spirits. As human beings, we do not summon spirits. We have dominion only over the earth. The spiritual world is not at our beck and call, for it is filled only with beings possessed of free will. Therefore, it is wrong for us to treat it like a dog we can call to us at our leisure. And it is dangerous, because some of those beings are evil, and they will answer us only to turn around and use their will against ours.
Finally, if we see truly innocuous things like dancing or alcohol as inherent evils, then we will only interact with them in an intentionally evil manner. And that is on us.
We are not responsible for what we do not know
Finally, we are not responsible for what we do not know. If something has, or has had, evil attached to it, then that is a pity. We should bless it with holy water, and move on. And if it is something wherein the very intention behind it is wrong, then we should avoid entering into that intentionality. But until we discover evil of something, it is our responsibility as lords of this earth to discover what is good about it, and how its existence enriches life about us.
Many things, such as dancing, are beautiful, when approached with the right intention. And it is not our responsibility to know everything. Such a burden would wear us down. Such a responsibility makes us scrupulous. We are called to be like eager children, looking about for beauty and new ideas, all while staying close to the safe protection of our father’s legs.
The New Age
This brings me to the New Age Movement. Like anything that is entered into by human beings, there can be found here both the good and the bad.
The New Age made use of, and still makes use of, practices, ideas, and physical objects that are not evil in and of themselves, but which they approached with a very dangerous mindset: the idea that we can control our spiritual natures.
They took something innocuous, like healing the body’s energy field (which is not a spiritual aspect, but a physical one, since energy and physical matter convert into and out of one another), and made it spiritual. They thought that energy was the soul, and to heal one’s energy elevated the soul above the body.
This is a radically heretical viewpoint.
Most insidious of all, this thought about energy is not new. Eastern spirituality has embraced it for millennia, and it is, therefore, much more difficult to dig out than a new sapling of an idea.
What is good about it?
There are good things that came out of the New Age movement. In a time when the entire world was veering away from the spiritual (in medicine, religion, homelife, etc.), a group of people recognized that this was wrong. They asked how they could build up their spiritual self, and do so in an integrated way.
Many Catholics fear this viewpoint, because they fear the New Age. But this is a basic tenant of what it means to be human: to live an integrated lifestyle.
However, the founders of the New Age movement, rather than discovering the full truth of integrated healing within the Catholic Church and ancient Western Tradition (for it is far more difficult to find things buried in our past, than in our neighbor’s backyard), found Eastern practices that focused on the soul, and this was the birth of the New Age.
Yet even these practices that they found in the East were not wholly wrong.
What is our intention?
Those who have bad intentions can still stumble across truths. Those who, in eastern culture, sought to elevate the spirit above the body, still found means by which to bring peace to their patient’s mind and heart. They healed the WHOLE person, a practice much more prevalent in ancient western and eastern practices than in the modern western world, in ways that made the soul FEEL better, and thus believed they were directly healing and influencing the soul.
But again, I want to stress that no one but the self and God can touch the soul, unless by an indirect route. Not even Satan.