Journal of Sacred Work

Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together
in perfect harmony.  – Colossians 3:14
The highest aim of healthcare is not to fix but to heal. – Erie Chapman

   What does it mean to "heal?" So many Christians make the error of thinking that the main thing Jesus did prior to his crucifixion and resurrection was to perform his healing miracles – returning health to lepers, restoring sight to the blind, ressurecting the dead. Jesus himself seems to have felt otherwise. His goal was not to fix bodies but to heal our souls. The more we focus on his physical healing skills, the more we risk denigrating the true healing he brought to the world…

   In fact, Jesus, after healing one group of lepers, specifically asked them not to tell anyone what he
had done. Clearly, he was becoming concerned that his physical healing skills might distract people from his higher mission.
   "Clothe yourselves with love" are the words in Colossians, not "clothe yourselves with physical health." The health of the spirit is what matters most. That is why we all know so many people who are physically healthy but not healed and why we know so many others who remain physically sick with, for example, cancer, and are nevertheless healed.
   It is understandable that many healthcare professionals have come to think of themselves as "fixers" not "healers." After all, most professional training focuses on physical diagnosis and physical treatment. Sadly, a student can travel the journey through medical school with no gift of compassion so long as he or she can pass exams that test analysis and memory.
   It will be a long time, if ever, before this balance is corrected. The reimbursement model continues to pay for "fixing" and the scientific model disregards the role of compassion. Over the past three decades, some doctors to whom I have posed the healing question say to me, in essence, "Look, I was trained to fix what’s wrong. That’s all I know how to do. If someone needs spiritual help, that’s what chaplains and social workers are for."
   Yes, the chaplain is trained in the Spiritual. But the rest of us need to attend to the small "s" spiritual – the realization that the sick human being who comes to us has been made vulnerable by their affliction. This creates the need and the opportunity for a compassionate encounter between the spirit of the caregiver and the spirit of the patient.
   This does mean that every encounter must be earthshaking. It simply signals that when caregivers limit their work to "fixing what’s broken" they have missed the opportunity to care for a person as a human being.
   Fixing is mechanical and, increasingly, its something robots can do. Healing is a uniquely human endeavor that robots will never be able to replicate.
   Jesus, as a physical healer, passed from this earth. Fortunately, the highest healing Jesus offered is as available to us today as it was two millennia ago.   
   On the edge of a new year, we may rejoice in the gift of our humanity and the opportunity we have to be carriers of God’s Love. Each day of this year, we can weave an even richer fabric of love with which to clothe ourselves through the many encounters we will have in 2007.

-Erie Chapman