The International Scholarly Research Notices, a journal covering a wide range of subjects in science, technology and medicine states that clinical studies find that religious belief and spirituality reduce the incidence of mental diseases, health behaviours, and physical illnesses.
An online article posted on June 11, 2015 by the University of Maryland find that results from several medical and clinical studies and research revealed that patients with religious beliefs and spiritual practices recover faster from surgery, are less anxious and depressed, have lower blood pressure and cope better with chronic disease such as arthritis, diabetes, cancer etc.
Modern medical evidence is beginning to weigh favourably on the side of spirituality. But is this development a fad, a mere flash in the pan, something to rivet medical attention for a while and then fizzle away? Faith, religious belief and spiritual practices are not dependent on matter or material means, which are intrinsically temporary. Thus, a practice such as homeopathy dependent on placebos may engage medical attention and even gain its respect for a while, but it tends to go the way of all fads. And this begins to reveal why spiritual practice is not a fad.
Spirituality is based on God who is immutable, unchanging and permanent. Many doctors here in Nigeria have some level of spiritual faith and some may tend to agree, cautiously at least, with the findings of their foreign colleagues. Many spiritual thinkers also encourage reliance on medical healthcare.
However, spiritual thinker and healer Mary Baker Eddy discovered, one hundred and fifty years ago that spiritual understanding in and of itself results in consistently reliable, permanent healing. She writes in her internationally and critically acclaimed book, Science and Health with key to the Scriptures that the apprehension of spiritual facts, which resulted in spiritual healing centuries ago, is repeating such healings today.
Exactly how spiritual faith impacts recovery and health positively may be a discussion for another day. Suffice it to say that Eddy proved for the last forty-five years of her life what clinical and medical studies are beginning to find in the Twenty-First century – that spiritual understanding, based on God, and His immutable, divine law, can do more than aid in faster recovery, or cope with chronic diseases; it can actually heal.
