Christianity and traditional medicine
Posted: Tue Oct 17, 2017 4:42 pm
One area that really fascinates me is how Christians today relate to sciences that do not align with the "modern" practices and accepted beliefs.
While at a retreat this summer I met quite a few Mennonites who were very firm that the practices and associations of different traditional medicine systems were wrong and/ or dangerous for Christians to partake of. By the way, I know plenty of non-anabaptist Christians who hold the same views. Now, I could agree with them to an extent on some areas, but overall their worldview on this caught me by surprise.
One group of individuals I talked to all shared the conclusion that "if it works, and we do not know why, then it's working by some spiritual/ demonic force... we should have nothing to do with it. It's dangerous". They applied this to acupuncture especially.
My personal view is that there are a lot of medically valuable "traditional" practices that do have some relations to cultures and religions that are not our own. Many of these cultures sought to explain whatever was working in some way, and it's these very old explanations that make many uncomfortable. But does a flawed understanding of how something works actually change the legitimate reasons for it's working? Surely not.
If one is going to deny certain time-tested medical practices due to their associations with certain beliefs, then surely they'd have to deny all such practices, right? Problem is, most Christians do not. Many of those herbal supplements in your cabinet were once explained using very magical and superstitious beliefs, but we can now see that they work for actual, natural reasons.
Just because something is a bit mysterious and it cannot be explained using the current, Western scientific mindset does not necessarily make it magical, witchery, or false. Perhaps we simply do not know why it works (yet).
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I'm curious, where do such beliefs come from? How/ why are they perpetuated? What does it say about Western Christians and their views on science overall? How can one respond (assuming you see the need to)?
While at a retreat this summer I met quite a few Mennonites who were very firm that the practices and associations of different traditional medicine systems were wrong and/ or dangerous for Christians to partake of. By the way, I know plenty of non-anabaptist Christians who hold the same views. Now, I could agree with them to an extent on some areas, but overall their worldview on this caught me by surprise.
One group of individuals I talked to all shared the conclusion that "if it works, and we do not know why, then it's working by some spiritual/ demonic force... we should have nothing to do with it. It's dangerous". They applied this to acupuncture especially.
My personal view is that there are a lot of medically valuable "traditional" practices that do have some relations to cultures and religions that are not our own. Many of these cultures sought to explain whatever was working in some way, and it's these very old explanations that make many uncomfortable. But does a flawed understanding of how something works actually change the legitimate reasons for it's working? Surely not.
If one is going to deny certain time-tested medical practices due to their associations with certain beliefs, then surely they'd have to deny all such practices, right? Problem is, most Christians do not. Many of those herbal supplements in your cabinet were once explained using very magical and superstitious beliefs, but we can now see that they work for actual, natural reasons.
Just because something is a bit mysterious and it cannot be explained using the current, Western scientific mindset does not necessarily make it magical, witchery, or false. Perhaps we simply do not know why it works (yet).
________________________________________________________________________________________________________
I'm curious, where do such beliefs come from? How/ why are they perpetuated? What does it say about Western Christians and their views on science overall? How can one respond (assuming you see the need to)?