October 29, 2006

Healing Kind David's Back Pain - And Yours

Today’s devotional comes from Dr. Scott Brady.  It is an excerpt from his powerful book about healing pain through a mind / body / spirit approach.  I love Dr. Brady’s spiritual sensitivity and his profound insight into health and healing.  * Please note the special message about Dr. Brady at the end of the devotional.  Enjoy! 

Todd

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While scouring the Old Testament, some words in Psalm 38—a psalm by David, a king of ancient Israel—jumped out at me:

“My guilt has overwhelmed me like a burden too heavy to bear…my back is filled with searing pain; there is no health in my body…My strength fails me; even the light has gone from my eyes…my pain is ever with me…I confess my iniquity; I am troubled by my sin…Come quickly to help, O Lord my Savior.” (NIV, emphasis added)

I did a double take.  The passage actually said that King David experienced searing back pain!  Not only that, but David connected his pain to an overwhelming burden or pressure, and the emotion of guilt.  And as he expressed that deep negative emotion openly and turned to God, the inference was that his pain got better!

Here it was—right before my eyes—a connection linking the mind, the body, the spirit and back pain.  This was a revelation for me since I too had suffered from severe back pain. 

To put his observation in our terms, David was spiritually unhealthy; he felt distant from God, he felt extreme guilt, and he was experiencing searing back pain.  What treatment did he choose?  He certainly didn’t resort to some tenth-century version of codeine or back surgery.  Instead, he turned to a strong spiritual salve: confession of his guilt, coupled with prayer and a return to trust and faith in God.  “Come quickly to help me, O Lord my Savior,” he wrote.

When Psalm 38 is read with historical accounts of King David elsewhere in the Bible, it becomes evident he believed his back pain (as well as other physical ailments mentioned in the psalm) was a direct result of his personal transgressions, including adultery and murder, which cased overwhelming levels of strong negative emotions, such as anger, shame, and guilt.  Apparently the problem had been building for some time with the king, causing his health to spiral downward and resulting in vision problems, skin problems, and back pain.  But at last, he found the secret: emotional insight, emotional expression, catharsis, and connectedness to God.

No one really knows the full extent to which spiritually impacts our health—and our pain.  But there do seem to be significant connections among the mind, body, and spirit, as evidenced in studies consistently indicating that spiritual health has a positive effect on the health of the mind and body.

For thousands of years, people in every culture have believed that physical health was influenced by emotional and spiritual health.  For example, David’s son Solomon, another ancient king of Israel, highlighted this theme almost three thousand years ago in various passages in the proverbs.

In Proverbs 14:30 King Solomon advises that a “peaceful heart gives life to the body” while spiritually suspect emotions like “jealousy” result in “rottenness to the bones.”  Later, he says, “A cheerful heart is good medicine, but a crushed spirit dries up the bones [or the body]” (17:22 HCSB).

Other proverbs of Solomon also warn specifically about the dangerous emotion of anger (29:11; 22:24-5; 19:19) and assert that those who are “slow to anger” are wise.  Similarly, Solomon talks about the medical effects of shame, which—like jealousy—will also produce “rottenness” in the “bones” (12:4).

Several factors seem to have been at work in producing relief from pain for these ancient writers, some of which I also recommend to my patients.  They understood the link between their symptoms and nonstructural causes (the mind-body-spirit link); they were able to identify the strong negative emotions by writing them out (depth journaling) and talking them out (pain talk); and finally, they renewed their connection with and trust in God (spiritual health).

This tradition continues into the early Christian experience recorded in the New Testament in James 5:13-16.  Here we have a treasure trove of mind-body-spirit healing guidelines.  James advises combining individual prayers, groups prayer, the presence of the divine (anointing with oil), and confession of guilt and wrongdoing.  Another way of describing this healing experience is that if you’re sick and experiencing pain, bring God into the equation through every mode of prayer available to you. 

Belief plus prayer plus confession plus fellowship with other believers make up an extremely strong healing potion.

“Dear friend, I pray that you may enjoy good health and that all may go well with you, even as your soul is getting along well.” 3 John 1:2 NIV

Scott Brady, MD

Senior Medical Director

Florida Hospital Centra Care