Connecting Physicians and Pastors

We wash our hands so as not to infect patients with physical germs. Yet we carry the germs of deadly spiritual ideas from a misbegotten medical orthodoxy -- wrong ideas about the nature of people and their complaints -- and bring those wrong ideas into our examination rooms. We are infecting our patients with these wrong notions. We are harming our patients both physically and spiritually by the infectious ideas we bring with us into the medical encounter. We are also harming them by keeping biblically correct beliefs out of the medical encounter….

Consider, however, a household I have encountered that is not all that unusual. A divorced woman in her forties heads the house, one of only two employed persons in the house. Her ex-husband contributes nothing to the support of his one surviving child, who is disabled. The other child died in infancy. The mother has three daughters by other men whom she never married. Two of these three already have illegitimate children of their own, out of numerous sexual liaisons, and the third adolescent is already quite sexually experienced. Educational and vocational aspirations find little encouragement or example in the house.

Out of this household has emanated sexually-transmitted diseases galore, depression, one murder, a person with a seizure disorder possibly related to childhood head injuries, severe visual impairment, numerous infections, premature childbirth, and so forth. Into this maelstrom of medical problems, our profession has hurled, modern obstetrics, Dilantin, antibiotics galore, surgery, tricyclic antidepressants, and vitamins. Not admitted to this arena of suffering, however, is any investigation, let alone challenge, of the erroneous belief systems. What is proper sexual behavior? What is a good basis for marriage? What is the right way to handle anger? Is it right not to work, when you are able to do so, and live off the means of others? These kinds of questions are begging to be asked and answered. Yet, with a vengeance, the medical profession is refusing even to consider them. All lifestyles are now being created equal. The Scriptures have answers to these questions. They are not rhetorical questions. Medicine, however, is halted well short of the etiologies contained in values and beliefs. By means of working connections between physicians and pastoral counseling, we need to make these answers available to patients.


Excerpt from "Physician and Pastor: Co-Laborers"