The Indianapolis times. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1922-1965, 1936-05-16
Pastor Holds
Church Among
Health Needs
Considers Environment as
Factor in Treatment
of Bodily Ills.

BY THE REV. Fl. S. STEWART
Pastor. First Baptist Church, Oak Park. Ill
I firmly believe that in the future
We shah see physicians who seek TO
heal man in his social environment
as well as in his mind and body, TO
heal through the social environment
both body and mind.
There will come time when ply
sicians will see that their task can
not be complete until they have en-
tered into the realizations of a man
to the ultimate, to God, and are as
deeply and soundly concerned with
the reconciliation of the man TO
God N their healing endeavors as
they are for the harmony of the
digestive system, or the sanity Of
the mind, for on no lower level can
man be made fully whole.
For what is happening is this.
We surround ourselves with va
riety of instruments and agencies.
We group ourselves into societies.
We set up national defenSes and
work out economic orders and we
devise and establish laws for the
common good. And yet, with all
this, life is a frail and threatened
thing. Our social organizations are
constantly on the verge of disrup-
ton. Wars hang over us with their
ominouS threat. Millions are al
ways on the borderline of Starva-
ton. And for the individual there
is always the danger of failure,
either in health or in morals or
in the whole undertaking of life.
Cures by Fakirs
Therefore, we surround our
selves with physicians, with psy-
chiatristS, with vocational direc-
tors, with adult educators and,
am ashamed to say, with astrolo-
gers and palmists and phrenologists
and all the unhealthy brood Of
fakirs, in order that we may keep
whole and find our way. And when
we have succeeded in reaching the
age of 60 in soundness of body,
death comes staring at us around
the corner, ready to break up the
patchwork we have devised in try
ing to devise life.
Up till now man who has been
sick has often gone from ply
Sician to physician and not been
healed, and then has gone to SONS
mental healer, some charlatan,
some fakir and has been healed
Enthusiastically healed. What has
happened? The physician has been
working on the end-result of the
mans disease. He has found a
sick organ and he has patched
away at that, but has not some
how cured the man himself. The
charlatan, on the other hand, has
inspired a confidence, or worked
a trick that has cured the man and
the organ has gotten well in con-
sequence
In other words, we have regarded
disease as something that belongs
wholly to- the body. But it does
not belong wholly to the body; it
belongs to the man. This idea
was foreshadowed long ago by
Socrates when he said, "Just as
you ought not to attempt to cure
eyes without head. or head without
body, so you should not treat body
without soul" And Hippocrates,
moving in the same direction, said,
In order to cure the human body,
it is necessary to have a knowl-
edge of the whole of things"
Healing Men as Well as Bodies
Here is the point: You can not
make man we'll by making his leg
well if his mind is sick. You can
not cure a man by making his leg
and mind well if he is subject to
such pressures from his whole So
clal environment that he is con-
stantly endangered with nervous
breakdown. We may be thankful
that there is movement among
physicians to treat men and to seek
to- heal men rather than to treat
and seek to heal merely diseases.
Jesus set out to heal men and he
addressed himself to the whole task.
Jesus would never feel that the life
of man was healed until not only
Wiz PAly SlChlleSS Was dDdLe0.
but the whole man was restored to
healthy relationships to his fellow
men and to God and freed from
misunderstanding sins and attitudes,
Jesus healed the morally sick
those who had demons, or who had
fallen into sin. He healed men as
men, restoring their Wilderness as
persons, rather than healing Just
deaf ears or blind eyes. His con-
ception of the Wilderness of man in
Guided mans eternal and life-giving
relations to the heavenly Father. SO
that when Jesus set out to heal men
he began with a larger idea of the
Wilderness of man than that held
by any physician, unless that ply
sician has himself been persuaded
that human life is primarily some
thing derived from God and having
its Wilderness in relation to God.
We shall never succeed fully in
the attainment Of life and health
for men, not even fully in any phase
of their life, until we have made
sound and whole the relationships
Of men and Of society to God and
the reactions of men and society to
God.