The need for a correction to the Inner-Healing Process

Fr. Conrad Saldanha                                                     Part I

Having been in the ministry of inner healing and experienced the entire inner healing process, I believe there is an urgent need to correct certain aspects of the process, its vision and goal.

At our DD (Discipline and Discernment) retreats, we would make it a point to emphasize this need i.e. for a right and correct attitude in the face of certain drawbacks to the inner healing process.

There have been many instances of lacunae in the inner healing process.

I was once ministering to a girl who was facing many problems on account of the abusive nature of the relationship she was in.  The boy would be abusive, beating the girl, using all sorts of abusive language and with threats of using force against her and the family. 

For the sake of her attaining immediate mental peace in order to overcome the trauma of those moments, it was necessary to pray with her for healing of memories. But, this in no way helped her situation. For after having come out of that state they would patch up again even though it was discouraged as being highly risky. The advice to corrective measure would also get ignored. Perhaps a supportive assurance and by allowing the individual to remain in the pain and encouraging her to handle it prayerfully with the right Christian attitude would have helped her greatly than a quick fix solution. 

This above example communicates a point at a very human level.

I was told of an individual who was ministered to by someone who has been quite experienced in the ministry of inner healing.  The person was suffering from a low self image and had some skin allergy too. The deep rooted rejection and pain was handled through a process of inner healing therapy.  Yet it never really encouraged the boy to seek God once the healing process was in place. This was because the relevance of God in the life of the individual was never emphasized.

Another area in question is this: What happens when a person does not receive the assured healing, even though, the triggering factors is well known?  Many times, a person goes through a tremendous guilt and trauma in one’s relationship with God and one another for not having received the healing that one has so diligently sought for.

There are many such stories of deficiencies in the goal and aims of inner-healing. What then are some of the dangers of the Inner-healing process that should make us tread with caution and should spur us on to make a course correction in our whole approach to it? For this we need to explore a brief into the historicity and background of the whole process.

A brief about its origin and background: The subject has its roots in the Freudian and Jungian psychology.  Agnes Sanford a Pentecostal was among the first adherents of a methodology that tried to combine spirituality with the principle of the Psycho-analytical methodology.   Freud believed that at the root of every human behavior was a background in subconscious stimuli received at some point in the growing stage and hence the reason for human behaviour.  What Freud had discovered was true to a large extent. But to attribute every regression to the subconscious is the debatable element in the whole concept.  

You need to attend an inner healing retreat, they say, in order to handle a particular areas of weakness.  Many times the emphasis especially, among prayer groups on this element is so much that even God takes the back seat and healing the first place.  Even post inner healing, the situation now being better, one has forgotten the God who has healed. One then goes on with life as usual, returning to their former lifestyle of sin and wrongdoing.

Here below, I want to explore the two reasons which can help us understand the limitations of the Inner-healing process and the caution we need to exercise in the unbridled application of this therapeutic methodology:

The first is the anthropological nature of humans from a Christian point of view; the body, mind and soul, with each having a role to play in the development of the individual with eternity as its ultimate goal.

Hence every experience and pain and trauma that one undergoes has an important role to play in one’s formation and development. For a Christian, the body is not a unnecessary evil that has to be discarded: sooner the better!  But rather the body is an instrument of our transformation through much learning. This is made possible through the many experiences and stimuli that it receives and the way it is interpreted and applied. In this body, with its experiences and subject to the law of Christ, is what develops the inner man which in Christ Jesus is transformed from one degree of glory to another.

It is through the sufferings which we undergo that we are transformed much. Therefore Jesus says; Carry your cross daily and follow me.  Part of the suffering is the daily pain of the temptation of sin, which for a Christian is never a palatable action as one seeks to please God out of love for him and his laws. These sufferings in a Christian crucible, makes us all the more human and meek. Surely the meek shall inherit much and even eternity for they shall be shown mercy.

Likewise the mind transformed through the Word of Christ, despite all the pulls of the body is what Christianity is all about. Christ salvific action in us is a total sanctification of mind, body and soul. Hence the struggles of daily life can be sought to be mitigated by inner healing but in the long run can have a negative effect if this freedom is not used to seek God’s glory.

On the other hand we need to dwell on the nature of sin and its many manifestations, and the constant deception in which we live as humans, especially the deception of being blind to the whole concept of sin and its priority.  

The sinful nature in human beings and the various wrongs that one commits can be broadly classified into two categories:

1) The Divine priority 

2) The human priority

Unfortunately, even in Christian or Catholic circles, these two categories of sin or wrongdoing is not explored or understood so as to apply proper remedial measures to alleviate the sufferings of the penitents who come to priests for solace and healing. 

There are some sins that bother human beings more than God and we may even think that we are doing God a favor when we become activists to vanquish it either from our own lives or from the lives of others.  Guilt or the human agenda for revenge become a determining factor in the human priority and one is not able to see the deception we are enmeshed in. “They know not what they do” holds true here.

A mere lie could disturb us more and we could browbeat the whole issue than if a person fails to witness to the truth and love of God or spend time in prayer in his presence.  A person dabbling with new age spirituality may never be looked on with so much contempt than a man who has committed adultery; though the other is an adulterous relationship with the spiritual world of darkness. Though both are sins which one is more heinous in the sight of God?  Here it is not the question of which is more heinous, it is that the other may be totally overlooked and ignored and maybe, one even finds reasonable justification when confronted.

In drawing attention to some of these human priorities, I also want to bring to the forefront the whole issue of inner healing: Many times we encourage people to seek healing or even individuals may seek healing in keeping with the human priority.  “I want God to heal me of a particular weakness because I find myself in an embarrassing position. I am afraid of the rejection that I experience on account of the pain, fear and anxiety thereof.  God’s commandment and the category of sin and its viciousness may never be the priority of the individual.

God may be telling us; “My child I love you just the way you are, my grace is made sufficient where there is weakness.  Just as the heavens are far above the earth so also my ways are not your ways. In keeping with my priority I want to deal with that particular area which is nagging in my eyesight and I need to deal with that first” or I want to leave the weed and wheat to grow together so that there is no patch mark left in your life and the wheat will grow better.”

It is better to have all the scars of sin, which may even present us a bad witness in deeds (After all human judgment is flawed with irrelevant expectations) than to have every scar of sinful tendencies vanquished in us and have no God.  To have Jesus in our lives is much important than to have a perfect, upright life but deprived of God.

Does this mean we discard inner healing completely?  (We shall answer this question and the alternatives we have towards resolving this problem in Part II…)

Prayer: Lord, may I not seek to please myself but you. In pleasing you, my soul will be at rest and enjoy your peace.