Faith Healers: A Force in Nigeria

938 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Religion and its impacts

The Faith Healers are out in force in Nigeria. There is a problem with medicine. Medicine is so far removed from the understanding of most people who it appears to be medicine.
When discussing a terminal disease many people are desperate for a solution. It’s the same for Chronic Disease. You just want it to stop. Even something as minor as myopia is an annoyance and many people fall for scams to get rid of their glasses. However you see this at it’s deadliest in the hands of the cures for diseases such as cancer, HIV/AIDS and diabetes.
I have seen a fair few signs of alternative medicine practitioners who insist that thee can cure these diseases. Maybe not AIDS, in India people still fear the HIV/AIDS patient and believe all sorts of superstitions about how the disease transmits but I have seen signs promising a cure for diabetes. This is not out of the goodness of their hearts or the willingness to do good but because either they are unscrupulous charlatans who hope to make some money at the hands of people who are desperate, or who genuinely believe that they have the power to cure these diseases.
This is where religion comes in. The faith healers genuinely may believe that they are capable of healing people through mechanisms of the spiritual. In the USA this takes the form of these immense revival meetings where slick production values allow these faith healers an impressive audience to prove their powers. We know this is merely an extension of the placebo effect. We know that the drama and pageantry play an integral role in treating patients and that in our more ethical medical practices we are no longer to be unscrupulous with claims about medicines.
But there is a large and significant group of people 0END.0 anti-medicine. ...

... middle of paper ...

...HIV+ have their faith affirmed and strengthened. The pastor also makes a lot of money out of this since word of mouth spreads about his “good” work.
The HIV/AIDS patients who give up their drugs are easily taken care off because they either die (and may even spread the disease to others ensuring more people to take advantage of) or if they do survive, they can be easily ostracised since HIV/AIDS patients already are ostracised and the disease’s link with immorality means it’s easy to character assassinate any angry victims of this scam and simply ignore them. After all, they got HIV/AIDS because they were immoral once. If the healing failed it must be due to the fact they never really accepted the power of god in the first place.
And all that happens is the pastor gets richer and more people fall into his flock and more HIV patients are sacrificed to drive his greed.

Show More
Related

  • Healing And Western Medicine: Ethnographic Study

    1319 Words  | 3 Pages

    Ross defines and differentiates between the terms healing and curing. She recognizes the fact that healing and curing are very intertwined and it can be hard to distinguish between the two terms. There are differences between the definitions in scholarly and general settings. She references an ethnographic study of healing versus curing conducted by anthropologists Andrew Strathern and Pamela Stewart in 1999 with native groups in New Guinea. The results of the study looked at how energy used by the different types of tribal healers to either cure or heal a patient. Eastern medicine focuses on how energy interacts with the healing process in connection within the mind. Whereas Western medicine is focused on the mind and the body separately. The practice is considered a holistic approach to finding cures. According to Ross (2013), healing is more a therapeutic process targeting the whole body and specific illness including emotional, mental, and social aspects in the treatment. The act of curing is a pragmatic approach that focuses on removing the problem all together. The life experiences of a person playing into how well certain treatments will heal or cure what is ailing them. These aspects can not be defined with textbook definitions. The interaction that the healing process has with energy is a variable in the success rate. Uncontrolled emotions can have a greater impact on the inside the body than a person can realize. The exploration of energy interaction within the body can be used for greater analysis of health care systems. (21-22). Are Western healthcare facilities purposely “curing” patients just so that they return are few years later? Is Western Medicine built upon a negative feedback loop? The terminolo...

    Read More

  • The Interrelationship Between Theories of Psychotherapy and the Techniques Used By Those Theories

    2182 Words  | 5 Pages

    Anderson et al. (2010) viewed the healing setting as shared beliefs between the client and the practitioner about what healing means (p. 148). They state “the setting in which a treatment occurs imbues the process with power and prestige while simultaneously reminding the participants of the predominant cultural beliefs regarding effective care” (p. 148). In this sense, whatever is acceptable treatment within a specific culture is valid so long as patients believe in the treatment. Thus, what happens in...

    Read More

  • The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down - Anne Fadiman

    1624 Words  | 4 Pages

    ...uals, even if they don't agree with them. It really falls to nurses to address the situation properly, and effectively ensure that the cultural communication between the doctor and the patient does not break down. Nurses most of all have to communicate with patients in a healing way, even if they do not agree with mystical remedies because the nurse has to recognize that there is nonetheless a function that mystical ritual remedies do serve, even to western medicine: to comfort the patients and their families. Ancient rituals or customs, retained to some extent or respected by western caregivers, can serve to maintain a healing and positive attitude, and as a psycholgocial support which the nurse can provide through respect and symbolic use of non-western cultural myths as a psychological stimulant to assist the healing process and inspire the patient thereof.

    Read More

  • Summary Of Body Ritual Among The Nacirema By Horace Miner

    521 Words  | 2 Pages

    In the article “Body Ritual among the Nacirema” By Horace Miner, there are a few points that he is trying to put across. Firstly, it is sometimes difficult to collect accurate information about a culture when you do not belong to it. Not everything will be explained in great detail, which forces a person to make assumptions about what they are being shown or what they are hearing. Secondly, Americans seem to always believe everything that they are told from doctors because they have been highly respected for many generations and people learn from when they are very young that when they are sick, they must go see the doctor to feel well again. Lastly, People always believe that they cannot heal without medicine because doctors have been making people believe that medicine is the key to healing for many years.

    Read More

  • Analysis Of AIDS, Inc. By Helen Epstein

    1217 Words  | 3 Pages

    To begin with, one of the biggest issues with prior attempts of HIV/AIDS programs is that once a person was told that they had been infected, they were rejected treatment, as stated in Epstein’s piece. Luckily today, it is common for schools to have free HIV testing. This, however, does not solve the issue. Instead of having free HIV testing more commonly available in schools rather than at-your-fingertips, governments should fund worldwide clinics that provide free HIV testing and protection available to all genders. Said clinics could then pair with multiple insurance companies to make treatment as affordable as possible, because if one tests positively, they most likely cannot afford the medication. Treatment can cost from anywhere between $500-$2,700 for one prescription, which can reach

    Read More

  • aboriginal medicine

    1955 Words  | 4 Pages

    Illness was treated in many ways but the main goal was to achieve a sense of balance and harmony.(p82). Applications of herbs and roots, spiritual intervention, and community wide ritual and ceremonies were all therapeutic practices.(p71). “It was the healer who held the keys to the supernatural and natural worlds and who interpreted signs, diagnosed disease and provided medicines from the grassland, woodland, and parkland pharmacopoeia.”(p18). The healers knowledge of herbs and roots and ways to administer and diagnose had been passed down from generation to generation.(p85). Healers stood as an advantage for the Aboriginal people. “Trust and a personal relationships would naturally build between the patient and the healer.”(p77). This must have ...

    Read More

  • Issues With Managing Chronic Illness

    1316 Words  | 3 Pages

    Chronic illness issues can include managing their illness, the cost of taking care of the illness, etc. Many people who suffer from a chronic illness suffer a lot trying to manage their illness on a daily basis. According to a website called NCOA.org, “About 80% of older adults have one chronic disease. 68.4% of Medicare beneficiaries have two or more chronic diseases and 36.4% have four or more. Chronic diseases can affect a person’s ability to perform important activities, restricting their engagement in life and their enjoyment of family and friends”

    Read More

  • Yoruba Cultural Influence

    1730 Words  | 4 Pages

    Those Yoruba’s who have traveled out of their culture to different parts of the world happen to be the ones among them who believe in western medicine. Furthermore, they traditional Rural Yoruba’s do not actually trust the western medicine. In the rural parts of the Yoruba culture, western medicine is seen as a challenge to gods, and also a threat to their culture. The Traditional rural Yoruba’s don’t believe that any other medicine can cure any sickness that their traditional medicine could not cure. Which makes them to see the western medicine intimidating. The Yoruba’s are the main ethnic group in the states of Ekiti, Lagos, Ogun, Ondo, Osun, and Oyo, which are subdivisions of Nigeria; they also constitute a sizable proportion of Kwara and Kogi States as well as Edo State (Yoruba People, 2010).

    Read More

  • Native American Medicine and Spiritual Healing

    1088 Words  | 3 Pages

    Throughout time, mankind has persistently been seeking ways to maintain their health and to cure those that had not been so fortunate in that task. Just about everything has been experimented with as a cure for some type of illness whether physical, spiritual or mental. There has always been evidence of spiritual healing and it will continue to be an important part of any healing process, large or small. In particular, the roots of Native American Medicine men (often a woman in some cultures) may be traced back to ancient times referred to as Shaman. A special type of healer used by the Indians is referred to as a medicine man (comes from the French word medecin, meaning doctor).

    Read More

  • The New Guidebook for Pastors: A Book Review

    1319 Words  | 3 Pages

    “The call is something that is an indescribable joy and an indefinable burden at the same time.” (Bryant and Brunson 2007, 32). There is nothing more rewarding than seeing a congregation of the redeemed moving forward in their faith. However exciting this may be, it is usually not the thrill that propels the pastor in his service. It is the burden placed on the pastor by God that compels him in his work. The pastor understands that he is largely responsible for the work of God being accomplished by his faithfulness to his calling. “All through the Word of God and down through the annals of history, when God has moved it has almost always been attended by the preaching of the Word.” (Bryant and Brunson 2007, 31)

    Read More

  • pastor

    516 Words  | 2 Pages

    Pastor George Fleurimond of the Emmanuel Seventh-day Adventist Church can best be described as a man full of vigor, spiritualty, compassion as well as nobility. Serving as a pastor for four years, Pastor Fleurimond has spent most of his servitude in Plant City, Florida, where he would preach in a manifestation of as much as 100 people, imparting the word of God to those who sought religious consolation. Not only does he influence the regular-going church members, he also connects with the youth on a weekly basis to ensure they make the right resolutions amongst ever press-ganging peer pressure.

    Read More

  • Poverty and Disease

    383 Words  | 1 Pages

    The AIDS virus is the most common disease, and with no cure, an infected person will die. It is estimated that 90 to 95 percent of AIDS infections occur in developing countries where the world’s worst living conditions exist.

    Read More

  • Hypocrisy of Evangelists: A Biblical Comparison

    617 Words  | 2 Pages

    Franklin Graham in a public Youtube, a social media website filled with videos from various sources, video Franklin Graham urges other Evangelists and Christian pastors to “Don’t shut up. If they want to run you out of Church don’t let them [ homosexuals and those who have had abortions]. God will bless you if you speak out on these issues. It is a sin.” In Philippians 4:9, Paul tells the people “Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me -- put it into practice,” and in Matthew when Jesus is giving his Sermon on the Mount, directly saying “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you to love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of you Father in heaven,” one is able to see the juxtaposition between Graham and the word. He urges Christians to “shut up” and to not let homosexuals and people who have had abortions run them [Christians] out of the church, when the word tells him to “love his neighbor as Jesus has loved him,” John 15:12 and to put whatever is taught by Jesus whether directly or indirectly into practice in everyday life. This is what he should be teaching, not the word of

    Read More

  • Faith Healing And Healing

    780 Words  | 2 Pages

    Faith healing may be performed either in close proximity to the patient or at a distance. When practiced at a distance it may involve a single agent or a group praying for the patient. When close to the patient or in “revivalist tent” type meetings, the healer usually touches or "lays hands on" the patient while imploring for the aid of the Supreme Being. Faith healing may also entail a visit to a religious shrine, such as the French city of Lourdes, or the Ukrainian city of Uman, in search of a miracle. O...

    Read More

  • Comparing Modern and Alternative Medicines

    633 Words  | 2 Pages

    In the first place, when people use alternative medicine, they consume fewer drugs and chemicals in to their bodies and there are fewer side effects to the human beings. This means that, when people get caught in any kind of disease, if they use herbal therapies to heal their illnesses, they do not harm their organs and systems. They can drink a bowl of soup, a cup of tea or a bottle of water regularly if they want to get rid of the pathogens or aches such as sprain, head wrist and ankle. For instance, it is known that there is a man who used to use walking stick for a few y...

    Read More

More about Faith Healers: A Force in Nigeria

Open Document