THE PRAYER PLACEBO

THE PRAYER PLACEBO
By Rev. Dr. Larry Delano Coleman
Wednesday, February 09, 2011

Why does prayer “work” sometimes, and not “work” at other times?
Does prayer itself have potency? Or is its potency illusory?

These compelling questions may be answered, ironically, by science. An experiment with “placebo effect” may explain.

One web site reports:
Placebo effect: Also called the placebo response. A remarkable phenomenon in which a placebo -- a fake treatment, an inactive substance like sugar, distilled water, or saline solution -- can sometimes improve a patient's condition simply because the person has the expectation that it will be helpful. Expectation to plays a potent role in the placebo effect. The more a person believes they are going to benefit from a treatment, the more likely it is that they will experience a benefit.
http://www.medterms.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=31481

A mere “expectation” that {prayer/placebo} will be helpful can improve a patient’s condition. This is true whether one is dealing with a pill with no active ingredients, or private prayer.

Certain persons are believed to have the capacity “to get a prayer through” in some religious circles. However, both religious and scientific evidence cumulatively suggest the actual power lies within the faith/belief complex of the “prayee,” the object of prayer, not in the “prayor,” the person doing praying, nor in the words of the ‘prayer’ incantation itself!

Jesus’ powerful colloquy with the Canaanite woman explains:

Matthew 15:21-28

Leaving that place, Jesus withdrew to the region of Tyre and Sidon. A Canaanite woman from that vicinity came to him, crying out, "Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me! My daughter is suffering terribly from demon-possession."
Jesus did not answer a word. So his disciples came to him and urged him, "Send her away, for she keeps crying out after us."
He answered, "I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel."
The woman came and knelt before him. "Lord, help me!" she said.
He replied, "It is not right to take the children's bread and toss it to their dogs."
"Yes, Lord," she said, "but even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters' table."
Then Jesus answered, "Woman, you have great faith! Your request is granted." And her daughter was healed from that very hour.

The Canaanite woman’s “great faith,” i.e. “expectation” was the active enzyme in her daughter’s deliverance, according to Jesus!

http://www.rationalchristianity.net/canaanite_woman.html

Returning to science:
It has been shown that placebos have measurable physiological effects. They tend to speed up pulse rate, increase blood pressure, and improve reaction speeds, for example, when participants are told they have taken a stimulant. Placebos have the opposite physiological effects when participants are told they have taken a sleep-producing drug.

The key phrase is “when participants are told…” such and such a thing, they tend to feel physiologically and believe. The Bible says:
“So then faith [cometh] by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.” Rom. 10:17

“Faith comes by hearing.” Believing what one is told is key, especially where it involves the word of God.

Reverence for God is the most powerful placebo of them all, which is accessed through prayerful expectation, otherwise known as applied faith, which science cannot qualify nor quantify.

Where there is light, though, there is also, necessarily, darkness. That is because a “nocebo”—negative effect-- is the opposite of a placebo—positive effect.

Observe:

In the strictest sense, a nocebo response occurs when a drug-trial's subject's symptoms are worsened by the administration of an inert, sham,[1] or dummy (simulator) treatment, called a placebo.

According to current pharmacological knowledge and the current understanding of cause and effect, a placebo contains no chemical (or any other agent) that could possibly cause any of the observed worsening in the subject's symptoms. Thus, any change for the worse must be due to some subject-internal factor.

The worsening of the subject's symptoms is a direct consequence of their exposure to the placebo, but those symptoms have not been chemically generated by the placebo. Because this generation of symptoms entails a complex of "subject-internal" activities, in the strictest sense, we can never speak in terms of simulator-centred "nocebo effects", but only in terms of subject-centred "nocebo responses".

Although some attribute nocebo responses (or placebo responses) to a subject's gullibility, there is no evidence that an individual who manifests a nocebo/placebo response to one treatment will manifest a nocebo/placebo response to any other treatment; i.e., there is no fixed nocebo/placebo-responding trait or propensity.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nocebo

This is all part of the awe, wonder and mystery of God:

Oh Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars which you have set in place, what are mortals that you are mindful of them, the children of mortals that you care for them? Psalm 8, verses 1, 3-4.

As you do not know how the spirit comes to the bones in the womb of a woman with child, so you do not know the work of God who makes everything. Ecclesiastes 11:5.

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom; all those who practice it have a good understanding. Psalm 111:10.

Think of us in this way, as servants of Christ and stewards of God’s mysteries. I Corinthians 4:1.
http://mysteryandawe.com/page3.htm

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. put it this way:

In a real sense everything that we see is a shadow cast by that which we do not see. Plato was right: "The visible is a shadow cast by the invisible." And so God is still around. All of our knowledge, all of our developments, cannot diminish his being one iota. These new advances have banished God neither from the microcosmic compass of the atom nor from the vast, unfathomable ranges of interstellar space. The more we learn about this universe, the more mysterious and awesome it becomes. God is still here. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. "The Measure of a Man" page 54.

AMEN!