If you want to make friends — somebody once said — never talk about politics or religion. Why? Because if you do, you’ll find that you passionately disagree with your acquaintances. Whoever “somebody” was, they probably made great small talk at cocktail parties.
When I was his age, I was diagnosed with asthma. When I got sick, I’d awake barely able to draw in a breath until my mom started my nebulizer. I looked nothing like this guy. To be fair though, drool and mucus aren’t trending keywords in the stock photo business.
The years brought some reprieve, but even into adulthood, the common cold would settle deep into my lungs. What I’d notice most regularly, though, is that before any sort of cardio, my inhaler was a must. Two puffs before a casual game of basketball, and I’d still suck wind for twenty minutes till it kicked in and brought my lungs’ protest to a manageable level.
I developed a sense for how hard I could run with and without my inhaler. I’m loath to reference actual times — they’re on a treadmill, unimpressive to the running world, and yet it still feels egotistic to proclaim them — but they’re part of the story, so bear with me. About five years ago, when I was running somewhat regularly, I pushed my treadmill mile PR (personal record) down to a painful 6 minutes with an inhaler. Since then, my times gradually slowed 10-20 seconds. Without an inhaler: a 9-10 minute mile would be comfortable, below an 8 minute pace I would start to taste blood and wheeze, and 7:30 was probably the best I could do, though at the expense of being wracked once I stumbled over the finish.
Here’s where cocktail party guy bids me stop. A half-finished story is preferable to a divisive one. But I’m not cocktail party guy. I don’t want to live in a bubble of yes-men, and I don’t think you do either. After all, you clicked on a link that could have been trying to either scorn the divine or proselytize you into a cult. But as much as we want to open-mindedly confront the ideas of our peers who look at the world differently, it goes against our nature. As I walk between spheres of Christians, atheists, liberals and conservatives, I confess that more often than I’d like, I change my tune because of an unhealthy desire to blend in, be liked, and be accepted. Chameleoning, I call it. I’m working on that.
I dream of a world where colliding bubbles don’t fracture, they fuse. Conservatives and liberals uncover shared sentiments driving their polar politics and begin to integrate ideas from across the aisle. People of faiths and people of no faith jointly seek scientific truth, unabashed of the variegated interpretations they espouse. Proponents of rapid societal reopening and proponents of extended isolation come to understand each other’s motivations, and compromise instead of criticize.
Will you risk a collision with me? I have a story that I want to share with you, and whether I recount a miracle shining through the placebo effect or being explained by it, will you join me? This isn’t a post about why God does or doesn’t exist, but about how people who believe He does can deeply engage with people who believe he doesn’t. I find that the best conversations about the divine happen when theists and atheists speak openly about how they grapple with and question their own worldviews. But if you don’t want to, that’s okay. We can stick to the easy topics. Click the little x. Nobody gets mad at cocktail party guy.
About a year ago, a preacher at church was calling up people with various ailments to pray for their healing. I was plenty healthy at the time, though I couldn’t help but think about my chronic asthma. As much as I wanted to get rid of it, so far, I was 0 for many on that. On the other hand, I thought, worst case scenario, preacher-guy says some nice words then I awkwardly tell him nothing happened. So I mentally verbalized it: Hey God, will you call me up for my asthma?
I open my eyes and the next words out of the preacher’s mouth are: “Is there anyone with something going on in the deep lungs?” Coincidence, I wonder, but the odds of pure coincidence have got to be pretty low. Humans do have an uncanny knack for subconsciously predicting each other, though, plus if you roll the dice long enough, you’ll eventually get what you’re looking for. But coincidence or not, what more could I have asked for? I look around and nobody else is stirring, so I make my way to the stage.
Justin, the preacher, asks me what I came up for, then prays for my asthma — nothing long, no exorcisms, just a simple command that my asthma leave. Then he asks how I feel. Great, I tell him, but I don’t feel my asthma on a day-to-day basis, so the real question is how my lungs do when I run. He says well, run, and let me know how it goes.
To be honest, when it comes to miracles of healing, I can be a bit of a skeptic. I’m keenly aware of the placebo effect, especially for more subjective matters like pain. Placebo response rates can be 30-40% [1]. In some cases, fake acupuncture may be more effective than western medicine [2]. I can’t rule out that my biases influence my perception; could they make me believe I’m healed even though nothing is different? But even if they did, does it matter? This made asthma an interesting case. I was about to measure my performance numerically, and numbers leave less room for distortion through the lens of perception.
I decide to do my familiar Monday run with no inhaler. I don’t think twice about it until I’m lacing up my shoes. As much as I have nothing to lose for trying, I realize that I am afraid to quench my candle of faith that this time will be different. I pause, but I’ve made up my mind, so I step onto the treadmill without my inhaler. I set the pace to around 6 minutes per mile, easily a minute faster than what I could do without an inhaler.
One minute, then two minutes go by. I feel good and haven’t had to slow my pace yet — but, I think to myself, I’m only just beginning aerobic respiration. Minute three and minute four tick by and I haven’t slowed a bit. At this point, I realize this is probably farther than I could have gotten before. Might I actually finish a mile at this pace? At minute five it sinks in that I’m going to make it. I actually turn up the speed for a 6:05 finish — just 5 seconds shy of my inhaler-PR from five years ago.
And yeah, I’m winded. I don’t really know how normal people feel when they run. But I’m staring at these red LEDs announcing my time and I’m not tasting blood or wheezing.
If you’re a Christian, maybe you’re smiling. Placebo effect or not, I was thanking God. How often do you hear about someone being cured of asthma? If you’re not religious, maybe you have your skeptical face on. That’s fair. I did too. Could I really declare my asthma cured after one good run?
So I came back and broke my mile PR by seven seconds. I ran in the cold. I ran my third fastest 5K. I beat my seasoned mountain biker friend up the hill. Since the day Justin prayed for me, I haven’t used my inhaler. I threw away nearly a thousand dollars’ worth of asthma meds that I’d been taking for 20 years. [3]
I believe in God. And if I believe in a God who created the world and its order, is it too much to believe that He intervenes from time to time?
You might not agree. That’s okay. You might raise any of the valid points about spontaneous remission, nonspecific support, or the Hawthorne and Rosenthal Effects that scientists studying prayer healing bring up [4], and I’d love to talk about them. I enjoy discussing these things because no matter what actually happened, and whether or not we can agree on how, my lungs used to hurt and now they don’t, and based on that we can celebrate a story about health to offset that last post about injury.
I don’t write this to change your views on God. I write this in hopes that we will stop fearing contentious topics. That unexamined theists will step back and reexamine their beliefs through the critical lens that atheists do, and that those atheists will take the time to earnestly consider theistic experiences. If you want to talk to me about religion and politics, my door is open. I’ve bid cocktail party guy adieu.
[1] “Mean placebo response rates in antidepressant clinical trials are 30% to 40%”. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3181672/
[2] “Available studies suggest that acupuncture is at least as effective as, or possibly more effective than, prophylactic drug treatment, and has fewer adverse effects”, and that when compared to “sham acupuncture”, “pooled analyses did not show a statistically significant superiority for true acupuncture,” suggesting that “sham” (fake) acupuncture may be more effective than prophylactic drug treatment (typical western medicine). http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?pid=S1516-31802015000600540&script=sci_arttext
[3] Notes: My new mile PR is 5:53 (no inhaler). Running in the cold is notoriously painful on the lungs for asthmatics — I know from experience. This cold run and subsequent cold runs, though, haven’t hurt my lungs. I have 14 5K’s logged on Runkeeper, and the two runs faster than my new inhaler-less time are from 2016 when I was in better running shape. I’ve actually experienced a novel sensation of my legs being unable to keep up with my lungs. After getting off Xopenex, Advair, Nasacort, and Singulair for a month or so, I threw my whole stash away.
[4] “Prayer and healing: A medical and scientific perspective on randomized controlled trials”. A great summary of various faith healing studies and their inherent difficulties, replete with snarky yet pertinent questions. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2802370/#CIT11
Words & Things 