Scripture As Placebo

TUES., MAY 27, 1986, 6:55 AM
FARM, STUDY

Yes, o son, this is the theme for the day. You might say that I am expressing My confidence when I offer you such a Teaching, for this could be misinterpreted, certainly. Holy Scripture is a key element in My communication with humans. Scripture is a real spiritual story… a genuine account of My relations with the earth and its people. And yet… it also is a powerful placebo. Wouldn’t you like to know about this?

As you know, a placebo is something that produces an effect quite beyond its true capabilities. In medicine it typically is seen as a pill that has no inherent power to reduce pain, but, when taken with the belief that it can diminish pain, the effect is the desired one. The belief and the confidence in the sufferer serves to mobilize powers within self – mental and physical – and the experience of pain is abated. With the administration of any medicine which the taker believes will produce some good results there always can be some placebo effect… and it is impossible to distinguish from the real effects.

But what has this to do with Holy Scripture? You are a committed Christian, with fairly firm allegiance to Me and a fairly orthodox commitment to the Church and its teachings. You accept, as Church doctrine, that the Holy Scriptures are your main guide to living this earth life… and I have taught you this repeatedly, also. Yet your Scripture reading is not regular nor intense, and you know that there is much in Scripture that you just don’t know. And you are above average among Christians in your knowledge of the Holy Bible.

How can the Bible be so revered when so few people read it regularly to learn from it? I see few Bibles that are underlined or otherwise marked in evidence of being studied. Virtually no one in your congregation reads the Scripture before and along with the preacher’s reading of it. The answer… in the terms of this morning’s theme… is a wonderful placebo effect. Because the Bible is EXPECTED to guide and shape individual lives as well as life in general, it does.

Skeptics have a point when they ask how writings of 2,000 to 4,000 years back can be germane to the modern industrial, technological world. There is little actual guidance for modern medicine, with surgical and transplant techniques. There is even less guidance for a world economic system based in borrowing, lending, interest payments, futures, and deficit financing. Yet Christians believe that the Holy Scriptures contain truths that guide, even for a world unimagined by those who originally spoke the words. (The unstated assumption, of course, is that I, the Holy Spirit, guided those speakers and writers and, further, that I have guided all translators and decision-makers in regard to what is “in” and what is “out”. A good assumption!)

The Scriptures can engender faith, and they certainly can bolster faith that is established. They stand as the basis for the faith. They are seen as, even, the only necessary source of truth for life. And people, believing this, lead lives of reasonable dedication and service without “cracking the Book”… but occasionally. That’s a powerful placebo.