E. Anthony Allen, Contributor
Allen
The following is an edited excerpt of a paper entitled ' 'Whole Person Healing: Affirming God's Image' presented by Jamaican theologian and psychiatrist, Dr. E. Anthony Allen, at the 13th World Congress International Christian Medical And Dental Association held last July in Sydney, Australia.
I believe that we Christian health care professionals need a renewed vision of the meaning of God's image as well as a renewed commitment to cover the earth with the glory of the nature and the image of God.
We need awareness of the extent of this world's neglect of this image of God and the resultant marring by dehumanisation. This should lead us to a passion to affirm this image.
As we seek this affirming of all persons as creative, loving, transcendent beings with inherent dignity, value and worth, there is a twin perspective to this image that we need to understand, as health care professionals.
Firstly, God's image which is reflected in us is multi-dimensional in nature - in the sense of his possessing mind, being relational and being spiritual.
Secondly, each aspect is interconnected to each other in such a way as to enable a unified whole in God. Thus to refer to our being made in God's image is really to speak of our being created as multi-dimensional persons having several integrated capacities.
These together enable our unified wholeness and therefore need to be affirmed and utilised. We will become better equipped as healthcare professionals when we take this twin perspective and choose to minister to persons in order to enable their wholeness by paying attention to the presence and interconnectedness of all their multi-dimensional capacities.
Erroneous philosophy
Western health care, which is now practised globally, has been guilty of an either/or or 'compartmentalised' paradigm of the person. This is due to the erroneous philosophy of 'Cartesian dualism'. This states that mind and body operate completely separately.
This has opened the door to material determinism. Thus a resulting traditional one-sided focus on the body has led to a systematic neglect of God's image and the resulting paradigm of 'the person as machine'. This approach leads to a 'patchwork medicine' attending to 'machine parts' rather than to the healing of whole persons.
This paradigm has also paved the way for a dehumanising 'patchwork approach' to human development in general. Here, any attention to the various dimensions is to be carried out by separate professionals and their related teams. The body is left to the doctor, the mind to the psychologist, the soul to the pastor and the socio-economic and environmental to the social scientists and politicians. They can all take licences to dehumanise the person as none sees the person as a whole, or as God's image.
We are challenged as Christian health workers to break out of the compartmentalised or 'either/or' modes of thinking to adopt an integrated 'both/and' or whole person paradigm. What provides this challenge isthe fact that our mental, social and spiritual dimensions or capacities do not merely co-exist, but are inextricably bound up with the physical, as mutually interactive parts of the whole person.
In fact, medical and other researchers are increasingly showing a clear mind/body/spirit relationship in disease and health. No speciality is excluded. Simply put, the way we think, feel, relate, manage our lifestyle and experience stress can maim us and even kill us! Spiritual ill health, social harmony and justice also impact on one's psychological well-being and ability for physical health.
Vision of wellness
Thankfully, in newer perspectives of medical science, health in its total aspect includes the bio psycho-social perspective of G. L. Engel, but goes beyond it to integrate the spiritual in a maximum quality of life called 'wellness' where persons can also be whole. The biblical world view has long since maintained such a unified vision of the person. So, when we look in Genesis at the account of creation, the body of the person is made from the elements of nature - 'dust'.
The person becomes a living soul (or nepesh in Hebrew) because God breathes the 'breath of life'into him (Genesis 2:7).
The Biblical view of well-being is also one involving the whole person. St. Paul writes to the Thessalonian Christians: "May the God of peace himself sanctify you wholly; and may your spirit and soul and body be kept sound and blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ." (1 Thessalonians 5:23-28).
Whole person recovery
From the 'new' medical understanding and the 'renewed' biblical perspectives, health or well-being, now ought to mean 'wholeness'. This is an integration or harmony between body, mind and spirit; between the individual and others; between the individual and nature; and between the individual and God. This is illustrated in figure 1.
This is a recovery of the whole person, while person paradigm means that we will be engaged in an approach of healing whole persons versus a patchwork development and treating specific ailments of 'machine parts'. This paradigm applies to us no matter how much we may specialise or 'sub-specialise'. It affirms that God intends for Christian health care workers to have the identity of being ministers of whole person healing, through Christ.
As the whole person becomes healed, our mental, relational and spiritual as well as our physical capacities become attended to, and harmonised with each other through God. Thus they become restored and liberated to their full potential!
Our inherent dignity and worth become fully respected and we reclaim our positive self identity. This is the restoration of God's image! We can now easily recognise the dynamic relationship between the restoration of God's image and achieving wholeness.
Hence, my proposition that one of the best ways that Christian health professionals can affirm God's image in others is to fulfil Christ's mandate to be whole person healers! Thus affirming God's image in persons will occur both as a reason for whole person healing and a result of this ministry.
Though often marred by an eclipse of its meaning, the image of God in persons never disappears. In a real sense, the marring exists more in the minds of the victimisers and those who accept a victim status than it does in reality.
It is the recovering of Biblical wholeness through whole person healing, amidst modern dehumanisation, that can affirm God's image in us by enabling its full reclamation. No matter how alienated from God, broken and oppressed that we are -- no matter how destructive we may become, we never lose the dignity and potential of being God's image. Our capacities may have become latent, but they can once more be released in their fullness! We are still blessed with the Divine possibility of becoming whole. The vandal may deface the work of art, but in the hands of the Great Artist the image can be restored.
Practical implications
What are some of the practical implications of the whole person approach to healing that will affirm the image of God in persons?
Firstly, a true whole person healing ministry will involve a multidimensional approach to service delivery. Where possible this should involve a multidisciplinary team providing medical, counselling, social casework and community services, along with prayer for divine healing and spiritual ministry.
This team approach would involve whole person history taking and assessments and interdisciplinary team referral and dialogue. Within or without such a team each Christian health professional could also seek themselves to function as a 'generic whole person health care giver' using as many of the modalities as they can manage.
We will have to be willing to abandon our professional territorialism in the interest of multidisciplinary teamwork.
Here, professionals from any discipline could take leadership. Physicians, psychiatrists, social workers and clergy have held political power in terms of leadership and economic control in their respective institutions. They will have to be prepared to share their power and resources.
We are told in the word of God that "the body is a unit, though it is made up of many parts; and though all its parts are many, they form one body" (1 Corinthians 12:12 NIV) and "the eye cannot say to the hand, 'I don't need you!' and the head cannot say to the feet, 'I don't need you!' (1Corinthians12:21NIV).
Likewise, there is no place for the medical professionals to say to those in community development, 'We have no need of you', or for the psychologist to say to the social worker, 'I have no need of you'. It is as the healer loses his or her particular power and allows for wholeness instead of fragmentation that true healing takes place.
Secondly, whole person healing calls for promoting healthy lifestyles. Despite the most advanced pharmacological and technological cures it is only a self responsibility for healthy living that will afford whole person well being. This fulfils the power of choice that comes with beingcreated in God's image.
Thirdly, the Christian health professional should minister wholeness in the context of building community. Thus, we can encourage a healing community in the 'neighbourhood' community and in the local faith congregation. Small groups for support and action provide an excellent way of building community.
Community, versus isolation, is the only human context in which whole person healing can take place. This is because the wholeness, which is an aspect of being in God's image, involves harmony with one's social environment. Thus, affirming God's image through whole person healing means including the poor and marginalised for whom no one else stands because they are not deemed to be fully human. This is what building community affords.
Radical changes
These approaches to whole person healing can be practised anywhere - in public clinics, in private offices, in hospitals, in churches and in communities. There is no speciality that treats any aspect of the person needs to be an exception. Various modifications will become necessary such as establishing specially approved linkages between clergy, church volunteers and public hospitals and clinics.
A change to a truly whole person approach to healing will require radical changes in the way that many of us as health professionals have been trained to think. What are the requirements for this?
We will have to change through internalising the whole person vision. It must become an integral part of our theological learning, our interdisciplinary continuing education and our research.
Without theological inquiry, as well as personal growth, interpersonal caring-skill development and community development, effective whole person healing is virtually impossible. For the whole person approach to work, we will also need the financial courage to be prepared to pay the difficult cost of extra time and additional personnel for our patients.
Dr. E. Anthony Allen is a theologian, consultant psychiatrist and a consultant in Whole Person Health and Church-based Health Ministries. He may be reached at edwardallen1@hotmail.com. His website is www.eanthony allen.yourmd.com. Send feedback on Mind & Spirit to mark.dawes@gleanerjm.com.
