January 6, 1999

Real pain produces real faith, and real faith prepares for real pain
___By Mark Wingfield
___Managing Editor
___If you want to understand the connection between faith and health, you first must understand authentic faith, according to those who work in this field every day.
___There's a difference between people who have a superficial faith and those who have an enduring faith based deep within themselves, according to Bob Fine, an internist who chairs the ethics committee at Baylor Medical Center in Dallas.
___The best health results are found in those who "pursue religion not for some secondary gain," Fine said. "Those who are most extrinsically religious have some of the worst outcomes."
___Among the many studies that find links between faith and health, Fine said, this distinction between the deeply devout and the

Bob Guffey

superficially devout shows up often.
___That resonates with the experience of Bob Guffey, associate pastor of First Baptist Church in Shreveport, La. Guffey has worked extensively in hospice programs and other pastoral care situations.
___"The people I see who seem to think they can bargain with God through their prayers or can make promises to God in order to 'convince' God to heal them, don't have an understanding of lifelong pilgrimage with God," Guffey said.
___"Their view of God is more transactional. They see God in some of the same ways the Pharisees saw God, as punishing them for their sin by causing them pain or causing pain to a member of their family. These folks seem easy prey for the TV evangelists and faith healers."
___On the other hand, Guffey explained, are those who express an understanding of what it means to walk with God in a lifelong journey. For these people, prayer becomes "a way to experience the presence of God and to open a person to being shaped by God," he said.
___"For many of the people I have worked with who were people of some measure of spiritual depth, the more they prayed, the more they were able to settle into the reality that God was with them whether they were cured or not."
___The spiritual experience of these people gives them a longer view of life, Guffey said. "To these people, prayer is less an exercise in claiming the promises of God than it is cultivating a relationship within the presence of God."
___These people have taught Guffey the difference between pain and suffering, he said. "I've found many people I would consider thoughtful, prayerful people of faith to be in pain but not suffering, for they were at peace with the reality of God's presence and their healing beyond the grave."
___That has been the personal experience of two Kentucky men who have spent their careers ministering to the needs of other patients but also know what it's like to be the patient.
___Herb Booth, a physician and active Baptist layman in Northern Kentucky, recently underwent some major surgeries. He found strength through prayer, but not just strength linked to an assurance of healing.
___"The bottom line of prayer is it changes me," he said. "It's not that you don't move mountains. But I think about Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane. He was struggling as a man with the prospect of a horrible death and would have liked it to pass from him. But in the prayer he became subservient to his Father and therein gained the strength to endure."
___That also has been the experience of Wayne Oates, widely acknowledged among Baptists as the father of pastoral care but also someone who has known pain himself. For years, Oates has struggled with chronic back pain due to disc problems.
___While he has not been miraculously healed, "prayer helps me endure it," said the 81-year-old professor at the University of Louisville Medical School.
___The pain and the prayer together have made him a better person, he explained. "Prayer has had a lot to do with my character, with my hope.
___"I pray at night sometimes: 'Help me to bear the pain as you did the Apostle Paul and help me to learn what it has to teach me.'
___"Pain," Oates concluded, "makes you wise."

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