"Healers": Why Does the Church Oppose Them?

1. Entity type Lemma
2. Original title«Целители» : Почему Церковь против?
3. Language term Russian
4. lemma author Asliturk, Miriam
5. lemma category Natural and the supernatural > Pseudoscience - Scientific theories and disciplines > Medicine
6. Publication date 07-07-2018
7. lemma work Каплан, Виталий [Author]. «Целители»: Почему Церковь против?
8. lemma manifestations Суеверие.нет
9. Keywords healing - Russian Orthodox Church - pseudo-medicine - spirituality
10. Url Click Here
11. Citations
    1. <p>Каплан, Виталий (2007). «Целители»: Почему Церковь против? <em>Суеверие.нет</em>. Retrieved from: <a href="http://sueverie.net/celiteli-pochemu-cerkov-protiv.html">http://sueverie.net/celiteli-pochemu-cerkov-protiv.html</a> </p>
12. Lemma body

    1. This is an interview with Priest Daniil Sysoev, who has been working in a rehabilitation centre for victims of totalitarian sects. Fr. Sysoev does not see a problem with healers using medicinal herbs in their practice. The problem arises when healers conduct spiritual healings. The Church is a two thousand years old spiritual tradition, and when the Church opposes something, such as healers, there is a long spiritual experience behind it. Healers claim to have special relations with spirits but not all spirits are good ones. It is the Church who has the necessary expertise to discern between spirits. Moreover, in saying that they can heal, healers are arrogant and lack humility: only God heals. Normally, healers are people with an exaggerated ego who need help themselves. The Old Testament prohibits seeking help from healers.

       Sysoev points out that many people come to Church for confession as part of a healing procedure. Sysoev asks how a truly spiritual person, that healers pretend to be, can demand their patients to lie in Church about their true intentions. Sysoev argues that in reality healers serve the devil. 

       The Russian Orthodox Church blesses medicine, apart from abortions and hypnosis, but the Church is against medical science when it tries to replace God. When a healer uses special prayers and techniques, they appeal to a spiritual dimention condemned by the Church. The world of the spiritual is divided into good and evil; people who are not within the Church often do not see the difference between the two. Spirits that fight God will never tell the truth.

       Sysoev concludes that there are too many people who are obsessed with their health and go to healers when they do not truly need it. There are others who want to please their ego and seek some exoteric knowledge. Sysoev believes that one should first seek and know God. The knowledge of the spiritual, including God’s enemies, can come afterwards but not vice versa.