Believers and Faith Healers

The article by Russell Chandler (“Texans Offer to Turn Flock Into ‘Healers’ ”, Part I, Dec. 4) concerning Charles and Frances Hunter, included a few statements by me which I desire to comment on, and, especially, to clarify his description of me as a “Christian believer,” which I take as a compliment, but, since I am a Jew, is not entirely accurate.

As a Brooklyn boy, bar mitvahed here at the Fairfax Temple and graduated in 1949 from Fairfax High School when it was 97-point-something percent Jewish, such a confusion would not have been possible a few years ago. I grew up strong in my faith and cognizant of a Gentile world that largely mocked in practice what it professed. Appending another testament to mine with red words in it offended me, and churches made me feel uncomfortable. Yet, concerning Jesus himself, if he was not more, I saw him, at least, as a rabbi willing to die for his convictions, and I admired that. On the other hand, I had a few questions that could never be satisfactorily resolved for me.

Answers emerged slowly within a far greater framework of God working within my family. Events and much study eventually eroded and finally shattered attitudes that had been formed from the behaviors of men but not, I learned, the word of God.

The fact is I have become a Hebrew-Christian believer. The difference is so profound in my life that I am available to discuss it and elaborate my decision to anyone who may ask. My faith, my Jewishness, is more vital now than ever before, because of the distinction.

Concerning my statements regarding the Hunters, Chandler was accurate except that I only saw them once, not a number of times as the article implied. I did so because I had concluded negatively about them, and I decided to see for myself. I first, however, did call another physician in Florida, whom I did not know. The Hunters had written that they had healed his back pain. He convincingly confirmed their story.

My interest in studying alleged miracle cures was first stirred by seeing a real one 10 years ago which involved one of my patients whom I had been intensively, unsuccessfully treating. It is one of the events which has contributed to such a profound change in me. I had unknowingly provoked her, her family and church to greater prayer when, in anguish and frustration, I had told her she needed more faith. She related that after my urging, for the first time in her life she really began to pray, joined by her family and church. Her miracle came at midnight two days later when, suddenly there was a presence in the room, and in an instant she was healed. All her subsequent tests were normal.

Returning to the Hunters, despite the few “cures” I investigated, I continue to remain uncomfortable about behavior allegedly for the Lord that employs carnival-type antics like throwing gifts to the audience and intentionally exploiting gullibility by calling any limb that moves miraculous “growing,” or conscious gibberish, speaking in tongues. God doesn’t need stage tricks.

Someone will say, judge not that ye be not . . . , or that God uses the simple to confound the wise and will point to people like Carolyn Phillips (mentioned in Chandler’s article). Others with at least as much justification, can refer to promises of healing as cruel, especially to the seriously disabled. Certainly, at the service I observed, the most obviously needy were ignored. The controversy will continue, and God’s plan will proceed, regardless.

PAUL H. GOODLEY, M.D.

Big Bear Lake