Religious support

All ‘believers’ and ‘non-believers’ accept that there is a transcendental component to life that can offer comfort, support and an explanation for the ‘human condition’. Atheists might gain this through fine art, music, literature, poetry and theatre. ‘Believers’, in addition to their access to the arts, may achieve the transcendental via membership of a faith community or by seeking their spiritual salvation through any number of ‘new-age’ belief systems.

However spiritual comfort is achieved, focusing on the transcendental enhances a sense of personal control, builds self-esteem, offers a meaning to both life and death, provides comfort and hope, and if ‘believers’ are members of an organised faith community they will have access to community support too. Of course, belief in God and belief in modern medicine are not mutually exclusive. However, there can be a downside to all this, if religiosity is confused with magic or subverted to be in conflict with a doctor’s duty of care.

Even the word ‘healing’ is open to semantic abuse, where it can be used in a loose way to imply ‘healing of the spirit’ rather than the common usage where ‘to heal’ is meant ‘to cure’. Some charlatans appear content to allow this misconception to stand uncorrected, yet deny ever claiming that their interventions contributed to a cure. Others, who truly believe in their healing powers as a cure, often invoke a view of a lost ‘Golden Age’ when nature offered a cure for all human ailments. In this respect, medical practitioners must take a robust position. There never was such a Golden Age – nature is neutral and ‘left to nature’ would mean observing the natural history of cancer. At the same time, Golden Age beliefs imply a denial of progress. Most sinister of all are the faith systems that look upon disease as ‘God’s will’ and cancer as some kind of punishment, in which case ‘healing’ can only follow prayer. This is an evil doctrine equivalent to those who claimed that the victims of the tsunami disaster in Asia reflected God’s anger at mankind’s corruption.