Healers

There's a New Ager on Facebook who I subscribe to.  She posted a YouTube video (*warning: it's on auto-play), where she asserts that we are all born as healers.

While I would like to agree with her, and have believed pretty much forever that I am one, the first letter to the Corinthians would disagree with her claim. St. Paul states that when we are bestowed with the gifts of the Holy Spirit, we receive different geniuses.  One person might possess the gift of discernment, while another the gift of tongues, while another the gift of healing, and a person who becomes able to heal - not as an innate feature, but as a gift from God - can heal not only with the laying of hands, as the video only mentions, but also just by having his or her shadow fall on the inflicted.

Every so often, when the time is right, Leija's voice is very powerful to me. I wanted to believe her, and I put my hands on my trapeze muscles and commanded them to heal, but only if it were Jesus' will.  This is where I began to wonder.

Healers, such as Reiki masters, for example, do not accredit anything to themselves: all the power is (their understanding of) God's.  Leija states in her video that she is just a channel, and the outcome is not up to her.

So is she, to a Christian standard, blasphemous?  One of my favourite prayers is this Jesuit one, "Let me do my days work calmly and quietly, carefully and prayerfully, and above all, in the name of Jesus."  This healer is not using Jesus' name, but she is also not using her own name - a grave offence in the Old Testament.  Since she is recognizing herself only as an instrument to God, and since Christians believe that Jesus is God, is it possible that she is healing righteously?

"Whoever is not against us is for us." (See the entire passage about driving out demons, aka healing, here).

Editors Note: I came across this short book. Witches, Midwives, and Nurses: A History of Women Healers, here, in PDF; an interesting read.