It’s ironic to me that the inverse of this question would be far less controversial. If we were asked whether or not the state of our belief was affected by the state of our physical health, there would be, I suspect, broad agreement. Those who are comfortable with faith would regale us with tales of spiritual awareness that came at moments of illness, extreme physical suffering, or great physical accomplishments.

Those who think that faith is “nothing more” than an electro-chemical or neuro-biological reaction in the brain, would see evidence for their conclusion in the fact that people under physical stress experience new mental states which help them to explain or cope with new realities. But because the issue here is whether or not faith is real in the physical sense, we are likely to see some genuine disagreements. I wonder if that is even necessary.

This issue is not whether or not “one believes” that faith affects our health, because it is a scientific fact that it does. My hunch is that each of us has had the experience of pulling ourselves together emotionally, or insisting to ourselves that we can overcome a specific challenge and experience a newfound strength that helps us to achieve our desired goal. That is no less a matter of faith simply because it is momentary faith in ourselves than it would be if we called upon God, Jesus, Allah, or any other Divine name in whom we might believe.

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