The Magic of Nature

 

Have you ever heard someone say, “The Chinese have used this for thousands of years”, or, “But this is a natural remedy, so it’s better for you”?

Of course you have.  These kind of ideas are pervasive in Western culture.

There are several pitfalls and fallacies that we have all fallen prey to in our lives, and I would like to address some of them here, while giving you a brief history of medicine.  It’ll be more interesting than it sounds – I promise!

We can very roughly divide the history of medicine into several important “theories”:

• Traditional medicine, herbalism and witchcraft/shamanism
• Miasma
• Humourism
• The Age of Heroic Medicine
• Mesmerism
• Germ theory
• Evidence-based medicine

Natural Medicine

I frequently hear Christians announce, with great certainty:  “God made a cure for everything in nature.”

Let’s think about that for a moment.  Does scripture actually say so?

Plants do play a role in bodily health and sustenance in the Bible, just as they do in real life.  The primary example, of course, is the Tree of Life in the Garden of Eden, which was intended to help Adam and Eve sustain eternal life.  However, we know that, as soon as they sinned, God sent them out of the garden specifically so they would no longer have access to the life-giving tree.

One further Biblical example of the use of plants as medicine is Leah and Rachel and the mandrakes (Genesis 30).  Mandrakes have long been linked with fertility and used as an aphrodisiac (kids, ask your parents about that one).  Both Leah and Rachel were experiencing infertility, and so the mandrakes, being rare, were considered valuable.  But the story is not what it may seem.  Leah gives Rachel the mandrakes in exchange for a night with their husband, Jacob.  But nowhere does the Bible actually say that the mandrakes would have worked, anyway.  In fact, it is Leah who becomes pregnant, not Rachel, and verses 16 and 17 specifically state that it was because God heard her prayer, not because of any treatment.  The implication is that it was wrong of Rachel to be superstitious about the medicinal qualities of a plant, especially without firstly asking God for a child.

There is a tendency in humanity to put a lot of time and energy into finding cures.  Understandably, we want to be well.  There is even an idea among a startlingly large percentage of Christians that God always wants everybody to be well (c.f. Bethel’s Bill Johnson).

Only a cursory study of the Bible on the subject will show that this is not the case.  Even Paul, possibly the “greatest” Apostle (I’m sure he would violently dispute that description) could not heal everyone.  In 1 Timothy 5:13, he doesn’t tell Timothy to decree and declare that he is healed from his stomach problems and other frequent illnesses.  He doesn’t tell him to make a special offering for his healing.  He doesn’t tell him that he just needs to have more faith.  He tells him to “take a little wine”.  Paul also leaves his companion, Trophimus, behind because he is sick (2 Timothy 4:20).  Finally, Paul himself came to the church in Galatia because he was ill (Chapter 4): 

But now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how can you turn back again to the weak and worthless elementary principles of the world, whose slaves you want to be once more?  You observe days and months and seasons and years!  I am afraid I may have labored over you in vain.  Brothers, I entreat you, become as I am, for I also have become as you are.  You did me no wrong.  You know it was because of a bodily ailment that I preached the gospel to you at first, and though my condition was a trial to you, you did not scorn or despise me, but received me as an angel of God, as Christ Jesus.

Speaking as someone with a long-term disability who has struggled to be understood and accepted in certain churches, it would be wonderful if everyone would follow the example the Galatians set while Paul was with them.

Nevertheless, the desire for ultimate wellness at the expense of other things persists, as does the criticism of those who “don’t have enough faith to be healed”.  In ancient times, this desire drove humankind to the most obvious thing available:  plants and animals; i.e. food.

Let’s get this out:  there’s nothing wrong with studying nature and discovering treatments and cures therein.  In fact, it’s a smart thing to do.  The problem comes when we start to endue nature itself with a certain power – or magic – that it does not have.

That brings us to the first fallacy I want to discuss.

The Natural Fallacy

This idea pits the “natural” and “organic” against “chemicals” and the “synthetic”.  It’s the belief that nature is better or healthier.

This does not stand up to scrutiny.  In fact, it’s nonsense.

Everything, including your body, is made up of “chemicals”.  Arsenic is a chemical – a dangerous, toxic one – but it’s also natural.  So is snake venom.

Biosynthetic insulin, on the other hand, is a “man-made” chemical that saves the lives of diabetics every day.

The Natural Fallacy is an extension of much older and – I’m going to be frank here – demonic practices.  We all should have at least a vague understanding that, in less-developed societies, the local doctor was often the local witch, herbalist or shaman.  Older ideas of magic didn’t include wearing posh robes and waving wands around.  They involved potions, and tinctures, and poultices, and rituals.

What’s the difference between a potion and a medicine?  I would argue that it’s efficacy.  Evidence.  Has the thing been shown to work in clinical trials?  Does it work through a certain biological pathway that we can know, or at least have a good idea about?  Or have you been told it works because of some inherent property, such as the way it looks?  (For example – and I’m sorry to break it to you – walnuts are not good for the brain because they look like little brains.)  Has your favourite unqualified YouTube influencer told you it works because it worked for her?  (It cures acne and cancer!!)  Has Pete Evans spun you a story about how humans ate it when they lived in caves?

Ultimately, witchcraft is trying to influence events using something mysterious in nature or the supernatural for your own purposes.  Anything remotely like witchcraft is strictly forbidden in Deuteronomy 18: 

When you come into the land that the Lord your God is giving you, you shall not learn to follow the abominable practices of those nations.  There shall not be found among you anyone who burns his son or his daughter as an offering, anyone who practices divination or tells fortunes or interprets omens, or a sorcerer or a charmer or a medium or a necromancer or one who inquires of the dead, for whoever does these things is an abomination to the Lord.  And because of these abominations the Lord your God is driving them out before you.  You shall be blameless before the Lord your God, for these nations, which you are about to dispossess, listen to fortune-tellers and to diviners.  But as for you, the Lord your God has not allowed you to do this.

The Appeal to Ancient Wisdom

Linked to the Natural Fallacy is a fallacy called the Appeal To Ancient Wisdom.  This is the belief that ancient knowledge of medicine (or any number of other things) has been lost to time and that, if we just pay attention to old writings and traditions, we can uncover amazing cures.

However, if you read up on the history of medicine even a little, you will come to see that the ancients, and even our much closer ancestors, had    NO     CLUE     WHAT     THEY     WERE     DOING.

No clue.

For the vast majority of history, the belief was, if it makes you barf, pee or poop, great – it must be working.

This surprisingly hardy idea began with ancient theories of how the body worked.

Miasma theory, which was advanced by Hippocrates in the fourth century BC, held that disease was caused by pollution, or “bad air”.  Particles of matter from decomposition became airborne and poisoned you when you breathed them in.  Night air was especially bad – you wanted to keep your windows closed after dark, even in the height of summer.  Cold air was also a problem.  Although we now know miasma theory is incorrect, it did spark efforts to improve urban sanitation during the 19^th century, so it wasn’t bad, really.

Out of ancient Greece and Rome came humourism, and it too persisted right through to the 19^th century and the discovery of these little things called germs.  In truth, the idea probably comes from even further back, in Egypt and the East.  Again, Hippocrates had a role in solidifying and spreading the idea, as did Galen.  The theory goes that our bodies contain humours, or body fluids:  black bile, yellow bile, blood and phlegm (not the stuff you hock up when you have a cold).  Both your health and your temperament were supposedly the result of how much of each of these fluids you had in your body.  Imbalances also caused disease.  Feeling a bit emo?  Too much black bile.  Got a temper?  Too much yellow bile.  Too lazy to get off your backside?  Gotta get rid of that excess phlegm.

Imbalances were sometimes treated with food.  Hot foods helped you produce yellow bile, and cold foods helped you produce phlegm.  Over time, certain herbs and plants became associated with each of the humours and were therefore given in an attempt to balance the patient.  Most treatments, however, involved the aforementioned barfing, peeing or pooping – in other words, purging.  One very popular treatment, and one that killed people such as George Washington, was bleeding.

This aggressive purging of the body to balance the humours became more and more extreme and eventually resulted in what’s known as the Age of Heroic Medicine.  Not because physicians were heroes, but presumably because you had to be a hero, or better yet a demi-god, to survive their treatments.

While bleeding has fallen out of favour, thankfully, the idea that specific foods heal the body has endured through modern alternative medicines and wellness culture.

The truth is, there are no magical foods, or “superfoods”, to use wellness lingo.  No one food will do much for you, despite what Big Wellness tries to sell you – I mean, tell you.

At the root of both the Natural Fallacy and the Appeal to Ancient Wisdom is the oldest sin of them all:  the desire for hidden knowledge.  Satan tempted Adam and Eve with knowing good and evil (the forbidden tree was not the Tree of Knowledge, but the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil):  “Your eyes will be opened, and you will be as gods.”  When I talk about “the desire for hidden knowledge”, I don’t mean trying to figure out how black holes work.  I mean believing in, and seeking, progressive revelation of mystical/supernatural knowledge that goes beyond what the Bible teaches – stuff that we’re not (yet) supposed to know.  This is exactly the goal of Gnosticism and Mysticism.

It’s a desire for power, ultimately.  There is a great deal of pride in having this kind of knowledge.  You’re morally superior if you understand that some foods are good and some foods are bad and, goshdarnit, that disabled person must be eating so badly.  It sets you apart if you know the real truth about God, or angels, or how the natural world works, or the dangers of vaccines, or the conspiracy behind COVID-19, or the power of elderberries, or how God will stop you from getting sick – the stuff THEY don’t want you to know.

Whoever “they” are.  I’m never sure.  Certainly not governments, because most politicians can’t find their way to the fridge without three Green Papers and a special committee.  “They” must be the lizard people.  Or the Illuminati.  Or the Cabal . . . or the Jews.  You can see where that kind of thinking leads, frighteningly fast.  And suddenly we end up with QAnon.  But that’s a subject for another time.

In future posts, I hope to take a brief look at Mesmerism and other alternative therapies, such as homeopathy, plus the progression through germ theory to modern-day, evidence-based medicine, and give you some tips on how to sort through good and bad medical information in academic publications and the media.

In the meantime, I encourage you to think carefully about your beliefs about medicine and nature, and what alternative medicines you are using.  To pinch a line from the antivaxx movement, “Do your research.”  Take a close look at what you’re letting in to your spiritual life through the Natural Fallacy and the Appeal to Ancient Wisdom.  Where does this treatment originate?  Is it mystical, or does it actually use a proven biological pathway to treat the body?

If you have a query you’d like me to discuss in relation to Christianity and what I call “Wellness Culture”, let me know by leaving a comment below.