Thy Faith Hath Made Thee Whole

Several weeks ago, in Sacrament Meeting, a man spoke about how special the Sacrament is. He had suddenly developed some problem with his ear. I can't remember now whether it was pain or hearing loss or both. But acting on either an impulse or inspiration, he put a little bit of Sacramental water in his ear, and shortly thereafter, his ear was healed. Something I wanted to say, and wish someone had said, was that it wasn't the Sacrament that healed him. The healing could have been natural, but personally, I think he was healed because of his faith.

There is at least one other person who, through their interaction with an ordinary object, received an extraordinary healing blessing. The New Testament tells of a woman who had an issue of blood, who touched the hem of Jesus' robe and was healed. I am certain that it wasn't Jesus' magic healing robe that cured her. I'm sure that His clothes had nothing special about them at all. In fact, just after the healing took place, Jesus identified the power behind the healing when He told the healed woman "Thy faith hath made thee whole."

The Sacrament doesn't have any magical healing powers. There is nothing special about that bread and water except symbolism. The bread and water itself remains regular bread and water. The special power behind the man's healing wasn't the blessed Sacramental water, but his faith. Just as with the woman with the issue of blood, he had the faith that he would be healed, and he was healed.

When Moses created the brazen serpent that healed at least some of the children of Israel from their snake bites, it wasn't that he had created a magical anti-venom staff. It was that those who were healed had had at least enough faith to look. I might even go so far as to say that even consecrated oil doesn't any inherently magical healing qualities. When people are healed by Priesthood Blessings, I don't think it's the oil that's doing the healing, but their faith.

My opinion is that the oil, the water, the robe, and the brazen serpent are and were similar to placebos. The healings happened because those that were healed believed they would happen, not because of the objects or substances themselves. Faith is powerful, especially when it is strong enough to persuade someone to act, even if the action is as simple as touching some cloth or putting some water in your ear. It is a test of faith, to see if a person's faith is strong enough to follow their prompting, even if they suspect that the action itself won't heal them. If their faith is strong enough to convince them to perform the action, then the action itself won't have to heal them; their faith will. In the case of every healing I know of, it wasn't the special objects or substances that healed them. It was their faith, and their acting on their faith, that made them whole.