Faith Heals

Metro Detroit doctor Earlexia Norwood prays. She prays for guidance while diagnosing illnesses, and sometimes prays with her patients. It's because she believes that faith helps the healing process, and that medicine can't do everything.

There has been much research on the connection between faith and healing. Dr. Harold G. Koenig, director of Duke University's Center for Spirituality, Theology and Health, says that there have been many studies into the issue of religious belief and curing the sick, and that around two-thirds of them find a healthy correlation between the two.

It is fascinating to hear Detroit physicians and surgeons so accepting of the role faith plays when treating their patients. True doctors, those open to the fact that they can't do it all medically, are more than willing to give the higher powers of religion their due. After all, they became doctors to help people. The desire to help is naturally unselfish and welcomes any aid which it may get. It makes you wonder how much healing we might receive in any and all walks of life if we were self effacing enough to put faith at the center of curing all societal ills and not only the physical.