No stress and believing in Jesus = No disease!

[xReems]

According to David and Priscilla (Keller) Waller have a new post on their website that if you follow Gothard's "How to handle seven deadly stresses" seminar/training, you can cure your disease/sickness instantly! Apparently, they're happy to be ministering in a country where many are becoming born again Christians and are able to recognize their way of life went against want God wanted them to do---Believe in Jesus = no sickness! Don't believe in Jesus = cancer. Oh and stress adds to the factor to.

davidlovespriscilla.com/2012/04/02/serving-together/

What the fuck, is Bill Gothard 100% against medical science?! Because after reading that website, it showed me more proof that Gothard truly believes that everything will be okay in the world if people find Jesus.

I have nothing against missionaries who go to various countries and help restore/rebuild cities but it bothers the crap out of me when something like ATI go to various counties and preach that diseases occur due to stress and people should follow Jesus to cure it. Yes, stress can cause high blood pressure and various other conditions but I do not believe that 70% of diseases are caused by stress. Clearly these people do not know a damn thing about genetics and mutations in the genes.

[JMarie]

Sounds like when Tom Cruise was on Oprah (you remember, when he jumped up and down on her sofa), and he said he never gets sick because of Scientology.

And really, davidlovespricilla? Blech!!!

[Shirley MacLaine]

Heh, my grandmother believes this and she goes yearly to some faith healing seminar. She took her father when he was dying in hopes of curing his blindness - it didn't work, but God apparently deigned to fix his torn rotator cuff.

Also, somehow God prevents her from ever getting sick, but her Christian husband has frequent health problems associated with aging. This does not cause any cognitive dissonance for her. Somehow.

[Coconut Flan]

That is so irritating. I know a young man with MD who has been dragged from one healing service to another and told a few times his faith just wasn't strong enough. It's terrible.

[ThisOlGirl]

Hmmm, I'm confused. My granny believed in Jesus and had very little stress--unless you count the throat cancer that was literally eating holes in her neck from the inside out. I guess if she'd only prayed harder and not "stressed" about it so much, she'd be alive today. :roll:

Fuck Bill Gothard.

[GeoBQn]

Well this doesn't bode well for any future medical emergencies.

[doggie]

well it is easy to say see I am right because it is almost impossible to live life without stress. If you don't have any stress you are a hell of a human or not really living.

[Vex]

Tell that to Denise Sproul and her family.

The idea that people are sick or even dying because they weren't godly enough to prevent it really makes my blood boil.

[uber frau]

I have an aunt that believes this crap. She tried to convert my grandfather when he was dying of cancer. My grandfather was very religious, but in a quiet kind of way. He was one of the most generous and good ppl I have ever met.

It always puzzles me how Gothard finds an audience with foreign governments. Either he has a lot of influence (which is scary) or he's taking lessons from Geoff Botkin in embellishing his achievements. I hope it's the latter.

[bicyclecat]

Wow. I was diagnosed with Hodgkin's Disease last month and it is good to know that, if I just believe in Jeebus a little more, I can skip chemo this week and not have to put up with four days of puking my guts out, blistering headaches and maybe, just maybe, I'll be able to feel my fingers again.

Fucking assholes.

[flojo]

I don't like that sort of crazy being in hospital in the first place.

And the arrogance and audacity it took for them, uneducated as they are, to 'teach" the doctors and patients their crackpot theories of 70% of disease being caused by stressed. The arrogance combined with blind stupidity is baffling.

[alysee]

So if you're born with some disease does that mean it's your parents stress? Because what could a baby do to prevent a disease?

[alikat]

Shouldn't the same logic be applied to David's brother, the one who died in Mongolia? Surely when he got sick he should have 'rested on the Lord Jesus' and he would have been cured!

[AudreyE]

I guess Bill hasn't gotten to the Book of Job yet. Keep reading, a-hole.

[uber frau]

So if you're born with some disease does that mean it's your parents stress? Because what could a baby do to prevent a disease?

Probably. He's anti-adoption because he believes in generational sin. He should probably read his gospels a little more. And then Job.

BicycleCat-I'm sorry. :(

[snickerz]

So David's brother who died of cancer had some secret sin, I guess?

Am I bad for hoping a medical crisis will befall them?

[2xx1xy1JD]

That post was painful.

Sure, stress is a factor in illness, but you simply can't make a blanket statement about it, especially in a foreign country. What environmental contaminants are present? What are the effects of poverty? Tons of children were born into absolute misery under the late dictator, who had draconian policies against all birth control and abortion and even had "menstrual police". How is their health today?

What kind of stress is caused by disallowing birth control and setting up a situation where most families would be living in poverty?

We praise the Lord that we are ministering in an area where there are many born-again believers who quickly recognize how they have been violating God’s way of life.

Yes, that's EXACTLY what sick people need - someone telling them that they've been sinning all along!

They see how they can resolve their stress and then either by life or death their greatest pain is elevated which is the pain of inner tensions and interpersonal conflicts.

Can someone translate this into English please?

[Visionoyahweh]

Seven Deadly

Why hate Catholicism and ape it at the same time?

[Loveday]

Wow. I was diagnosed with Hodgkin's Disease last month and it is good to know that, if I just believe in Jeebus a little more, I can skip chemo this week and not have to put up with four days of puking my guts out, blistering headaches and maybe, just maybe, I'll be able to feel my fingers again.

Fucking assholes.

I'm sorry to hear about your illness. I hope you don't have to be on the chemo for too long.

I don't even know what to say after reading the crap in that post. I'm a Christian, but I'm a realist, too, and it doesn't matter how strongly someone believes in Jesus, or how faithfully they try to 'resolve' those so-called seven deadly stresses, it doesn't prevent disease and suffering. I wish I knew what did, but that ain't it. :(

[slh12280]

I'm sorry to hear about your illness. I hope you don't have to be on the chemo for too long.

I don't even know what to say after reading the crap in that post. I'm a Christian, but I'm a realist, too, and it doesn't matter how strongly someone believes in Jesus, or how faithfully they try to 'resolve' those so-called seven deadly stresses, it doesn't prevent disease and suffering. I wish I knew what did, but that ain't it. :(

^This

[2xx1xy1JD]

The other thing is that it's not just stress by itself that makes someone sick. It can lower resistance, but the germs still need to be around. It can lead auto-immune conditions to flare up, but they need to be there in the first place. In other words - stress reduction is important, but it doesn't eliminate the need for medical care because it is just one factor.

And again - do you get to use birth control if your ten kids and lack of income are stressing your out?

[Burris]

Stupid. Arrogant. Cruel. Wrong-headed.

A similar belief is addressed in the Book of Job, where God itself appears in the whirlwind and castigates Job's friends for their cruel hubris. In the end, Job has to pray that his friends be forgiven their berating of him, lest they should face the wrath of God for being so presumptuous.

And isn't it convenient that that these dipshits have found a way to "minister" that costs them precisely nothing in terms of providing material aid.

[Lady]

This sort of thinking that is one of the worst aspect of fundamentalist thinking. God put doctors on earth to help us. Use them.

[bicyclecat]

Thanks for the good thoughts :) I have 4 months of treatment and a 99% chance of being cured completely, which is really awesome. We caught it very early, on a CT scan for an unrelated issue and... thank God for that and for the doctor who looked it and said "Wow, that could be lymphoma." Thanks to him, I'm going to live through this.

Not for fundie religion/ spirituality whackjobs, who would have told me to just pray the pain away or that it's my fault because I did something wrong. And thank God, I was able to go to the doctor by myself, because I have people in my life who told me just that. My neck hurts because of my thoughts and feelings, not because there's a fucking tumor growing under my collarbone.

Now that I have confirmed cancer, I'm being told tht it's my fault, because I have so much resentment for others and that resentment causes cancer. No. In my case, the Epstein Barr virus causes cancer. I caught mono when I was a teenager and had it so bad, I was in the hospital on antivirals for a week. I also had a recurrance a year later. The Epstein Barr virus hangs out in the lypmph system and eventually can mutate cells and cause cancer. That the theory anyway. The fact that I'm under a crapton of stress doesn't help, but it was really the virus that caused it.

Pardon my vehemence about this, but it hits VERY close to home for me right now. If I'd listened to what some people were telling me, I could have been terminal in a year or two and would never know, until it was too late. If I'd listened to the people in my life, who blamed me for my medical problems, I never would have gone to get a CT scan, I never would have known that I had early stage cancer and I'd probably be dead before the age of 40, from a curable disease.

Faith in Christ is helping me through this ordeal, but it's just no substitute for legitimate medical care and I believe that God does much of his work through human hands. Like the ER doctor who cared enough to keep checking on my test results several days after treating me. He actually saved my life, unlike those who would rather be self inmportant douche canoes, rather than actually do something to help someone.

[browngrl]

Bicyclecat - I am glad to hear that you have a good prognosis. I hope you are soon well.

You are quite right to be mad at these two (IMO). At their best they are sanctimonious fools. At their worst they could well lead someone who HAD a chance of a cure to withhold appropriate treatment. Their ill thought out advice could lead to needless death and disability.