Crazy Can't Cure

Ever had to deal with a crazy person? I mean a genuinely crazy person, someone who

lacks any awareness of their actions’ consequences. Unfortunately, I have had the privilege of dealing with such people far more often than I would like. In 2015, a spiritual healing fad invaded the church my family was attending. Adherents believed they had the secret formula for healing, that they could heal people if they had enough faith. If the sick were not healed the first time they prayed, they would pray again to show their faith. My family found this belief irritating and foolish due to having a family member who still has chronic illness even after being prayed for repeatedly. After my dad caught pneumonia that winter, we learned just how crazy some people had become. The obsession with bizarre healing fads led some to deny all common sense.

When my dad caught pneumonia, we didn’t fully realize how severe his sickness was until later. We could have lost him. Fluid was in his lungs, he was coughing almost constantly, and he has never fully recovered. It was horrible, and his work was not giving him sick days, forcing him to go in so he couldn’t rest. After a couple of weeks, he started getting a little better, and he was able to drop me off at youth group one cold January evening. I was irritated that the guest of honor was Marcus, a fanatic for the healing movement. Marcus was a snake oil salesman who believed in his product, and he loved to tell stories about all the people he had prayed for who had gotten healed.

“A group of us got together and prayed over these cloths so that they’d heal people like Peter’s clothes did in Acts,” Marcus said.

Towards the end of youth group, the leaders asked for prayer requests. I asked my friends to remember my dad in prayer. Thankfully, that prayer was acceptable, and I was relieved that nobody had made it weird. However, Marcus came up to me afterward, asking after my dad, and I began to get flustered. I knew my family’s views on Marcus’s healing beliefs and how incredibly annoying he could be. I made the mistake of trying to get out quickly by saying, “Well, my dad’s here to pick me up. I better get going!”

To which Marcus responded, “Oh! Your dad’s here?”

“Yes… Bye!” I turned to leave, and to my stomach-clenching horror, he followed me outside. I power walked in the cold night silence with my heart pounding. I reached the car and jumped in the passenger seat, slamming the door. Marcus went over to my dad’s window, and Dad rolled it down.

“Hi Mr. Neumann, Emma mentioned that you were sick. May I pray for you?” He asked.

I was surprised that my dad said yes to letting him pray. Marcus then had me pray as well, but I resisted the repetitious little rite of “In Jesus’ name be healed” that Marcus used every time he prayed. What followed was incredibly bizarre. Marcus gave Dad a little piece of green eyeglass cleaner cloth. “A group of us got together and prayed over these cloths so that they’d heal people like Peter’s clothes did in Acts,” Marcus said. “Whenever you feel sick, just touch it.” At this point, Dad was done. He politely said thank you but that we needed to leave. Finally, he was able to roll up the window and cut off the cold winter air. We pulled out and started heading home.

“I GOT WORSE! That would have probably killed me.”

On the way back, Dad started having a coughing fit. Then he started laughing, laughing hard whilst hacking up a lung. I was petrified. Everything was dark aside from headlights zooming by. Even though I had only practiced driving once before, I offered to drive. He just kept laughing.

Months after this debacle, Dad confronted him. He brought up the fact that “Yeah, I actually got worse because of all the cold air being let in. Emma was freaking out on the drive home.”

Marcus’s response? “Oh man, I should have kept praying!”

I remember Dad laughing at him. “I GOT WORSE! That would have probably killed me.”

I couldn’t believe how Marcus could be so fixated on his beliefs that he would abandon all of his common sense. It is beyond me how he could have missed my discomfort at his following me out to the car or that giving my dad a pathetic piece of prayed-over cloth was not received well. Then, after all of that, when confronted with facts that his methods did not work, he insisted that he should have tried harder. Experiencing Marcus’s unfaltering delusion made me realize how important it is to thoroughly analyze why I believe what I believe. It is way too easy to get caught up in what is popular to think than in what is true.