Timothy Keller on Medicine and Spirituality

Timothy Keller, in his book Every Good Endeavor, quotes a journal article about one doctor's frustration in his practice. This doctor's experience mirrors Dr. Matt Anderson's experiences. Matt is the instigator of our Haiti Mission Trips.

One woman I corresponded with pointed me to an article in The New England Journal of Medicine titled "God at the Bedside." The author was a doctor who often found that patients' spiritual beliefs and practices were very much a factor in their health issues, but "in the modern era, religion and science are understood as sharply divided, the two occupying very different domains." He wrote that he often found that patients' guilt and fears were factors in their illness and also that their faith in God was part of how they healed, but he felt completely unprepared by his training to address any of these realities. "Doctors," he wrote, "understandably are leery of moving outside the strictly clinical and venturing into the spiritual realm."(pp. 176-177)

Matt Anderson talks about these issues on every trip to Haiti. He wants to develop a model of care that addresses both the body and the soul. May God bless his work!