Shaken, not stirred!
Researchers, who surveyed 596 elderly hospitalized patients in 1996, found that those who said they ”wondered whether God had abandoned me,” ”questioned God’s love for me” or ”decided the devil made this happen” were more likely two years later to have died than patients who did not endorse such statements. The patients in the study were almost exclusively Christian, with the majority representing conservative or mainline Protestant denominations.
In many religious traditions struggle is portrayed as a prelude to growth, one researcher said.
”From Moses to Jesus to Buddha, you see religious figures going through dark nights of the soul and through that process they come out steeled and strengthened,” he said.
But he said the study suggests that some people appeared unable to resolve their feelings of anger, guilt or anxiety and that their health might have suffered as a result.
Dr. Harold G. Koenig, a professor of psychiatry and medicine at Duke University Medical Center and another author of the study, said, ”It’s normal to ask God, ‘Why is this happening to me? Did I do something wrong? Why aren’t you responding to my prayers?’ ”
”All these are normal feelings but people work through them usually, and people who can’t, who get stuck there, they are going to have worse health outcomes,” Dr. Koenig said.
That being said, my encouragement to you today is to be stirred in your faith but not shaken!
Though the mountains be shaken and the hills be removed, yet my unfailing love for you will not be shaken nor my covenant of peace be removed,” says the LORD, who has compassion on you. – Isaiah 54:10
