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 | Cimply Putting it…
Welcome to the Hour of Power...I don’t have the opportunity to watch Dr. Robert Schuller’s “Hour of Power” on Sunday mornings, but I love the name he has given to his religious program. One morning when I did have the opportunity to watch his service from the Crystal Cathedral he told the story of a Ph.D. student in mathematics who was going to take his final test for his doctorate. Unfortunately the student arrived late for the test. Everybody else in the classroom had already started the test. On the board were three math problems. The late student sat down immediately to do them. He worked feverously an hour and half but everybody else had finished the test and left. He felt to himself, “What an idiot I am, for I am the last one here taking the test. I must be much slower than any other students in this class.” He had finished only two problems and he knew that he was going to flunk his math test. You can’t leave a third of the test unanswered and not flunk. He was very upset. He came up to the professor and said, “Professor, I didn’t finish the last problem. Would you please let me finish the third problem and bring it into you later tonight? Please, I’ll get the third problem done and bring it to you.” The professor said that was permissible. The math student turned in to his math professor the calculations for the two problems and went to work on that third problem. He worked all afternoon. He worked into the night. He worked until 11:00 that night and he finally finished the third math problem. He rushed it over the math professor’s office which, of course, was closed. He slipped the test of the third math problem underneath the door and went home exhausted. Early the next morning, his phone rang and it was his professor who excitedly said to him, “Young man, you are a genius. You are brighter than bright. I have never seen anything like it.” The young man said, “What do you mean?” The professor responded, “The first two problems on the board were the test. The third problem was a mind teaser. I have never had a student ever finish that problem. No student of mine has ever gotten that right. You have done something that no other student has ever done before.” It was because the student came in late to the test and never heard that the third problem was impossible to solve. He never heard that it was a mind teaser, an impossible challenge. Dr. Schuller made the comparison of this student’s experience with the power of believing.
Faith is a power. You probably have heard of the “placebo effect.” This means when we are really sick and our head feels crummy, and our belly feels crummy, and our legs and back feels crummy, you go to the doctor and say, “Doctor, I feel crummy all over.” “Where specifically in your body do you feel crummy?” the doctor asked. You say, “All over. My head. My belly. My legs. My back.” The doctor looks at you and says, “I have just the right medication.” The ugliest, awful tasting pill that you have ever seen. The doctor gives you a week’s worth of this ugly, awful pills. He says, “Take two of these a day, one in the morning and one at night, and it should make you feel better.” We, as faithful patients, do this, and we come back to the doctor after a week and say, “Those pills really worked. I am feeling fine.” But those big, ugly, awful tasting pills were only sugar pills, with nothing of medicinal value in those pills. Those pills were placeboes. They were given to us in such a way to convince us that they were medication and we believed that we would get well if we took them.
If we believe that the pill can cure us, it can really help. If we believe we can really solve a very difficult problem, chances are increased that we can solve it.
However the opposite of the placebo effect is called the nocebo effect. This occurs when we disbelieve in the treatment.
What does this all means for us? It is possible to come to this Hour of Power and hear the wonderful stories of our faith and to see our friends and enjoy their company. But do we really believe in the power of our believing? Be careful however, for I do not want to be misunderstood. Just because a person is a positive thinker and believes in the power of Christ, that does not means that we will be healed of one’s diseases, inner torment, or relationship problems. Just because we have faith and even sometimes a very deep faith, does not mean we will experience healing. It just doesn’t seem to work that way. I know plenty of devout Christians with the deepest of faith who had a disease and died. The Hour of Power can only assist us when we realize that we are in need of God because we all need to be healed of something in our lives. Unfortunately most of us think like this: “Lord, show me a miracle. God if you heal me or my loved one or do something about this bad relationship, then I will really believe in you.” The opposite is what the Bible says. We are to have faith in Christ. It never says to have faith in faith or faith in possibility thinking or faith in self confidence. These may be helpful but that is not what brings us to the Hour of Power. The power comes from believing in Christ who will be with us in all our needs. Without faith we are merely taking a sugar pill. It may work for awhile but it does not have the staying power of our God.
Make it a great week. clc
| | | | Written By Fr. Chuck Cimpl |
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| | Ephesians 2:19-22 Joohn 20:24-29 |
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 | | "You became a believer because you saw Me."--John 20:29 |
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