Insight on the News
Emotions and Health
● “In medical centers across the nation, evidence has been accumulating that grief, joy . . . affect our bodies far more than scientists have heretofore believed,” reports an article in the New York “Times Magazine.” Negative emotions are now seen as playing at least some role in “lowering a crucial threshold.” Says the article: “Research indicates that anger and anxiety seem to play an important role in allowing the common herpes simplex virus to overpower the immune system, producing the ubiquitous canker sore.”
The article also reported on findings by Dr. Barbara Betz, who studied graduates of Johns Hopkins Medical School. Over a period of 30 years, she found that among those with good mental health and positive emotions, only 25 percent suffered a heart attack or a bout with cancer. But for those who were moody and irritable, the number affected rose to 77 percent. “Your temperament and approach to life,” she says, “certainly seem to have an effect on your resistance to disease.”
Though some in the medical profession have been slow to discern the link between emotions and health, the Bible long ago made it clear, saying: “A heart that is joyful does good as a curer, but a spirit that is stricken makes the bones dry.”—Prov. 17:22.
Scientists and Deception
● In a guest editorial for “American Laboratory” magazine, biochemist Donald F. Calbreath, Ph.D., pointed out three ways in which evolutionists deceive the public. First, the teaching of creationism in school is opposed because it is said to involve religion. “However,” he writes, “the secular humanism prevalent both in the classroom and in the teacher training programs must be considered just as much a religion. . . . Since both deal in some realms that cannot be dealt with completely by scientific experimentation, a certain element of faith is necessary for the acceptance of the tenets of the system.”
Yet, writes Calbreath: “The [school]child is not presented with evolution as a theory. Subtle statements are made in science texts as early as the second grade (based on my reading of my children’s textbooks). Evolution is presented as reality, not as a concept that can be questioned.”
Third, there is the attempt “to portray the battleground as being between scientists who support evolution and believers in creationism who are nonscientists.” This, he says, is “invalid.” Why? Because “much of the opposition to evolution comes from scientists, men and women who have achieved academic distinction, who are knowledgeable about research and the scientific method and who reject evolution on the basis of their scientific knowledge. . . . When qualified scientists reject the theory of evolution and provide significant arguments to substantiate their rejection, perhaps there just may be some validity to their arguments.”—November 1980, pp. 8, 10.
“False Caste System”
● There are “some hopeful signs that the excessive clericalism which has strangled the Church for centuries is beginning to crumble.” So said an Anglican priest in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada. He added that there is “an exciting rediscovery of the New Testament model of ministry in which the ordained clergy are recognized as ‘servants of the servants.’” But he cautions: “Of course, it is no easy task to reverse a false caste system which has been in place since the Middle Ages.” The result is that “we have . . . turned the Church into an institution made up of active clerical suppliers and passive lay consumers.”
Interestingly, Jehovah’s Witnesses have for years followed the direction of the Founder of Christianity that “all you are brothers,” and have no clergy class among them. They also have a reputation worldwide for their neighborhood evangelism by all the members of their local congregations. This very organizational arrangement and activity has brought them much criticism from the clergy. But even Jesus Christ encountered clerical opposition in his day from those who wanted titles and positions to distinguish them from their fellow worshipers.—Matt. 23:8-12; 26:3-5.