Be Healed!
Trading Religion for Philosophy

W hen I was a Christian I was taught to bring my pain, confusion, and doubt to the foot of the cross. “You can be healed,” I was told. “ If you have faith, God will make a way .” But the promised healing never came. When my faith-filled prayers were answered with silence, the reassuring comments of “It’s all part of God’s plan” started to sound like empty rhetoric. For that reason and many others I eventually left Christianity, carrying a burden of spiritual scaring. Now what? Seek psychological help? Eliminate my magical thinking by actually studying science? I tried those paths, and they did help. However, somewhere along the way, I quietly, curiously—stumbled onto the writings of modern and ancient philosophers. I mostly skipped the dry texts presented by academia, more drawn to contemporary writers who are bringing philosophy alive. When I think of medicine, I often picture pills, prescriptions, or white-coated professionals poking at problems with stethoscopes. But...