#STRask - What Would You Say to Someone Who Believes in “Healing Frequencies”?

Episode Date: May 8, 2025

Questions about what to say to someone who believes in “healing frequencies” in fabrics and music, whether Christians should use Oriental medicine that’s based on the concepts of qi, and how to respond to someone who says he’s sending “good vibes” your way.   What would you say to someone who believes in “healing frequencies” in fabrics and music and claims there is biblical support for it? What are your thoughts on Christians using Oriental medicine specialists, who base their techniques on the concepts of qi, to diagnose and treat allergies? How would you respond to someone who sends “good vibes” your way when you ask for prayers?

This is the hashtag SDR Ask podcast from Stan to Reason. And this is the podcast where we take your questions from X and also from our website. We depend on you to send us your questions, so please do that. Yes, yeah. The more the better. Today, Greg, our questions are about interacting with people with other beliefs. Okay. So, we have a few different ones here today. This first one comes from Naya. How do you engage with someone who believes in, quote, healing frequencies through fabrics and music?

She believes that Leviticus 19 was God pointing to wool slash linen as healing. When I said the true meaning, she shifted the argument to God's speaking frequencies into existence and therefore their healing abilities." Well, I'm not sure about the Leviticus 19 passage, though it sounds like, nah, you dealt with that and it had no effect. In dealing with somebody in new age, I think it's especially hard. I'm actually much more comfortable dealing with atheists, materialists, naturalists, because at least we are playing by the same rules by large. When you talk to people that are into new age or that are just radical relativists, the rules at least initially sound different. So you could say, as they bring up in this case, the Levitical passage or whatever, and then, well, that's not what he meant. Oh, well, that doesn't matter. That person, I'll think of another

reason to justify my own views about these kinds of things. And so, I mean, I don't have a clever way to respond. Some people are really good. Melissa Doherty has worked with a lot of new age types. She's dealing with new thought now, just wrote a book on that called Happy Lies. And she had a compatriot, I can't remember her name, they both worked together, came out of the new age, who has got a very big presence now on the internet,

podcast presence, and they're the ones that can help you more with that kind of thing. But the difficulty for me is trying to make sense of the statements. And so I'm like in a, you know, I'm in tune with the enlightenment mind, that is. They still think in more or less logical categories

and they think reason is useful and intuition plays a part, but you know, things have to make sense. Now those folk think that atheism makes sense, but we have to deal with that. But at least we can play by the same, in a certain sense, thought rules. When you deal with somebody in the new age, this is very different. The thought rules are, they're non-existent, it seems like, and they are moving in a whole different way, what they would consider intuitive. I don't think that's what it amounts to with a careful understanding of what intuition

entails. But nevertheless, they are very subjectively driven and they are given to this mystical way of looking at the world. And even if you have a reasonable objection to their mystical interpretation of the world, they're just going to default to another mystical thing. And I had this conversation that's recorded in Street Smarts with a gal who was a waitress in Seattle a number of years ago. And she mentioned, she said in our conversation, she says, I'm not a Christian anymore, now the universe takes care of me. Well, I didn't know what she meant. I knew what she was

kind of getting at to in a very vague sense, but I wanted clarification, so I asked her, how is that? I mean, Colombo number one, right? How does the universe take care of you? Is the universe a person? No. Well, how does it take care of you? She had never thought of that. And so now she's contemplating that question, and then she kicks back and says, well, I guess God takes care of me. Oh, okay, well that makes more sense now, I said. And then she said, but God is the universe. I said, how can God be the universe?

And so every time I try to clarify something, she would kind of half agree with me and then go off on some other statement that was a bit nonsensical to me. She's free to make sense of it, but I didn't think she, well, she didn't at all in all the questions I asked. She never landed on anything substantive. And then off she went, you know, that was it. Smiling all the way, I thought I had no impact on her whatsoever.

Now the way this anecdote ends is she came up to me at the very end to give me my bill, and she said this to me. She said, no one has ever asked me questions about my view before, and it got me thinking. So there's a stone in the shoe, right? And what you don't know, who are listening, is that I'm not a morning person, and I did not want to talk with her about Jesus or God or anything at 0 dark 30 on a Sunday morning when I was just had a weekend of teaching and I was off to do a preaching and I was rolling out of my hotel to get some coffee and scrambled eggs and then head off. Nevertheless, I just couldn't help myself. I keep asking these questions

because it didn't make sense to me. But there's a lesson here and the lesson is, two lessons actually, when you're dealing with somebody in say, the new age kind of area of thinking, it's gonna be really hard to pin them down and get them to acknowledge that anything that they have been affirming is somehow amiss.

And this is just now what you experienced with this gal you were talking to. She just moves on, just like the waitress in Seattle. But what the other thing I want to see is you never know what's getting through when you either ask the question or speak something true to them. And even if you said, you know, God isn't like that. God is real and he cares about you and he's watching you. And that's good news and it's bad news. Because when he's watching you, he sees everything that you do.

And one day you're going to have to give an account for it. Now they're not wild about that message, but that's exactly the message I just read in what Acts 22 with Paul before Festus or Felix or Agrippa, they're all kind of grouped in there a little bit. And he's, I think it was Festus, and he's speaking of the judgment, and Festus gets scared. Maybe it's Felix, I get it mixed up.

And he gets scared and he says, well, okay, I'll talk to you later. Now, why would Paul say anything to Felix that would scare him? Because Paul was telling him the truth. And it didn't seem to have much impact on Felix except for just to get him scared. And then he put him off for two years,

just one little line in there, and he left him for two years in prison. I have him in the margin. What was Paul doing for those two years in prison? Doesn't say, just two years. But then he gets a chance to talk to Agrippa. And that seems to be a much more productive conversation because he says to Agrippa, and all these things I'm saying, you know what I'm talking about because these things have not happened in a corner. You believe the prophets, I know you do. Okay. And so what that conversation shows is that good news and bad news go together. And the bad news was front and center for Paul in those conversations.

That's why people got shaken up. And sometimes when you're talking to somebody who won't follow a line of thinking, if you just tell them the truth, say, you know, that's not the way God is, the way you're describing. He is real. He's personal. And He's here. He's here for you. But He's watching. And that's not good news. Because He's watching what we are all doing that's not good. And He's going to hold us accountable to that. Now there's mercy through Jesus. Not Jesus the New Age guru, the avatar,

but Jesus of Nazareth, the Jewish Messiah. He's the only rescue. Think about that. You know, just lay that with him, see what God does with it, you never know. But to me, I don't know any other way to deal with the New Age type because it's like nailing Jell-O to a wall. What's interesting to me in this question is that Naya's friend wants to connect this

to God in some way. It's unclear to me if this is someone who claims to be a Christian or not. I would assume not. But if not, then why is she pointing to Leviticus 19? And then when that doesn't work out, why is she then pointing to God speaking? So she seems to be trying to connect this to God, and in particular to Naya's God. That's a good observation, right. And so I think maybe what you might want to do is try and move the conversation in that direction. So what you could ask is, well, after I told you that that's not what Leviticus 19 is about,

you moved to this, So it seems like you care very much about this being connected to God. Would that be the Christian God? Is that who you're thinking of? Or what's your understanding of God? And then you can start talking about God. And if not, why are you citing the biblical passages? Yeah, good point. And then maybe you could ask, well, since you seem to be wanting to connect this to God being behind it, is it that you think the healing frequencies themselves are healing, or do you think it's coming ultimately from God?

And if it's coming from God, why not go directly to Him and what He's already revealed? Because these things, you're going about this, you're trying to figure, you're trying to fit this into the Bible somehow, but we have the whole Bible. We can look at everything it said. And He's revealed everything to us because He wants us to know about Him and He wants us to know what He requires of us, what He wants us to do. So why would He leave that out if it's something important? Why not just go directly to him and ask for healing? And now what she might say, I mean, the best thing that that conversation would do would be to move this onto a discussion of the Christian God. I think that is a great way to go.

Then she might say, well, we have medicine and we use medicine and there's nothing wrong with that. And that's true. So then it becomes a question of, well, are these healing frequencies real or not? But if you're just looking for a spiritual conversation, I would move it towards God, since she brought him into the conversation before you even did that. Good point. Okay, let's go to a question from Erin. What are your thoughts on Christians using oriental medicine specialists

to diagnose and treat allergies who base their techniques on the concepts of chi and claim to, quote, reprogram the meridian system to prevent further allergic reaction? Well, I'm pausing here because it's hard to distinguish. again, I'm trying to figure out how to categorize it, folk religion, I'm sorry, folk medicine that may have some basis in fact. So you have cultures that have used herbs and the like in different modalities that are not so popular with Western medicine, but many promote them. And arguably, there is value in a lot of these. I'm trying to distinguish between that and these spiritual exercises, these like, I don't know, Hindus call them asanas, these practices that are different things you do to help you get in touch with the divine. Now, I think the spiritual practices

that are just described here are of a different religion and they're based on a different concept. And so that's part of what's going on. If, is the concept these are based on, is the concept itself contrary to the Christian worldview? So you can do yoga. Yoga's entail stretching. concept itself, contrary to the Christian worldview. So you can do yoga. Yoga entails stretching.

There are yoga stretches that I've done in the past that were to stretch things in my body, but there are other positions that you take in yoga to say, for example, awaken the Kundalini spirit at the bottom of your spine. This is a purely religious enterprise, and then there's supposedly some benefit to that. If there's a spirit at the bottom of my spine, I want him to keep sleeping. I don't want to wake him up, you know, kind of thing. So you have to make this distinction. And it might be, even though there are some religious elements to it, like yoga, is an asana. It's a practice of Eastern

religion to help your spiritual life, but I think that there are innocent aspects of it. Now, Christians disagree on this particular point, but it may be when you come to the folk medicine slash religion, because these are tied, that there may be some things that other cultures have gotten onto that do have bona fide physiological therapeutic results. My suspicion is though, especially the way this was just described, is the therapeutic results that are expected are tied to the metaphysic, the worldview. Because the world is this way and your body is this way, then when we do these manipulations, your body produces this result. But that's because of the truth of this metaphysical view

that we're importing. And that sometimes is difficult to thread through. Now, my doctor, who's now retired, I knew him since he was in med school, Paul Reiser, R-E-I-S-S-E-R. He actually wrote the medical books for Focus of the Family. And he wrote a book, I'm trying to think of the title, you probably find find on Amazon, about these different medical modalities that were tied to false religions. New age medicine or something like that. R-E-I-S-S-E-R, Paul Reiser, if you want to look it up, just go by author if somebody wants to check it out. But he goes into a lot of detail about these things, and he's not very

sympathetic to them, and he's concerned for spiritual reasons as well as medical reasons. So I would commend people to that book. I just want them to see this distinction. You have folk religion and folk medicine, and sometimes folk medicine is tied to, you got herbs and stuff that could really work. And even people nowadays are falling back on that. I mean, a lot of ads about these kinds of things online. And I think some of them are probably pretty good. But you have to be aware of the metaphysical structure that's behind some of these

practices because they're directly related to that. And if you're doing in a sauna some practice like yoga or meditation or something like that in order to transcend this world and reconnect with the with the Godhead, well now you're practicing Hindu religion and you're not just doing something better for your body. Yeah, I agree that there could be something, there could be some practice that actually works even if they're misunderstanding why it's working. But the problem is, and here's where I think Paul's words about sacrificing meat. Paul the Apostle, not Paul Reiser. Yes, thank you for that clarification.

What he says about eating meat sacrificed to idols and those kinds of things in 1 Corinthians 10 and in Romans 14, I think can be really helpful here. Because one thing you have to remember, let's say, for example, that this technique works, not because their worldview is correct, but for some other reason that they've stumbled across that this technique works, not because their worldview is correct, but for some other reason that they've stumbled across that this actually works. If you engage in that, what people will see are two things. Number one, you believe with their worldview. And number two, their worldview is correct because it worked.

So now, even if you are healed by it, now you're giving glory to their worldview is correct because it worked. So now, even if you are healed by it, now you're giving glory to their worldview and not to God. This, I think, would go back to what Paul says about if you go, you know, an idol is nothing. So when you eat meat, you don't have to ask questions, see if it's been sacrificed to an idol, that's fine. But if you ask a question you find out, now if you eat it and somebody else sees you eating it, now you will affect their conscience because they think it is something and that will affect their view of Christianity, of God, of Jesus, all these things. So if you participate in this, even if it is, again, an idol is nothing, maybe it won't harm you, but you will be glorifying their worldview if it works.

And now that that's attached to it, you'll be affecting other Christians and maybe causing them to sin against their conscience because they believe it's true and then they're engaging in it because they want to reprogram the meridian system or whatever it is that they're doing. So again, I think Paul addresses this, so I would take a look at those passages about that. All right, let's go to a question from Sue. How do you respond to someone who sends, quote, good vibes your way when you ask for prayers around a circumstance in your life?

Am I the problem for asking for prayers from a group of people, some of whom aren't Christian? Think group of coworkers in a text thread. Well, if somebody said they want to send good vibes, I'm not. I think normally I wouldn't say anything. I suspect that these are well-wishers. It's kind of like when you hear of a tragedy that happens and there's some commentator on the news and they say, well, our thoughts are with you. Or sometimes they'll say our thoughts and our prayers are with you. Or sometimes they'll say our thoughts and our prayers are with you. I don't take the prayer part seriously. I'm a bit jaundiced about that.

I don't think most of these people, these secular types in these environments pray at all. Now, I don't know for sure, but I have no reason to think that they do. And just to say, our prayers are with you is easily dismissed as a social amenity. But what they are doing when they say our thoughts or maybe our thoughts and our prayers are with you is they're saying that there is something emotional going on in us that we're extending, quote unquote, physicalist language, but nothing physical is happening. The good wishes aren't going out and hitting anybody and causing some, the thoughts aren't going out and influencing anything. It's

just a way of one person saying to another that I care. That's all it means. And so I'll take it charitably. Now, if you wanted to take it further, I'm going to send out good vibes to you. That kind of language was more popular in the 60s, just saying, you know. But if I wanted to push it a little further, I would ask the basic question, what do you mean good vibes? It's sweet that you want to do that, but I'm not sure exactly what's going to happen. Is that going to change anything? Help me. Now, I think when I suggest that question, I suspect a lot of people listening to it are feeling a little uncomfortable

and they're thinking, I could never say that. And the reason you would never say that is because you realize this is just a social amenity and it's not meant to be analyzed. I mean, that would be just like if somebody said- Good luck. Good luck. What do if somebody said, um, good luck. Good luck. What do you mean luck? Well, good fortune. What do you mean good fortune? Oh, well, God bless you. I mean, even that phrase is often used not to invoke a blessing, but it's just to express

goodwill. You know, it's funny. At first I was thinking, well, maybe you shouldn't include them on the text thread. If you're going to ask for prayers, maybe don't include people who don't pray. But actually, I don't think there's anything wrong with that because I think it's nice for people who aren't Christians to see that other people are praying. And it would be nice for them to see that. And I don't think I would say anything in response. Yeah, I agree, Greg. I don't think it's meant, I don't think it was thought through and it's serious.

Now, if I really thought that they had some sort of practice where they did it, I might talk to them about it later and just ask questions and say, so is this something you do or, but you know, that's not what they're thinking. I agree with that. Send in good vibes your way. I'm so glad you did that.

Just a moment ago, I felt this little quiver somewhere. I just felt the vibe coming through. No, that's not what they're really talking about. And I guess it's possible that they are pushing back on your, in some kind of passive aggressive way and you ask for prayers and they're saying, well, I'll send good vibes. That's unlikely. I don't know. I guess if you think that's what's happening, you could have a good-natured conversation later and just say, I'm just really curious. Do you mean that seriously? Like, do you think that vibes change things? I'm really interested

to hear what you think about that. Because I'm still sick. So your vibes didn't reach me. You got to vibrate stronger. But if you do that, I would say you should probably do it from a spirit of like, I am actually really interested to know what you think about this, not like, well, what do you mean good vibes? I mean, nobody wants to hear their statement analyzed that they're like you were saying. I remember I was being makeuped by somebody

for a TV thing many years ago. And it turns out that he, as a small talk, he was suffering from cancer. And I said, can I pray for you? And he said, sure, I'll take all the help I can get. Now I went and prayed for him, but that response bothered me because I didn't want him to think,

well, I'm just going to go to all whatever religious source that might make a difference, I'm going to grab it. We go to God because he's God, and we ask a favor from him because he's the only one that can grant that kind of favor. We're not just trying to pick up deities here and there and just make sure,'m gonna take wear this lucky charm Thank you. You pray I got a rabbit's foot, you know and Blah blah blah and I didn't want him to think it was just like that But and regarding the rabbit's foot my dad would always say well the rabbit had four of them And where is he now? Right? Anyway.

Yeah, I don't know what else to say to that. She's thinking about tossing her rabbit's foot is what she's thinking. All right. Thank you, Nia, Aaron and Sue. We appreciate hearing from you. Good vibes to you all. Thanks for listening. We really appreciate it. This is Amy Hall and Greg Koko for Stand to Reason.