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Christianity & EFT
by Steve De Santo
Should Christians Fear EFT? Well, I'll answer that question with other questions. Should a Christian fear a simple, self-help process that can relieve life-long emotional traumas without medications that often cause life-threatening side effects and death? Should a Christian avoid learning a process that can erase hatred? Should a Christian fear a technique that can rapidly remove a person's resentment and bitterness toward God and open his mind to the love of
Jesus? Should a Christian shy away from a simple process that can help mend relationships and save marriages? Should a Christian fear a process that can help people relieve physical pain that has been debilitating for many years? Should Christians fear a process that can ultimately help them live a more Christ-like life?
Answer those questions and you have answered the first one.
Many people fear things for different reasons. You can read my "What is EFT" page and my EFT history page for more details, but Emotional Freedom Techniques is essentially tapping on your body with your finger tips while focusing on a negative issue and then feeling relief from your
issue. That’s EFT, pure and simple.
Don't skip over anything I've said so far. (Read it again.)
Fear is often triggered by a bad past experience. But many fears are based on Fear of The Great Unknown. For instance: take fear of heights. You're afraid of climbing that tall ladder. Why? Because you might fall. Have you ever fallen off a ladder in your life? No. Then why would you think you might this time? Well, maybe because of other times you've fallen, not from a ladder, but you did fall. Or maybe you saw someone else fall, or someone told you about someone else's horrible or fatal fall. So you generalize. You think falling is a possibility. Anything "might" happen. Something in you makes you "feel" afraid. The Great Unknown, the Big What-If.
If you still fear learning about EFT because you think it might conflict with your Christian walk, you might ask yourself where your fear is coming from. Are you generalizing from something that happened in your past? Are you a person who lives in fear of many things? If you don’t have a problem with somebody saying, “I have a headache,” (addressing a negative issue) and then taking an aspirin, (ingesting something far more likely to cause physical or mental harm than tapping gently on the body), why would you have a problem with EFT? Taking that aspirin is not exactly calling out to God for relief. It’s only doing what most people including Christians do for headache relief in our culture. It’s a habit you don’t question. ( But maybe you should. Have you Googled side effects of aspirin? ) Personally, I'm disappointed by the number of Christians who allow themselves to be victimized by medical doctors and prescription medication, yet they avoid reading books that warn of medication dangers and practices within the traditional medical community that harm and kill thousands of people every year.
Christians who fear EFT must ask themselves, “Do I know enough about EFT to fear it? Or is my view based on fear of The Great Unknown more than anything else? Do I fear many new things, and do I fear learning something that will change my viewpoint?”
Who should you trust for information about Emotional Freedom Techniques?
Think about this: Let's say an aquaintance is seriously questioning if he should learn more about Christianity. Where would you send him for good solid Christian teaching? What if he'd been given a hate-filled slant by atheists or agnostics who badmouthed Christianity and told him about Bible verses condoning slavery or other references like: 1 Samuel 15: 3 - "Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy everything that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys," (NIV) ? Here's my point. Would you suggest that this seeker consult skeptic web sites hosted by non-Christians with a false or uninformed take on Chrisitanity? I hope not. If you want to get a clear and accurate picture of Christianity, you consult the Bible and knowledgeable Christians. So, if you want to learn about Emotional Freedom Techniques, read a book by an EFT practitioner - watch some videos by EFTers, or talk to a Christian EFT consultant like me, Steve DeSanto. Reading more on this website is a good place to start.
Is EFT a New Age Religion? Obviously not. If you've read this far, you know it's only a healing method that brings emotional and physical relief. But the fact that the relief often borders on the miraculous makes people suspicious. Even famous authorities in different fields can be naysayers when it comes to new inventions or innovative processes. (Take a look at these famous authorities who were not open to new things.) New inventions and processes are often castigated and dismissed simply because they're different and not well understood. When Louis Pasteur developed his theory that germs made people sick, it took a long time before the general public accepted and acted on this new information.
And don't forget Jesus' experience with the Pharisees in "Matthew 12:22-24 ( TNIV )
22 - Then they brought him a demon-possessed man who was blind and mute, and Jesus healed him, so that he could both talk and see. 23 - All the people were astonished and said, “Could this be the Son of David?” 24 - But when the Pharisees heard this, they said, “It is only by Beelzebul, the prince of demons, that this fellow drives out demons.” So the skeptical religious leaders of the day sought to trash Jesus, the compassionate healer, by claiming he was in league with the devil. This reminds me of certain Christians who choose to view EFT as somehow occult because some explanations about why it works refer to subtle energies flowing along acupuncture meridians. Since these subtle energies and meridians are not widely accepted as valid by the western scientific community, The Great Unknown scares them. But the elephant in the room they ignore is that since time began people have talked about their problems, and tapped, touched, and massaged their bodies. And few have been concerned about what it was doing. So, if they’re going to find EFT suspect now, they’re going to have to view much of human life as suspect when it involves talking about problems and touching, rubbing, or tapping their bodies. The fact is we are constantly learning about our world and reevaluating how it functions.
Are Christianity and EFT in Conflict? By now you know the answer is no, but some Christians think so, mainly because even though they say they believe something as monumental and hard to understand as Christ redeeming them by his love and death on the cross, they can't allow themselves to believe that something as simple as EFT can do what it does. So they
become like the suspicious and fearful Pharisees in Matthew 12.
You can find non-Christians on the internet voicing skeptical opinions about EFT merely because of what EFT practitioners claim it can achieve, so obviously skepticism and unwillingness to study something in a serious way is not unique to Christians. Belief and disbelief play a powerful but constant role in our lives. If you don't "believe" a bad light bulb has been replaced with a good one, you won't flip the light switch, as simple as flipping that switch would be. False beliefs often prevent people from bettering their lives.
As a Christian, myself, I certainly wouldn’t want to do something that violated my faith. The fact is, while some people who have not accepted Christ as their Savior gravitate to new alternative healthcare practices like EFT, that doesn’t mean those practices are anti-Christian.
There is nothing about EFT that denies the deity of Jesus Christ or violates the tenets of the faith. However, if you do NOT believe in consulting with doctors, counselors, or pastors, if you don’t take medications or herbs, if you don't complain about anything or tap or massage your body, if you believe the only way to find healing and relief from your problems is through prayer, then EFT is probably not for you. The reason I mentioned complaining, tapping, or massaging your body is because that is essentially what EFT is.
How can I put it more simply? God gave you legs for walking, but you don’t thank him for your legs and avoid driving a car. God gave you a brain and the ability to pray and ask for guidance. But you don’t avoid going to school or avoid seeking guidance from informed people. You don’t ask God to fill your stomach and avoid food. EFT is just one more tool we can use to help ourselves and others in our daily walk with Christ.
Let me tell you about the first time I introduced a new friend to EFT years ago. Max had a bad headache. During our conversation he had mentioned his headache 3 times, and that he wished it would go away. Finally, I overcame my fear of suggesting EFT because he might think it sounded silly and said, “I just learned a relaxation technique that could possibly relieve your headache. Would you like to try it?” He said, "Sure, I’ll try anything if it might help." I told him it involved tapping on his face, hand, collarbone, and under his arm, spots corresponding to acupuncture energy meridians, while verbally addressing his problem. I showed him where I would tap, and said to him, "Repeat the words, 'this headache' each time I tap on a different spot."
One round of tapping these points relieved most of his headache. A second round using the revised phrase "this remaining headache" erased the rest. That was all. End of story. Well, not quite. I want to point something out. Go back to when I told Max where I would be tapping. What if I had said nothing about the spots corresponding to acupunture energy meridians. Would it have mattered? No. That part of the explanation had nothing to do with the process. It was
only an explanation that's been set forth by early developers of the process. So, read about the existence of energy meridians here, and if something about it still bothers you, keep in mind that whether they exist or not has never interfered with your life in the past, as you complained and moved your body in any number of ways.
Dawson Church, a major advocate of EFT has posted 2 videos you might like to watch: one about "how EFT can help you to rewire your brain" and the other, a simple explanation of the EFT routine.
I must add that what concerns me most is when Christians who know EFT don’t teach it to friends when it would help them find emotional or physical relief from an upsetting problem. Would you deny your friend a drink of water if he was thirsty? I hope not. So why would you pretend you can't help him with problems that EFT can relieve?
You might like to read this article on the subject of EFT and Christianity by Larry Nims, an ordained minister and clinical psychologist.
If you have read all the above but still have questions, feel free to email me.
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1 Corinthians 1:27-29
But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things, and the things that are not, to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him.
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