Continue Reading Below Advertisement

"I'm giving you chicken soup for the soul!"

I was still a kid at this point, and so I took on this healing with a few other children from the congregation. We laid hands on the woman, prayed for her sickness to be healed, and boom -- she went down quicker than Michael Spinks. After the service, our pastor (a professional faith healer) went to my parents and told them he saw something "special" in me. I've no idea what it was, maybe the extra pizzazz I put behind slapping the Jesus into that woman, but the pastor took me under his wing.

My formal training started when an elderly gentleman came to the pulpit to be healed. I believe his name was Don, and he'd been a member at the church longer than I'd been alive. He was in the midst of a cancer scare, and eventually stepped forward. At this point I still believed in miracle healing, and here was my first chance: I was going to cure someone of cancer. I laid my hands on him and demanded God take his cancer away. At no point did I realize how weird it was that I believed cancer was the sort of thing God assumed people were cool with unless explicitly told otherwise.

Michelangelo BuonarrotiÂ

Continue Reading Below Advertisement

Then He asks, "Are you SURE you want to unsubscribe from cancer?"

Later that month, Don got a clean bill of health from the doctors. Cancer-free, hallelujah! It was a miracle! Or at least it seemed like one if you didn't know what I knew: Don had never actually had cancer. The "scare" started because my pastor claimed God had told him Don was going to die unless he received a massive dose of Vitamin P(rayer). The faith healer giveth cancer, and the faith healer taketh it away.