Video
Twitter
Facebook
RSS Feed
Love Thy Neighbor's Health Care
By Gene Davenport
Professor Emeritus of Religion, Lambuth University
The present health care situation reflects the blessing and the curse of technology. By technology I refer not simply to machines, but to the complex, interlocking system in which we use our presumed knowledge from the sciences in an effort to control our environment - including human beings - for purposes of efficiency. Some of us learned this view of technology from French theologian and teacher Jacques Ellul. From this perspective, society itself functions much like a machine in which all parts depend upon all other parts for efficiency.
Using our knowledge and our instruments, we have increased survival rates on both ends of life. But this advance has come at a price. Some premature infants develop serious birth related health problems, and many older adults have age related problems that require extensive medical costs. Moreover, the ability to postpone dying and to cure major illnesses has been available primarily to those with economic, political, or other social influence.
Genesis 1 and 2 portray human beings as having been created to care for the world on God's behalf. Disobedience, therefore, could be either by attempting to be more than human or by rejecting responsibility altogether. Every scientific or technological undertaking confronts us with the same possibilities - to push blindly ahead or to unduly restrain ourselves. Complicating our dilemma is the fact that no technology is ethically neutral - depending for its own character upon the moral character of its use or is user - but is ambiguous, carrying both positive and negative consequences. For example, a plane carrying an organ cross-continent to save a life would leave a trail of pollution if Jesus himself were the pilot. And we will continue to strive for ever greater efficiency. There is no turning back. After all, our goal - we tell ourselves - is helping people.
An emerging question now is whether to attempt restructuring the entire health care system or to work on the current system's most critical parts, leaving other problems until later. Whichever position one takes, three things should be kept in mind.
First, history is filled with ideas that looked good on paper but did not work in practice. Prohibition laws are a good example.
Second, any solution to a problem brings its own problems. Some critics recently have asserted that 1970s Church committee legislation governing the CIA created some of the current intelligence problems. But to have enacted no legislation also would have left us with problems stemming from inaction. Similarly, any health care legislation, no matter how good or how bad, will bring its own problems. That is the nature of technology.
Finally, with regard to health care "rationing", many have correctly pointed out that rationing exists already. Moreover, it is rationing based on survival of the fittest, fitness being defined by economic ability or by political or social influence. It seems inevitable that a combination of the increasing gap between health need and resources and the technological quest for efficiency will lead eventually to calls for a more rational approach to rationing. If so, on what would rationing be based and who would be in charge? I fear the answer will be based on who is considered most valuable and most expendable for society. If so, human beings will have come to be regarded as mere consumer goods.
What are the implications of both the present situation and the possible future for people of faith? All major world religions teach, to one degree or another, love of neighbor. Jesus even taught love of the enemy, which the Apostle Paul interpreted as feeding and clothing the hungry, naked enemy. How can people of faith embody this love in health care, putting others first in a system in which bureaucracy automatically closes many options that might be available in a less complex system?
Without exhausting the possibilities, I offer two suggestions - one simple, one not so simple.
1) We can support legislation that seems to hold effective solutions although that legislation might increase our own taxes.
2) If preparing to receive transplant of an organ that someone else needs, we can defer to that person. If we could afford the operation, but the other person cannot, we can pay the expenses for that person.
Sounds absurd? Well, as Kierkegaard observed, genuine faith is absurd. And so is genuine love.
Dr. Gene Davenport is Professor Emeritus of Religion at Lambuth University in Jackson, Tenn. His new book is "Though the Mountains Tremble: Biblical Reflections on Contemporary Society."
By Gene Davenport |
September 10, 2009; 11:51 AM ET
Save & Share:
Previous: The Other 9/11 |
Next: The Faith of September 10
Posted by: ccnl1 | September 13, 2009 5:52 PM
Report Offensive Comment
If the purposes of healthcare, whether defined in the Congress’s committees or the President’s councils, isn't defined as some form of advancing human evolution, something the 100,000 year old Cromagnons have just acquired the ability to do, then any process created by members of a 'government', no matter how well intentioned, is going to have a nearly parasitic corruption attached to it. Pharaohs and Chin Emperors gave free health care (un-evolved care) to people working directly for them but not to others, but it was an evolutionary corruption since the wellness of the individual wasn’t the purpose. Whole person wellness must be defined as a human right in the context of the American Constitution Covenant, itself an political evolutionary process, before the many attributes of that 'right' can be worked out by the People and Congress of this Nation. For those who think the 'right' of whole person health already exists, check again. There is nothing in any Earthly constitution, charter, spiritual scripture (whether Vedas, Mahayana, Tao De Ching, Bible, or Quran; they hint at the idea) or societal covenant that defines the whole health of the Being itself as a right because until a generation ago, there were no scientific medical or technical mechanisms that could allow it. Human life was strictly a matter for Creation to determine through random chance and Creation usually punished anyone who was foolish enough not to take care of himself as he was able. That is no longer true; human beings are gradually acquiring the altruistic ability to cooperate in their own mind, body, and spiritual enhancement, which might incorporate the Parakletos itself, but they haven't yet defined it as a human right.
Suppose that a wellness ‘right’ or ‘Evolved Right of Being’ (ERB) was defined as any process that enhanced individual development through the proper creation and maintenance of the thousands of molecular structures that develop within the individual to make him a complete, enhanced and free being? With the ERB purpose as a gained form of freedom from many environmental tyrannies including fellow humans, the many attributes of the ‘Evolved Right of Being’ can be defined singularly (the attributes continually change in a dynamical complexity system) without being confused with capitalist, socialist, or Dracunculus (individual parasitic) manipulation of the Right, as was intended with the creation of the original Bill of Rights. The objectives of the Bill of Rights still remain; to insure freedoms of the individual and the ERB is no different in that context with the healthless being protected. Possible attributes are close to the proposals for healthcare that have come into existence over the past 100 years, although not defined formerly as parts of an ERB, which wasn’t even possible until a generation ago.
Posted by: arjay1 | September 13, 2009 8:56 AM
Report Offensive Comment
Has anyone else noticed this? Most of those against country-wide health care (I won't say universal) are insured and conservative. Of those wanting a change, most are either uninsured or liberals who do have insurance.
Just what do we believe Americans should be guaranteed by virtue of being human? Clean air? Clean water? Clean food? Health care?
Posted by: catlady1 | September 12, 2009 5:06 PM
Report Offensive Comment
I'm confused as to how "Paul's idea was not at all to love his enemies" when he states in Romans 12:14, "Bless those who curse you (enemies, no?); bless and do not curse them." Then in verse 20: "To the contrary, 'if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink..." which I believe is what Dr. Davenport is referring to in his article.
Now verse 20 does goes on to say, "...for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head," but this is not meant to be taken literally(somewhat obviously) as a curse on the enemy. Paul is quoting Proverbs 25:21 & 22 in Romans 12:20. The figurative image is used to mean that being kind to an enemy would confound them so that they would have to reexamine their opinion of you due to your treatment of them. The normal response, when an enemy is hungry, naked, or in distress would be to rejoice in their misfortune rather than to actually meet their needs. Treating an enemy in a caring manner would then present a nagging or burning concept to them--a dilemma which they could not ignore.
If burning coals were to fall a person's head, she or he would have to furiously brush them off until they were gone, and she or he were safe from harm. In the same manner, if an enemy feeds or clothes someone the one tended to would have to wonder why they were treated kindly. A perplexing problem, to say the least.
Paul goes on to write in Romans 13:9 & 10: "'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law." One might say, "Well, Paul uses the term 'neighbor', but not 'enemy'," but a follow up question would be, "And who is my neighbor?", as someone asked Jesus in Luke 10:29, to which Jesus relayed the parable of the Good Samaritan--so anyone you come across who is in need is the answer, even when "...Jews had no dealings with Samaritans"(John 4:9) because there was historical enmity between them.
Posted by: Isaiah68 | September 12, 2009 4:09 PM
Report Offensive Comment
Once again some incentives to live a healthy life style and also ways to pay for universal health care.
1. An added two dollar health insurance tax (or higher) on a pack of cigarettes. Ditto taxes on alcolholic beverages, the higher the alcohol content, the higher the tax. Ditto for any product shown to be unhealthy (e.g. guns, high caloric/fatty foods??)
2. Physicals akin to those required for life insurance- the overly obese will pay signficantly more Medicare and universal health insurance (unless the obesity is caused by a medical condition).
3. No universal health care coverage for drivers driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs or using cell phones while driving.
4. No universal health coverage for drug addicts or for those having self-inflicted STDs.
5. No univeral health coverage for abortions unless the life of the mother is at significant risk and judged to be so by at least two doctors.
6. No universal health coverage for euthanasia.
7. No foreign aid given to countries who abort females simply because they are female.
Posted by: ccnl1 | September 12, 2009 11:42 AM
Report Offensive Comment
Nice, but Paul's idea was not at all to love his enemies but to refrain from taking vengeance on them, because that was God's job. See Romans 12:17-20 & 2 Kings 6.
The Constant Weader at www.RealityChex.com
Posted by: marieburns | September 12, 2009 9:50 AM
Report Offensive Comment
The comments to this entry are closed.
Ever notice how Spaceship-earth and her clones post his/her insidious gibberish on the weekends when the moderators are not checking??? Hopefully universal health care does not cover the treatment of said strange person.