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Mercy as health care policy
By Tim Muldoon
theologian, Boston College
One of the earliest examples of Christian art--a fresco on the Catacomb of Sts. Marcellinus and Peter from the fourth century--depicts the story of the woman with a hemorrhage who surreptitiously approached Jesus in order to simply touch the hem of his garment, in the hope of being healed (see Matthew 9:20-22). The image is one which captures a basic human desire. Illness--like birth, death, hunger, and sexual urges--is an experience of limitation, a reminder that our freedom is circumscribed by factors over which we cannot even aspire to fully control. The spirituality of the fresco is rooted in the yearning for release from illness, for salvation from the sufferings that we all recognize are inextricably linked to the human condition.
Examples across many religious traditions show an intrinsic connection between sickness and religion. The studies of Shamanic practices around the world show a common concern to address physical suffering with spiritual comfort. The scriptures of ancient Israel frequently connect healing with divine power, as in the story of Elisha healing the Syrian Na'aman of leprosy (see 2 Kings 5). In the Buddhist text the Dhammapada there is the story of Kisagotami, who approached the Buddha after the death of her son, also seeking healing. The Buddha sent her to find mustard seeds from a home that did not know suffering; she returned when she understood that no home is free from this most basic element of the human experience. In the Indian subcontinent, the tradition of Vedic healing involves what Westerners would describe as physical and spiritual dimensions. Similarly, the history of Chinese medicine shows a deep reverence for the human body as a small quasi-mystical universe in itself.
Even in our age, when medical science has pushed back the frontiers of disease and opened up new vistas of understanding of so many medical conditions, illness remains at its root a mystery. We cannot know why we must suffer; we cannot know why those that we love must die. We can rally with marathoners who support breast cancer research; we can rejoice at the success of antiretrovirals; we can celebrate those who bravely face Lou Gehrig's disease or Fragile X syndrome. And yet we are really little different from our ancient forebears who saw illness as evidence of supernatural forces, over which human beings could exercise no control. We may live longer; we may be physically stronger for much of our lives; but it is as true today as it was five thousand years ago that we will get sick, and we will die.
It is therefore no surprise that even in our age of information and technology, religious traditions have much to say about suffering and death, healing and salvation. There is, for example, a growing body of scientific evidence that the connection between spirituality and health care is statistically significant. More important, though, are the ordinary experiences of people who bravely confront sickness, even while coming to grips with their own mortality. If religions have traditionally been associated with negotiating the thin boundaries between human life and death, it is no surprise that sickness can provoke a reawakening of interest in religious questions.
For me, what makes health care so ripe for religious reflection is that it involves two things: first, a person in need; second, a person who has a power to give. I confess that I bristle somewhat at the language of "rights" when it comes to health care, because rights language suggests to me that which one person must demand from others. More apt is the language of gift, of generosity: the posture of longing to bestow on another that which will return him or her to freedom (of movement, of sight, etc.). Health care is not a right the way access to food is a right; health care is an intimate meeting of a healer and one who needs healing. In my own Catholic tradition, for example, it is one of the corporal works of mercy, acts which reflect the command to love one's neighbor. This posture of mercy writ large as a social policy means that a nation must provide all its members, including the most vulnerable, with access to care. The great medieval Jewish philosopher Maimonides wrote that health care is the first of the important services a city must offer its residents; it reflects God's care for his people. What that means, I think, is that it is a moral demand that government must help provide the conditions that make it possible for the sick to be healed. The government need not necessarily pay for it, or provide the services; it must, though, help organize those who will play those roles, in order to insure that its citizens have access to the generosity of those who heal.
I am compelled by conceiving of the impetus toward religion as being rooted in what the theologian David Tracy has described as "limit-questions." We may know more today than in the age of Galen or the Yellow Emperor, and yet it is as true today that illness confronts us with the problem of suffering. It is also true, though, that suffering can elicit from us depths of care and compassion, dimensions of a capacity to love others that we might not otherwise experience. To the extent that religious traditions enable us to negotiate the terrain of love and suffering, they make us more fully human.
Tim Muldoon's most recent book is "Longing to Love (Loyola Press). He is a Catholic theologian who teaches in the Honors Program at Boston College, and contributes to the Catholic Gateway at Patheos.com.
By Tim Muldoon |
February 5, 2010; 12:44 PM ET
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Posted by: persiflage | February 8, 2010 9:12 AM
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Like darling_ailie, I solved the problem of not being eligible for health coverage without paying $6,000 per year premiums and $5,000 deductibles by moving to a Catholic country that has universal health care.
As an added bonus, I no longer have to live with "Christian" posers obsessed with their political wedge issues of gays and abortion while regarding both health care and education as "godless socialism"
No Super Bowl for me today (although it's available on my SKY satellite service) No thank you to a condescending moral lecture from Tebow and FOF who claim to be "pro-life" while supporting capital punishment and pre-emptive war. I guess I will have to just get used to soccer.
Posted by: coloradodog | February 7, 2010 10:42 AM
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"The great medieval Jewish philosopher Maimonides wrote that health care is the first of the important services a city must offer its residents; it reflects God's care for his people."
"What that means, I think, is that it is a moral demand that government must help provide the conditions that make it possible for the sick to be healed. The government need not necessarily pay for it, or provide the services; it must, though, help organize those who will play those roles, in order to insure that its citizens have access to the generosity of those who heal."
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Maimonides writes of the city directly OFFERING the medical care as a reflection of God's love.
You offer the begging bowl of private charity to the millions of uninsured whose suffering never 'elicit from [Christians] depths of care and compassion, dimensions of a capacity to love'.
As you know, private charities make their own demands with the desperate sick who are in the position where they have no choice but to accept those demands if they are to get the care they need. You people just add to the suffering and humiliation.
I was injured as a child, and as an adult I was uninsurable. One evangelical group offered to accept me and my children into their insurance group IF I converted to their denomination and if, as a widow, I allowed some form of monitoring of my sex life to prove that I was remaining celibate. (It was their charity, after all. They had the right to make the rules, and whatever demands they wished.)
In the end I decided to emigrate to a country with universal health care where I work, pay taxes, and receive the care I need. Problem solved.
This is a Catholic country, by the way. My children and I were warmly welcomed when we arrived, a reflection of their Christian compassion. No one has asked me to convert.
People who are sick and suffering do not exist so rich, shallow Christians on a whim can take them out and use them to practise charity. They are not your play things.
Whether or not you realise it, being sick and/or crippled, and having to beg for medical care is humiliating.
Posted by: darling_ailie | February 6, 2010 6:54 PM
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Real world problems cannot be solved with superstitious thinking.
Posted by: PSolus | February 6, 2010 4:41 PM
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Invoking medical cures as per the bible (and maybe Professor Muldoon's methods)
"Leviticus 15:25-31 (the background story Matthew used to generate Jesus' "cure"?)
15:25 If a woman has a discharge of blood for many days, not at the time of her impurity, or if she has a discharge beyond the time of her impurity, all the days of the discharge she shall continue in uncleanness; as in the days of her impurity, she shall be unclean.
15:26 Every bed on which she lies during all the days of her discharge shall be treated as the bed of her impurity; and everything on which she sits shall be unclean, as in the uncleanness of her impurity.
15:27 Whoever touches these things shall be unclean, and shall wash his clothes, and bathe in water, and be unclean until the evening.
15:28 If she is cleansed of her discharge, she shall count seven days, and after that she shall be clean. 15:29 On the eighth day she shall take two turtledoves or two pigeons and bring them to the priest to the entrance of the tent of meeting. 15:30 The priest shall offer one for a sin offering and the other for a burnt offering; and the priest shall make atonement on her behalf before the LORD for her unclean discharge. 15:31 Thus you shall keep the people of Israel separate from their uncleanness, so that they do not die in their uncleanness by defiling my tabernacle that is in their midst."
Posted by: YEAL9 | February 5, 2010 4:26 PM
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Envoking medical cures as per the bible (and maybe Professor Muldoon's methods)
"Leviticus 15:25-31 (the background story Matthew used to generate Jesus' "cure"?)
15:25 If a woman has a discharge of blood for many days, not at the time of her impurity, or if she has a discharge beyond the time of her impurity, all the days of the discharge she shall continue in uncleanness; as in the days of her impurity, she shall be unclean. 15:26 Every bed on which she lies during all the days of her discharge shall be treated as the bed of her impurity; and everything on which she sits shall be unclean, as in the uncleanness of her impurity. 15:27 Whoever touches these things shall be unclean, and shall wash his clothes, and bathe in water, and be unclean until the evening. 15:28 If she is cleansed of her discharge, she shall count seven days, and after that she shall be clean. 15:29 On the eighth day she shall take two turtledoves or two pigeons and bring them to the priest to the entrance of the tent of meeting. 15:30 The priest shall offer one for a sin offering and the other for a burnt offering; and the priest shall make atonement on her behalf before the LORD for her unclean discharge. 15:31 Thus you shall keep the people of Israel separate from their uncleanness, so that they do not die in their uncleanness by defiling my tabernacle that is in their midst."
Posted by: YEAL9 | February 5, 2010 8:35 AM
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If you or someone you know relies on Fixodent or Poligrip denture cream adhesive, you or they could be at risk for severe neurological disorders.
Sometimes this condition could mimic other very serious conditions like Lou Gehrig's disease, myodysplasia and a B12 deficiency. However, this could be due to excessive zinc levels linked to overuse or continued use of these popular denture adhesives.
Please visit this site for important health and legal information related to this danger: http://www.denture-cream-neuropathy.com/
Posted by: muckraker462 | February 5, 2010 3:12 AM
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".....religious traditions have much to say about suffering and death, healing and salvation...." but what do they now say? Right-wing religion in America says medical suffering and death is their Lord Jesus Christ's castigation for not being able to buy health insurance from their corporate contributors for $6,000 per year with $5,000 deductibles. Truly a result of the sloth of the unemployed and the sins of those with pre-existing conditions.
Posted by: coloradodog | February 4, 2010 10:52 PM
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I wonder if Tim Muldoon has control whatsoever over what the editors, especially the headline and link editors put on or above his byline. Surely the tease "Does government have a moral duty to make sure health care is available to all?" has almost no connection to this piece. His writing is thoughtful on the aspect of demonstrating compassion and mercy to suffering people while government, no matter how it is dressed up or the underlying motivations is necessarily coercive in nature.
Posted by: edbyronadams | February 4, 2010 6:14 PM
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The comments to this entry are closed.
'I confess that I bristle somewhat at the language of "rights" when it comes to health care, because rights language suggests to me that which one person must demand from others.......health care is not a right the way access to food is a right; health care is an intimate meeting of a healer and one who needs healing.'
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It's always good when such religious nonsense is marginalized in lieu of a more humanitarian, 'earthbound' views of things.
'Heal the body and save the soul' might be a better axiom for those of the religious persuasion to follow. That way, you're bound to be at least half right....and you've helped save the half that is most certainly and obviously suffering.
Save the metaphysics for another day - this is exactly the philosophy of those countries that see fit to provide their citizens with universal healthcare, whatever the culturally based & prevailing religious views might be (or absence thereof, in the case of Scandinavian countries with very weak religious ties).
It's nice to see social policies uncluttered with the pervasive confusion of religious views and values, as they are in the USA - and covertly used by big pharma and other corporate organizations that profit mightily from our fractured healthcare system hereabouts.......
Universal healthcare ought to be a core value of every religious organization, in the 21st century.