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As we go into the final stages of the healthcare war, I am increasingly wondering what happened to civility in this country.
Yes there has always been political rancor, name calling and the hurling of epithets at people who disagree with you on this or that issue. No of course, the epithets are more basic; liberal and conservative are now dirty words, fighting words and words of derision.
For the record (my record anyway) it's okay to be a liberal and okay to be a conservative.
What's not okay is to use those labels to stop progress in our country.
Quoting and shouting support for the Constitution is quite popular these days. So let's start with the Preamble:
"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."
Please take note of the phrase “promote the general Welfare”.
What could be more promoting of our country's welfare than to make sure everyone gets healthcare? Do people against healthcare reform really want people getting sick, staying sick and possibly dying because they can't afford healthcare? Do they want lives ruined because the person or family can't afford healthcare?
Are we as a nation that uncaring? Are our hearts so hardened that we just don't care?
Where is the general human decency that mandates helping our fellow man when he or she is in need?
Jesus healed the sick and feed the hungry. Matthew 25: 35-40 says:
“For I was hungry and you gave Me something to eat; I was thirsty and you gave Me something to drink; I was a stranger and you took Me in; I was naked and you clothed Me; I was sick and you took care of Me; I was in prison and you visited Me;
Then the righteous will answer Him, 'Lord, when did we see You hungry and feed You, or thirsty and give You something to drink? When did we see You a stranger and take You in, or without clothes and clothe You? When did we see You sick, or in prison, and visit You?'
And the King will answer them, 'I assure you: Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of Mine, you did for Me.”
So my question to all of you who are against healthcare is: where is your Christian spirit? Why are you so against what Christ obviously mandates?
Why are you so afraid to do the right thing and help those who can't help themselves.
I don't care about the cost. What I care about is the amazing lack of compassion by so many when it comes to helping their fellow man.
What has happened to our society that allows us to let people go hungry, people not get proper medical care, not have shelter and not have the basic necessities to live?
Where did our compassion go?
What distresses me the most is these professed Christians who yell loudly about their faith and, in some cases, tout the singular righteousness of their faith while simultaneously ignoring the teachings of their faith.
If these professed Christians actually practiced what they tell others to do, we'd have universal healthcare, we'd make sure that everyone in our country gets enough to eat, has clothes to wear and a safe place to live.
Now they say churches will take care of these people but that's not the case. Some do a good job of ministering to the afflicted but many only give lip service. One only has to look at the giant mega-churches with their lavish buildings and grounds to see where the money really goes.
Is it more important to build a big ostentatious church or heal the sick?
What would Jesus say?
Instead we have this massive political battle. It's not about healthcare, it's all about power and control. Both sides want it and will demonize the other side to get it. They'll spend millions of dollars pushing their agenda (money that could go to help the afflicted). They'll resort to the lowest name calling, shouting down those who oppose them and while doing all this forget one of the prime directives of the Constitution:
“Promote the general welfare”.
What is more in our best interests an the general welfare of our country than to make sure everyone in our country gets medical care when they need it? We are more productive, better educated and genreally happier when we are healthy.
Why would anyone be against doing whatever it takes to heal the sick - especially those who can't take care of themselves or afford medical care?
We are lost as a society not because we have too much but because we have lost our compassion for our fellow man. Yes we'll send a few bucks to the disaster relief mission of the day. We might even send some people to help. But by and large we don't get our hands dirty taking care of the people in our own backyard who need help.
Those people we tend to ignore.
Jesus wouldn't. Why do we?
Today as healthcare reform (such as it is) heads to a vote I believe it's better to think of this a s a first step forward, not some one time, never make changes or tweak it bill.
Providing healthcare for those who can't get it. It's the right thing to do.
It's what Jesus would do.
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Dear Stephen,
ReplyDeleteI appreciate your writing very much. Your strongest paragraph in this post is:
"What is more in our best interests of the general welfare of our country than to make sure everyone in our country gets medical care when they need it? We are more productive, better educated and genreally happier when we are healthy."
That is always the argument to use when trying to pursuade voters. (Look who is telling who about voters. Rather bold of me, huh?)
Trying to pursuade Christians to your opinion of what Jesus would do is futile. Besides, it lowers you to their tactics; tying their position to an authority that presumably cannot be questioned.
You'll always lose that argument because they assign the status of God to Jesus and you see him as a man. They will not care about your opinion.
My read on what Jesus would do is also different from yours. First, Jesus never had a chance to vote on anything. He lived in an occupied land and was at the mercy of Rome. It seems natural that he would use his American vote, if he had one, to support health reform. Perhaps he would. But, not given that opportunity in the Roman Empire he chose instead to simply heal people as they crossed his path or came to him with requests. In the end he was accused of sedition and was executed by the state. So much for affecting public policy.
Finally, the people I know who identify themselves with the so-called "Christian Right," (I'm related to several) use Jesus' example of personal "ministry" as their model. Jesus didn't change the law of the land to force Rome to care for lepers. He healed them. So, Christians today should pray for people who are poor or sick, but they should vote for the "Christian" candidate who will not give a man a fish, but will force him to learn to fish for himself or fall. I see it as Darwinian Christianity: the survival of the fittest Christians.
What do you think?
Mary