In all the debate going on about Health Care Reform, I figured rather than shout down those whose only argument is that they can yell louder and talk over any opposing point of view, I'd give it a more personal treatment on why I personally support HCR.
I figure this breaks down into three major parts; spiritual, practical and self serving. To do it properly, we're going to focus on one of these components per blog, because we have a lot of ground to cover.
We're going to start this blog-o-rama with the most important one. No matter my own circumstances or even the practicality of it, the main reason I support health care reform is that it is a moral imperative to me and everything that I believe.
In other words, if I were personally able to afford health insurance or was perfectly healthy and didn't need insurance, my faith demands that I fight this fight for those who aren't as fortunate.
It's as simple as that.
I am a Christian, and was raised in the Christian faith from the womb. The town where I was raised was supposedly reported in the 1950s as having more churches than gas stations. Currently there are over 250 churches for my town of 120K people. My family had strong roots in Oklahoma and Texas, and you could say that we all were deeply entrenched in conservative religion.
I was in the church from the time I was born, doing the Sunday School, vacation Bible school thing, saved at age 8, baptized at age 12 - and somehow in the middle of all that religion I managed to find out who Jesus Christ was, and who he'd become to me.
The two are obviously not mutually exclusive, which we'll get into in more detail in a minute.
The Jesus I heard about in Sunday school, or read about in the Bible, believed in the health of the people. It was in fact quite common for Jesus to heal/save right in the same event. To be made whole always meant in body as well as in spirit. To settle for any less would be incomplete.
And Jesus was (and IMO is) anything but incomplete.
If you look back at the society of that day, many people ostracized the sick as punished by God for their sins or the sins of their family. They were shunned and left to suffer and die, they were feared, judged and abandoned.
For Jesus, this would not do. He touched their life and made them well - it was his calling. He came to heal the sick, he said, and was unafraid even to raise the dead from their graves simply because of his great love and compassion for them, as well as the people who loved them.
"Well, Ginger, that's symobolism. When Jesus said he came to heal the sick, he meant the sinners. It was about saving souls."
Convenient argument, considering the gospels are filled with accounts of his miraculous healing powers that touched not just the faithless, but the faithful as well.
Consider the story of the woman who had suffered with the issue of blood for twelve years, and only wanted to touch the hem of his robe - knowing that it would heal her.... 'n it did.
"But that was a story of faith, not of healing."
You can't have one without the other. They walked hand in hand all through the gospels. In fact, the argument can be made that the healing came not from Jesus but from the faith itself... but that's a theological discussion for another time.
When Jesus saw suffering of any kind, it was his calling to fix the problem. In the book of Isaiah, where his life was prophesied, it says that by the suffering he endured we are *healed*.
The literal definition of "heal" - "to restore health or soundness", "to set right, repair", "to restore".
Jesus proved over and over again physical healing was part of the deal.
Therefore, as Christians, we need to be focused on making sure we are all healed not just in our spirit, but in our minds and in our bodies.
In FACT... in Matthew 10:8 he commands us to "heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those with leprosy, drive out demons." He goes on to say, "Freely you have received. Freely give."
Jesus also advises that we, "Be perfect, as your father in heaven is perfect."
If we are truly made in God's image, I'm thinking cancer, heart disease, depression and various other ailments are not part of that package. Those are imperfections, and that's not part of who God was or who Jesus was.
"That doesn't apply to me. I treat my body as a temple."
Good for you. So did Jesus. But note he wasn't content just staying healthy himself. He wanted everyone around him healthy too. That is an extension of love. If you love someone you don't want them to be sick or suffer, and you will do everything you can to make sure they are made well.
Restored as it were.
Now I could give you a dozen scripture references here on how important healing was to Christ, but there are a lot of them and that's a lot of work for people who obviously don't bother reading the Bible they stand upon. If you just read through the first four books of the New Testament they'd be impossible to miss. Even if you're one of those fundamentalists who want to tell me what is literal and what is symbolic by your own terms and definitions, even you can't argue that the very fact that healing/health IS a symbol shows the importance of our physical health in unison with our spiritual souls.
So when there's the issue of insuring the uninsured, making sure those who couldn't either afford or qualify for life saving health care, I consider that a Christ approved calling. It's a moral issue at its heart that puts humanity above profit, and there is no argument based anywhere in that Bible that supports fighting against it.
In fact, if we really want to dig deeper into it, there are plenty of scriptures that fight against the fight against HCR. If you don't agree, consider how your argument would stand up if you were face to face with Jesus today. If you were trying to tell Jesus you were afraid of socialism, which by your definition means "spreading the wealth" around, how do you think he'd respond to you? Do you honestly feel that he would change his tune from what he told to the rich young ruler, who upheld all the "rules" of religion, but was unable to fulfill the heart of it because he cared more about his fortune than he did what Jesus was telling him to do.
Consider that next time you want to paint a Joker face on the President.
In fact, most of the arguments against HCR have to do with money.
Find me one verse - just one - where Jesus said it was okay to shaft someone else so that you can keep more of your money in your wallet.
In fact, Jesus said the two greatest commandments were loving God and loving others as you love yourself.
More importantly, check out Matthew 6:24
“No one can serve two masters. For you will hate one and love the other; you will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.
So none of your arguments would hold water with Christ.
If you're fighting against HCR, you're ultimately fighting against Christ himself. You can save your sanctimony when it comes to the anti-choice, anti-gay stuff, because when it comes right down to it the only person you care about is yourself... not others, and certainly not God.
But I'm going to go one further.
If Jesus's mission was to give life and give it abundantly, and the devil's mission is to steal, kill and destroy....
Consider which of those two influences you're ultimately fighting for when you fight against making sure that every man, woman and child has health care and will not have to lose everything if the worst happens and they become seriously ill.
The people who benefit from your actions are the stock holders, the share holders, the insurance companies and those whose wealth has nothing whatsoever to do with you OR your God.
So I guess you need to figure out exactly where you stand.
If you're fighting against the fundamentally moral position of taking care of everyone, specifically the "least of these", you can not stand with Christ.
Think about that next time you pray for the death of a president, or the failure of health care reform.
You can either be Christ-like, or be a Pharisee. It's up to you.
Sojourners
FaithforHealth.org