Why I Didn't Write Anything About Health Care

Why didn’t I preach about health care? Why didn’t I write about it? The question of whether to raise the issue of health care in any venue has been eating at me for months. I feel strongly about the issue, but have remained silent. I’ve been wondering why.

I think it may have to do with my underlying belief in respectful, grace-filled dialogue. Simply put, I think that as soon as anyone utters the phrase “health care,” all kinds of walls and labels go up that make true dialogue impossible. It has become a loaded term. If I were to preach or to write about the issue, I thought, the chances are slim that anything helpful would happen as a result, thanks to the way in which the national conversation has been degraded in these last few months.

John Wesley taught, “First of all, do no harm.” I actually think that to voice my opinion on health care reform would do harm. I just do not believe that an open, honest, and truthful conversation can happen on this topic with the kind of respect and graciousness that I value. It just seems like people get angry and resort to denigration and belittling of their opponents so quickly, and that’s not good.

So if it wouldn’t do any good, and in fact it would do harm, I have decided to just let it be.

To be clear, I’m not worried about someone getting mad at me. The harm that I’m concerned about is not harm to me personally, but rather to the relationships around me. They call them “wedge issues” for a reason; they split groups apart. They split people apart. For me, that’s not worth it.

“But what if the status quo is causing more harm than discussing the issue would cause?” I ask. “Good question, me,” I reply. Let’s say that the status quo was such that thousands of people were getting sick and dying because they could not afford health care. Hmmm… do we dare compare the harm of thousands of people dying with the harm of a potentially divisive conversation?

Oh, if only that were a hypothetical question…

Can I just say that we seem to have misplaced the goal? The goal should be healthy people. Affordable health care, access to insurance, all that stuff – just means to the end. Healthy people, you know:
- people who don’t get sick just because they are poor,
- people who don’t have to choose between dinners for their kids or a visit to a doctor,
- foster parents who don’t have to wheedle their way into a doctor’s care on behalf of their kids because of the hassle the doctor’s office has with Medicaid,
- children who can go ahead and visit their doctor because a mid-level bureaucrat somewhere hasn’t deemed their condition “pre-existing,”
- and so forth.

The objection may be, “I agree that the goal should be healthy people, but the reforms don’t achieve that.” Then we might go off into specifics of how I think it does and you think it doesn’t and so on, which I am all too happy to do if we can do so with respect and graciousness.

What I’m not going to do is engage any idea that ascribes an insidious agenda to another person. I do not want to wrestle with straw men. I really believe that elected officials at all levels are there because they want what’s best for their communities, but they just happen to see things differently. Is that naïve? Maybe. But here’s how I think of it:

I think that otherwise well-intentioned, good and decent people kind of lose their heads when the spotlight is on them, and they end up saying things that sound differently than they would if you were having a one-to-one conversation with them at a coffee shop. Honestly, that’s what I think. I believe that power corrupts, but I believe that notoriety corrupts even more. Unfortunately, average people like us will never know, because the only time we hear from a politician is when they are in the public view, and they know it, so they act differently.

It happens to everyone, teachers, preachers, journalists, people speaking from the floor of Annual Conference, etc. We tend to veil our true selves with a public persona when we realize that attention is focused upon us, sometimes without even being aware of it. And for a politician, for whom so much is at stake every single time she or he speaks, it is especially noticeable.

One of the most apparent ways this phenomenon is manifest is when people act or speak with limited information. “A little knowledge is a dangerous thing,” said Tower of Power, and they got that right on! I went to the library last night and was stopped by a woman who wanted me to sign a petition to change the way judges are chosen back to a partisan election rather than appointment. I told her no thank you, then I went on to say that we could vote to retain judges every so often, anyway. She looked at me blankly and said, “We can? I didn’t know that.” Yikes. She didn’t know the current system that she was volunteering her time to get changed.

Nobody is going to argue for less healthy people. (I don’t think.) It’s really just the means to that end that we don’t agree on. And that’s okay! Its okay to disagree on stuff, but it is not okay to label and slander and denigrate other people, people who happen not to agree with you. So if you disagree with me on this, I invite your response. (I invite your response if you agree, too!) But please do so with respect and grace. Thanks.

A Post About Jesus' Bowels

Once (Mark 1:40-45) when a leper came to Jesus to ask for healing, Mark tells that Jesus was “moved with pity.” The NIV, btw, says “compassion” instead of “pity.” The Message says simply, “deeply moved.” The TNIV says, “Jesus was indignant.” That’s pretty cool.

Dig this - the Greek word is splangknidzomai.

Don’t you just love that word? Even the sounds of it, if you can force your mouth into shapes conducive to producing them, are fun! You really need to try it a few times to appreciate it.

There is a Greek word from which this verb comes, the noun splangknon. That means “guts.” Bowels or intestines. No, really. That’s what it means. Look it up in your Brown, Driver, Briggs if you don’t believe me!

So if we were going to be literal with this little vignette, Jesus would have been moved to his bowels for the leper. Of course, the key to interpretation is knowing that, at that time, the bowels were considered the location of the deepest emotion. For the Greeks, your guts were where you felt violent passions – anger and love, for example. But for the Hebrews, guts were for more tender and gentle feelings like compassion and mercy.

Nowadays, we might say that such emotion is “from the heart,” thereby ascribing to another internal organ that for which we really have no explanation. Biologically, emotions come from somewhere in the chemical makeup of your brain, I suppose. But semantically, I’m kind of glad that we’ve moved from the guts to the heart as our metaphor for emotional responses.

What motivated Jesus to heal? He was moved. Deeply moved. (Insert potty joke here). But elementary school humor aside, Jesus was emotionally moved by the leper who came to him asking to be healed. Compassion perhaps. Or maybe Jesus was moved by the leper’s faith. Or both.

The leper (let’s call him Bill) said with certainty, “If you choose, you can make me clean.” There’s not any doubt in Bill’s mind that Jesus can heal him. It’s not a question, “Can you make me clean?” – it is a statement of fact. Bill had been shunned by the rest of society by consequence of his illness, and yet spoke with confidence to a man he was certain had the power within to heal him. And after being healed, defying Jesus’ instructions to silence, he goes around telling everyone what has happened.

It is a miraculous story on so many levels, but at the same paradoxical time, a very human story. Bill is sick man and professes an immense faith – Jesus feels it in his guts and responds with compassion – joy spilling over, Bill cannot help but share with everyone what has happened to him.

It’s a beautiful little story, with a hundred lessons to teach us. And I can feel that in my splangknon.