Everyone! Quick! Run for the hills while you can! Obamacare has just been passed! Taxes will go up! Health-care quality will go down! Democrats will take control! Liberals will
rule our lives! Communism will supplant capitalism! Education will get dumberer! The seas will burn! Dogs will give birth to cats! The sun will set in the East!!!!
What I’m trying to say
(albeit a bit sarcastically) is that while Obamacare being passed has a lot of
negative consequences, it’s not the end of the world, despite how it may seem
after watching Fox News. Should that
make us okay with it? Well, no, but what if there’s an angle to this that many
of us have missed?
The problem Obamacare
says it has set out to fix is that so many people, especially the poor and
homeless, cannot afford to seek help if they are sick or dying. The proposed solution is to mandate
healthcare and provide it to those who cannot afford it. We can argue and rant about it all we like,
but I must ask something. The government
saw a homeless man sick and dying, and passed a law to give him healthcare…what
did you do for him? What did I do for
him?
We have fun,
family-friendly potlucks at our churches where we gather together and have a
great time fellowshipping…with our fellow church-members. “But,” as Jesus said in Luke 14:13, “when you
give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind.” In Mathew’s gospel, He also describes the
final judgment where so many are turned away because He had come to them, in
need of clothing, food, care, and love, and they had rejected Him. When they asked when He had come to them in
such a way, He told them that He was in every human-being they had ever neglected. Even if he was just a slob, a stranger on
a bus, God was still one of us, and
we let Him down.
Read Ezekiel 34, and
the reality becomes even more harsh: “Prophesy
against the shepherds of Israel…Ah, shepherds of Israel who have been
feeding yourselves! Should not shepherds feed the sheep? You
eat the fat, you clothe yourselves…you slaughter the fat ones, but you do not
feed the sheep. The weak you have not
strengthened, the sick you have not healed, the injured you have not bound
up, the strayed you have not brought back, the lost you have not
sought, and with force and harshness you have ruled them. So
they were scattered, because there was no shepherd, and they became food
for all the wild beasts… My sheep were scattered over all the face of the
earth, with none to search or seek for them…I am against the shepherds,
and I will require my sheep at their hand and put a stop to their
feeding the sheep. No longer shall the shepherds feed themselves. I
will rescue my sheep from their mouths, that they may not be food for them.”
If we do not care for
the souls around us, who will? Perhaps
the government really is overstepping their duty and is incapable of really
caring for everyone, but what choice do they have when those who are charged with this duty cast it
aside? They saw a need ignored by
everyone else and stepped in. There are
those who would say that Obamacare’s concern for the poor is only a fake
disguise for wanting more power and money; but even if that’s true, would that
disguise be available for use if someone else had already shown concern and
compassion? God warned us through
Ezekiel thousands of years before modern society and economics that if we
neglect the needy because it becomes inconvenient, then that responsibility
will be taken from us, and they would receive compassion from elsewhere. The hard fact is that somewhere, someone is
getting healthcare, small or not, who otherwise would have none at all; and
while this happens, we are complaining about the effect that saving their lives
will have on our wallets.
Hello Erik, once again, I have to agree with you here. Christians have fallen short on so many fronts, it makes me weak in the stomach just to think about it. Comedian Brad Stine addresses the issue of same-sex marriage in his book, "Being a Christian Without Being an Idiot" (a book I would recommend to anyone) in much the same way that you just addressed Obamacare. It saddens me to see one of the great virtues of the Bible, charity, be treated with the same contempt by those who read and preach it as the U. S. Constitution is by those who swear to defend it.
ReplyDeleteOne more thought to add, with more and more people in the U.S. becoming atheist, secular humanist, and 'simply don't carist', now is the time for all Christians to step up to the plate or step down to destruction. Another great piece, Erik! Keep it up!
Sincerely,
John Griffin
Erik, You make some very valid points, but you are also painting a narrow picture with a very broad brush. The true God loving and following Christian is trying the best they can to help the homeless and poor among us. So is it their fault they can not help everyone? If this law was just a health care reform law that would be great, but there are other parts to this law that have nothing to do with healthcare, but this is not mentioned in your post. The law had good intentions, but politics got in the way, and a lot of chatter by the non-informed and the political right and left made it was it is today. Again good post and as always thought provoking...Richard
ReplyDeleteI am not as up to date on my social services history as I would like but we can certainly see evidence in the recent past of strong involvement of the Church in the healthcare industry. Just look at the names of the major hospitals in our state: Mercy Hospital (Catholic), Creighton (Catholic), Iowa Lutheran Hospital, Methodist Hospital, Trinity Hospital, Genesis Medical Center - all major medical facilities and all with Christian roots. Christianity has a long history of providing care for the sick. The example of the Good Samaritan and his personal involvement in the care of the health of a hurting man has been our mandate for many years. I do not have enough historical knowledge of the subject to speak authoritatively about how we lost much of our influence - did we drop the ball or was the ball moved to another court and we weren't invited to play anymore? Maybe a little bit of both. I'm not sure. But I do agree, Erik, that as Christians we have a mandate from Christ Himself to care for the needs of the people around us as He,the Great Physician, did while living here.
ReplyDeleteI agree with the heart of God that we need to have for people, but there are other more crucial key lessons of Obamacare for Christians. For one, if we continue in our blind abandonment of the Great Commission instruction to tell the good news to every NATION, we will continue to be driven helplessly into the soulless, cruel, criminal ways of Marxism. The Reformation brought freedom to all of Western Civilization because they were subjecting all of society to the scrutiny of the universal principles and laws of The Lawgiver and Creator, and so it enabled beautifully crafting the binding laws and authorities and interactions in the halls of legislature and the courts and the executive branch. (Our sister nation is Switzerland, who still shines so brightly that the media and educators work very hard to ignore her lessons and examples which still keep her in the top three safest and wealthiest and most citizen-armed nations in the world.)
ReplyDeleteSo the Reformation taught the nations (people and government and social institutions) that the key principles of Sola Scriptura (only the Bible has ultimate authority and absolute truth), and Coram Deo (all of life is lived openly before the Face of God in every facet) had to form the basis for every aspect of society if people were to be free, peaceful and prosperous. Liars will always lie, and rage against truth, but the truth still remains and is eternally secure. The foundations of America testify extensively to this just as surely as they acknowledge Lex Rex - the outrageous idea that The Law is King and every king is subject to it. (Pastor Benjamin Morris spent 10 years researching and writing one of the largest books in American history in order to secure the facts in the mid 1800’s: The Christian Life and Character of the Civil Institutions of the United States.)
The corollary to this is that our Leaders are the five-fold ministry offices, while elected officials are merely Public Servants who our leaders and every citizen are responsible to hold accountable to the law and fully support them in their lawful decisions of good character. The current Washington atmosphere is one like living in the neighborhood with a million pig farm: the stench of treason and corruption washes across the nation so strongly that it makes normal citizens gag.
Well-manipulated and weakly educated Christians will take shocking offense at those statements of truth, as if Romans 13 applied to our duty to king Obama. However, it doesn't apply. What should be most shocking is that although we know that the government is of the people, by the people, for the people, instead of arresting and putting corruption and murder on trial and treason behind bars, after removal from office, as is our sworn duty as citizens both of this nation and of our only King, our nation's true leaders are unaware that our inaction as citizens makes us accomplices to the crimes, and enablers of the treason.
Are we really so blind that we can't see the seething hatred for God, for truth, for justice, for life? Obamacare is not merely taxation without representation (which it is because it was approved by vote long before it was written, and because the vast majority of Americans were against it), and it is not merely unconstitutional (in a who's-smarter-than-a-3rd-grader sense), and it is not merely using abortion as a litmus test to remove people of conscious from the new Final Solution medical technicians who will be killing off the elderly (with caring demeanor) after the government has taken their money, but it is by admission one of the most powerful means ever devised to enslave and control a population while robbing them blind. And that is what it was really created to do.
The ugly truth is that the glaring problems that did/do exist in the healthcare system exist because of government corruption and interference, combined with extensive criminal scheming. Allowing them to dictatorially seize control of it will ensure that more people will suffer and die, and fewer will get useful health care. The overwhelming elephant-in-the-room reason that health-care has skyrocketed in the last three decades is because the marxists in government have deliberately been driving it into failure by overloading it with illegal aliens. This is true of every other facet that they can ruin or cripple or commandeer, including the courts, education, drug trade both legal and illegal, military, public services, manufacturing, financial markets, especially the economy: this is the Cloward-Piven strategy that has been used very successfully in marxist takeovers, to evaluate and either break everything that works, or take it over and allow it to work right only for you and your paying friends.
ReplyDeleteThe public schools were founded for the purpose of moving the next generations away from their parent's "obsolete" ignorant beliefs in God, and have long worn two faces in masterful deception. For decades the marxist/socialist (Left) has taken control of universities and media so skillfully that Harvard has no idea they used to tell students that they were wasting each other's time and being irresponsible if they didn't spend daily time in the Bible and prayer. And they have pounded the church into a corner with the King James burn-the-Geneva-Bible-and-write-my-own-version-that-hides-that-the-people-are-accountable-to-hold-me-accountable-to-God's-laws-too agenda.
They've done it for so long that we don't realize that not only do Pastors have free speech like everyone else, but they were originally the vocal “news anchor” civic and political backbone that used election-day sermons to remind citizens of their responsibility to prayerfully vote for men of character, and to remind every person running for office of their responsibilities to the country and to God to be completely upright and conscientious in all their dealings. The separation of church and state was that the church would always hold the state accountable, but the state could not create or cozy up to their own exclusive version of Christianity. (Now the government has created an alliance with atheism and forces allegiance against Christianity, in direct violation of the Constitution.)
Being Christian in our communities is about far more than caring about people who need medical help. It's about waking up and caring for a nation that we've been suckered into abandoning over the last hundred years. If the church will do that, then two things will happen. People will see a light for truth, life, justice and service, and the God-haters will rage and accuse and threaten... just as they did when Nehemiah answered the call to build up the walls again. In doing it, the Antichrist will be more clearly seen and the Bride will shine brighter with righteousness, and she will be a bright beacon to all who long for truth, justice, peace and righteousness.
In our past, this scriptural heart of God in American citizenship has created child labor laws and ensured women’s voting, and ended slavery. (Unscriptural twisting of it created witch-trials and Prohibition, and kindled rebellion against God and church.)
What does that heart of God look like today?