WWJD?

In the area of Health Care Reform?

It is almost an oxymoron concept. Jesus the source of all health next to Health Care (Reform or not)?

If He were doing what He did in Galilee and Judea, there would be lines, no crowds, no mobs of people will all kinds of mental, physical, emotional ailments seeking to be healed. The insurance and health care providers would be seeking legal action against Him for "practicing medicine without a license." All of Adventist health and their workers would be bankrupt and laid off.

Has a thing like this happened in the past? Some 35 years ago Reader's Digest printed a story of an uneducated miner in Brazil who had unusual powers to effect healing with rather unorthodox methods and was very effective. He charged no one and worked long hours after coming home from his work in the mines. He was arrested and still did healing within the prison.

Will this happen in the future? Well, according to EGW, our health care institutions will be taken out of our control and we will need to be able to do medical missionary work of the home spun variety using simple treatments.

There are some charismatic denominations that are being used of the Spirit to provide miraculous healing of people who are ill and they do it without fanfare or personal gain, only for the glory of God and the advancement of the Kingdom of God and the tearing down of Satan's dominion.

So, while it it not possible for Jesus to be in person healing everyone at the present time, perhaps in the future when the outpouring of the Spirit, miraculous healing will be done in His name for His glory.

Jesus came not to reform but to reveal. "He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father!"Recall the question: "Who sinned, this man or his parents?" The raising of Lazarus was to validate His own resurrection. He did not involve Himself in the things of Ceasar.

He might over turned a few tables at some underwriters and CEO's offices. Tom

WWJD?

Why not what Jesus did?

He did not lead a campaign of political/social reform with Rome as His kingdom was not of this world.

He called men to believe in Him for forgiveness of sins and salvation and healed the sick and raised the dead...and I suggest that would yet be WWJD. The rest is but the eisegesis of our desires/agenda on the biblical Christ.

regards,
pat

Tom
Jesus was an apocalypticist who--in the synoptic gospels-- envisioned God's kingdom appearing like a blast furnace, to sweep away what he saw as evil (Matt 13). In that sense he was not a reformer. But ethics, especially the compassionate treatment of society's least powerful, was to him part and parcel of what it meant to wait for the kingdom of God.

It is of course possible to read the parable of the rich man and Lazarus the way Karl Marx did and see nothing but religious opium in it, but you can just as easily argue that it was an attack on the powerful for the way they treated the poor. I know that you have spent much of your life trying to do something about that. You may not believe that Jesus would campaign for poor people to have access to the same health care the wealthy have, but I'm pretty sure that you believe such a move would be entirely consistent with his historical stand on social issues.

Your comment is a fairly good summary of how Jesus is portrayed in the Gospel of John. It's very different from that of the Synoptics.

Thank you both Pat and Aage

Both thoughtful and full of meaning. I think you are right Aage, If man will not help his neigbhor then government must or fall. France, Russia, China and Cuba are recent examples. Not that the results have been an improvement. Government of the people, by the people, and for the people must act in order to be sustained and blessed. The problem is that recent history would indicate that Government supported aid creats a feeding frenzy among the power brokers. All or most of the controls are at the consumer end not the brokers. One does not see evidence of any change in that mind set in Congress during the current debate. Tom

Jesus WAS health care.
Why hypotheticalize his involvement in agitating for health care reform when in ACTUALITY he could have healed everyone who needed anything, (Pssssssst....he still could from heaven right now...), but DIDNT. Liberals would frame that as him denying people health care nowdays.
No need to guess or go all politically correct with WWJD.
The closest you could come with your construct is when he told Peter to catch a fish with money in it and then bought health insurance.

Not alot of income, as you understand it, in Jesus ministry. The salient point is that he didnt put the pinch on others to pay his taxes. So WWJD? He wouldnt put the pinch on others to pay his health care insurance. However like the good Samaratain, he would have provided basic rudimentary health care within his ability to pay, for those who he personally came across in need.
No need for speculation. We have biblical examples which cover all aspects of this discussion.

It's difficult to ask WWJD now in terms of gov't because our societies are very different. Besides, Jesus was not only focused on the kingdom of God, He thought it was coming before the last disciples died at least according to the gospel of Matthew. Resisting the Romans was not only futile due to their strength at that time, but a waste of energy because of the soon second coming. Focus should be on preparing for that, not trying to deal with societal systems that would soon be gone anyway.

The principles of how to relate to each other I think are there but relating to the gov't is much more convoluted.

If Christians really did take it upon themselves to take care of the poor through individual means, we wouldn't have to have the conversation around the pros and cons of involving gov't. But they don't or at least don't do it enough to provide for those who need it. Asking the poor to continue to suffer while waiting for Christians to get their act together (which hasn't happened in the last 2,000 years) and actually take care of them as much as they need seems short-sighted. Not to mention that there could very well be societal systems that contribute to the poor being poor and so ignoring those while trying to help them individually is like bailing a bathtub that has the faucet turned on.

Good points Beth, as Christ himself said, The poor will always be with you. As many Christians do not help the poor they encounter, the bible speaks only of how that relates to those like the pharisee who took no part in helping the poor he encountered on the road to Jericho. It lays out no plan or principals for paying for health care. Even those who like to use Acts and say they pooled all the money for common use fail to recognise that even that plan was for the believers of their church and not for all of society.

Good points Beth, as Christ himself said, The poor will always be with you. As many Christians do not help the poor they encounter, the bible speaks only of how that relates to those like the pharisee who took no part in helping the poor he encountered on the road to Jericho. It lays out no plan or principals for paying for health care. Even those who like to use Acts and say they pooled all the money for common use fail to recognise that plan was for the believers and new converts and not for all of society.

Michael
There is the same debate in the legal community about the Constitution. The strict constructionists (Scalia) argue that the provisions of the Constitution should not be applied beyond the original intent of those who drafted it. Liberals reject that point of view.

Liberals argue that the Constitution is made up of guiding principles that can be applied to contemporary issues not envisioned by Jefferson and Madison. This is the WWJD approach to law.

The WWJD crowd don't get hung up on the fact that the Romans are no longer with us, that we don't pay tithe to temple and tax to Caesar. They argue that the principles proclaimed by Jesus can be applied whatever the social and political situation might be.

In order words, Michael, how would a first century Gospel concern for the poor and the outcasts find expression in the 21st?

Micahel

The question What would Jesus Do? Might be a reasonable question in many personal situations. There are doubts that it has great societal value as you suggested. But why get so hypertensive about it? It makes few friends and certainly does your cardiovascular system little good. The story of the man who fell among robbers is a much better starting point for this discussion than the temple tax.

I was a member of the Board of Directors of United Way of Augusta for six years. I believe in personal and community charity that is well verified.

A story: I left the Milwaukee Church one Sabbath immediately following the service. A number of people remained to visit.
During that visitation period a middle aged woman and her grown daugther entered the lobby and asked to speak to the pastor or head elder. She told a heart breaking story of serious car trouble, repairs far beyond her means and they were on their way from New York to California following her husband in a U Haul truck. They had gotten separated and she had no way of getting in touch with him. She needed 600 dollars to get the transmission fixed. The people in the lobby took up a collection and gave her 600 dollars, they had prayer together, she thanked them over and over again. That Wednesday, the pastor got a phone call from the Conference Office telling him of a scam in the Wisconsin Conference. A woman and her grown daughter were visiting churches with a sob story about car trouble--be on the look-out.

The next Sabbath one of the elders approached me and said: "Tom, you owe me 100 dollars." I asked: "What for?" He said, "I gave that woman 200 dollars." One Hundred for me and I knew if you had been here you would have also given 100 dollars." I said: "Sorry, I would have gotten the name, address, and phone number of the garage and checked on the story first. Then I would have driven the woman and her daughter to that address to see if the money went for car repairs. I think you have been had. I think a 200 dollar lesson will stick with you a lot longer than a 100 dollar lesson. Tom

Wow... All I can say is that the selfish attitude is definitely no stranger to western society, inside and outside Christianity.

Whatever happened to "Jesus looked at him and loved him. 'One thing you lack,' he said. 'Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.' (Mark 10:21)

If that doesn't convince you immediately that you should give a few measeley pennies to help give the less fortunate some relief than we really are lost. Any more debate and you have lost the plot.

Why are people so astounded at Caputo by the way? He sounds pretty switched on to me.

I am happy to hear that the heart of the Milwaukee church members was in the right place.
I have made a habit of doing things more like you discribe in paying the mechanic or the grocery store myself.

I think the motivation for those reluctant to give is in large part due to all the scams that are out there and people hate more than anything to be taken advantage of.

Perhaps that is why I am especially tickled to hear how that elder approached you and said you owed him 100 dollars for his 200 dollars worth of generosity.
A perfect example of Obamas health care huh?!!!

Davy Crockett, Charity, and Congress

I was one day in the lobby of the House of Representatives when a bill was taken up appropriating money for the benefit of a widow of a distinguished naval officer. Several beautiful speeches had been made in its support, rather, as I thought, because it afforded the speakers a fine opportunity for display than from the necessity of convincing anybody, for it seemed to me that everybody favored it. The Speaker was just about to put the question, when Crockett arose. Everybody expected, of course, that he was going to make one of his characteristic speeches in support of the bill. He commenced:
"Mr. Speaker -- I have as much respect for the memory of the deceased, and as much sympathy for the sufferings of the living, if suffering there be, as any man in this House, but we must not permit our respect for the dead or our sympathy for a part of the living to lead us into an act of injustice to the balance of the living. I will not go into an argument to prove that Congress has no power to appropriate this money as an act of charity. Every member upon this floor knows it. We have the right, as individuals, to give away as much of our own money as we please in charity; but as members of Congress we have no right so to appropriate a dollar of the public money.

Read the story of how Davy Crockett came to oppose this bill and others like it, told in Crockett's own words here::
http://www.theadvocates.org/library/christian-crockett.html

Peter
I'm with you. What more can you say than 'wow' when you see presumptive Christians refuse to support a plan to help the unfortunate if it's going to them anything. Although it shouldn't come as a surprise. After all, most conservative Christians in the US were all in favor of segregation in the 1950s and 1960s. (Show me ANY SDA person of prominence attacking Segration prior to 1965! Adventists didn't even support Martin Luther King. Just read the Review from the 1960s.) People who claimed to be followers of Jesus met attempts at integration with faces contorted with rage, hurling insults at children daring to invade holy bastions of whitedom, such as Central High in Little Rock, Arkansas or the streets of Birmingham.

There were people like Tom Zwemer, who on their own, showed that it was possible to be a conservative and a decent human being at the same time, but that was not an obvious thing back then--or today.

Europeans are by no means morally superior to Americans but Europe has been blessed with the demise of organized religion and right wing politics. These have been relegated to the impotent sidelines of society. The values of Christianity have triumphed in post-war Europe at the cost of it's dogmas but people are the better for it. All over the continent people go to bed at night knowing that they are covered should they need health care. They pay half the price we pay, with better outcomes, because, in the spirit of Jesus, health care is not run for profit. The problem in this country is that people have convinced themselves that capitalism is next to godliness, that money is the measure of all things.

That "charity" argument is precisely the thing that Caputo (and I) are trying to show is completely inadequate and more a cover for greed than a serious attempt to follow Jesus.

That was the whole point of the post above.

The word "cost" fell out of my introduction above:

"'m with you. What more can you say than 'wow' when you see presumptive Christians refuse to support a plan to help the unfortunate if it's going to COST them anything."

Ryan
You make an important point. Charity is an inadequate response to the current crisis, even when it functions. In the third world (as in first century Palestine)charity is often all there is. We have the option of using the political process and important resources available to the state as a tool to solve serious problems such as health care.

In the 1950s conservatives argued that it was wrong for the government to get involved in securing civil rights for African-Americans. Blacks should have the patience to wait until their white neighbors on their own decided they were ready to grant equality to blacks. Sometimes government is the only solution available. What we do know is that the privileged will not share their privileges voluntarily with those on the outside, even if they call themselves Christians.

Obviously, you did not read the article describing Crockett's instruction into the principles of individualism and out of the principles of collectivism. The man, Horatio Bunce, from whom Crockett received his instruction on the principles of government in the United States is described by Crockett in the article (http://www.theadvocates.org/library/christian-crockett.html,) thusly:

"I have told you Mr. Bunce converted me politically. He came nearer converting me religiously than I had ever been before. When supper was over, one of the children brought him a Bible and hymn-book. He turned to me and said:

"Colonel, I have for many years been in the habit of family worship night and morning. I adopt this time for it that all may be present. If I postpone it some of us get engaged in one thing and some in another, and the little ones drop off to sleep, so that it is often difficult to get all together."

"He then opened the Bible, and read the Twenty-third Psalm, commencing: "The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not want." It is a beautiful composition, and his manner of reading it gave it new beauties. We then sang a hymn, and we all knelt down. He commenced his prayer "Our Father who art in Heaven." No one who has not heard him pronounce those words can conceive how they thrilled through me, for I do not believe that they were ever pronounced by human lips as by him. I had heard them a thousand times from the lips of preachers of every grade and denomination, and by all sorts of professing Christians, until they had become words of course with me, but his enunciation of them gave them an import and a power of which I had never conceived. There was a grandeur of reverence, a depth of humility, a fullness of confidence and an overflowing of love which told that his spirit was communing face to face with its God. An overwhelming feeling of awe came over me, for I felt that I was in the invisible presence of Jehovah. The whole prayer was grand--grand in its simplicity, in the purity of the spirit it breathed, in its faith, its truth, and its love. I have told you he came nearer converting me religiously than I had ever been before. He did not make a very good Christian of me, as you know; but he has wrought upon my mind a conviction of the truth of Christianity, and upon my feelings a reverence for its purifying and elevating power such as I had never felt before.

"I have known and seen much of him since, for I respect him--no, that is not the word--I reverence and love him more than any living man, and I go to see him two or three times every year; and I will tell you, sir, if every one who professes to be a Christian lived and acted and enjoyed it as he does, the religion of Christ would take the world by storm.

"But to return to my story...

Though this is addressed on another current thread, I continue to be intrigued by the assignation of the current "health care" debate and bills before Congress as "Obama's plan." In reality, he asked three things of Congress: 1) make the reform accessible to as many people as possible, 2) provide plenty of options, and 3) don't let it add to the national debt.

That's "Obama's plan." Dirty rotten socialist! Next he'll have us subsidizing elementary and high schools, city and national parks, road construction, and libraries! But then, what did you expect from a Kenyan-born, Muslim, unpatriotic, racist, community activist, terrorist-emboldener, death paneler, um..., and some other really bad stuff I will make up pretty soon?

Ahem. Yesterday I visited Senator Ben Nelson's office (D-NE) to share my thoughts. Here's what I handed out:

Health Insurance Reform 2009
Dear Senator Nelson:

For the past 16 years, I’ve been a communications professor at Union College. Here are my requests and points to consider in the current debate:

1. For accuracy’s sake, please stop calling it “Health Care Reform.” This is about the financial aspects of health care—almost nobody is debating actual health care. It’s “Health Insurance Reform” or “Health Care Coverage Reform.”

2. Suppose our fire stations—a health care enterprise if there ever was one—began operating in the for-profit manner of health insurance companies. Any fire station could choose to refuse “coverage” for these reasons:
a. There was a pre-existing condition, which includes faulty wiring, flammable materials in the garage, and careless children
b. The location is miles from the station; saving the structure and lives is cost-prohibitive
c. Residents of the threatened structure failed to stay current on their property tax premiums
Would citizens howl in outrage? Of course.

3. Virtually all the screamers at public forums lately are older and, we can guess, currently have health care coverage.

4. Our broken health insurance system will cost the Nebraska economy as much as $1 billion this year in productivity losses owing to lack of coverage. The average family premium in Nebraska costs $1,000 more because our system fails to cover everyone. An estimated 220 Nebraskans will lose their health coverage every week because of rising costs.

5. Pragmatically, you care about re-election and how your vote will play. The overwhelming majority of people I talk to here in Lincoln are in favor of health insurance reform and guarantees. As for me and my house, if you vote against the reform bill, you lose our vote.

Thanks for your good work toward ensuring a just and equitable future for all. Attached is a document (http://www.alternet.org/politics/141916/10_awesome_things_that_would_hap...) that further delineates the salient benefits of health care coverage reform.

Sincerely,
Chris Blake

No screeching, bulging-eyed rants or finger pointing. I added a few personal stories of people I know. Fairly straightforward stuff. Ah, well.

Chris, great comments.

"Virtually all the screamers at public forums lately are older and, we can guess, currently have health care coverage."

And some still do not realize that the Medicare they are either receiving now, or will soon, is the epitome of their dreaded "socialized medicine." Such is the naivete and gullibility of the public which is being pandered to by the insurance lobbyists which, according to the latest Harper's had a profit increase of 428% over that of 2002, and an increase in premiums of 87%. Is it any wonder that they are paying over $1 million daily to advertise against any change in health care.

2. Suppose our fire stations—a health care enterprise if there ever was one—began operating in the for-profit manner of health insurance companies. Any fire station could choose to refuse “coverage” for these reasons:
a. There was a pre-existing condition, which includes faulty wiring, flammable materials in the garage, and careless children
b. The location is miles from the station; saving the structure and lives is cost-prohibitive
c. Residents of the threatened structure failed to stay current on their property tax premiums
Would citizens howl in outrage? Of course.
Sincerely,
Chris Blake

This is completely faulty thinking.
If it was for profit there would be a contract just as there are in insurance policies. People know exactally what their policy covers or does not cover. Or are they as stupid as the people who they send to congress who also vote on things they havent even read?

Ziggy,

When your house is on fire, do you really want to be arguing with the responding firemen whether it was your cow or Mrs. O'Leary's that kicked the lantern over; and whether your fire insurance policy covers fires started by your uninsured neighbor?

Thanks to our socialist Fire Departments, we can sleep well at night without worrying about coverage and our choice of providers.

As someone based in the U.K, our health care service is not perfect and I am sure there are better health systems on the continent, but I would prefer the system we have than a privatised American style one. Perhaps all governments need to concentrate more on preventitive health, would that not be mroe cost effective in the long run? In the UK as in the US too many of us are eating ourselves into a hospital bed with our poor diets, drinking, smoking and lack of exercise habits and then expecting the medical staff to preform miracles. Well for that reason alone, a tax based system is justified.

Ryan, WWJD about healthcare? He would want everyone to get the same needed care. Notice I said needed, not Botox or breast augmentation. Also, I don't think Jesus would be to friendly with the Trial lawyers. Yet, this discussion has said very little about guys like John Edwards who has made a living for his family by milking the very system we are trying to reform.

Tort Reform, Retirement salaries in the millions off the recent health care system, I think Jesus would be angry, maybe even make a whip and head for those responsible, some within the SDA Church Health System. Why weren't these guys thinking outside the box rather than grabbing and retiring??? I saw a $80 million judgement for an ulcer created on a nursing home patient in Arkansas. Who is worth $80 million. Why not a cap on judgements like the airlines did at $250,000. Oops, now our SDA culture is threatened, eh. No more rich lawyers and Hospital Execs, eh???

To Karl Sandberg :

The Davy Crockett example makes me feel a little uneasy. The abulance helicopter, the MRT , the enormous costs of neurosurgery, the cytostatic postoperative treatment and the rehabilitation are no (!) matters of charity or Psalm 23. (The young lady, an architect, then 25, recovered,got
married, gave birth to a child, and now is in her occupation again. No depts, the National Economy and the Society had developed all the means necessary for this success and made them available. She still wll have full coverage at the same costs for a possible carcinoma and for Alzheimer treatment and care in some decades.

God gave the wisdom. OK. The society provided the development of scientists and Science through the centuries. The distribution of means, provided by the national economy, is an act of politics (Any ethical objections except "Not with MY money I earn - I live healthy, I take care of my health and I am healthy till now !" ? )

WWJD ? Well, he approved the sovereignity of Rome on merchandise (Mt 22 : 17 ff), he did not oppose the Roman administration.

To Aage Rendalen :

In Homers epic Ilias the physician already has a public function : Repairing the warriors and making them fit for the next manslaughter (Iatros gar anhr pollwn antaxios allwn).
Christian organisations - the orders with their hospitals - a millenium later offered medical care for those who needed it.
Here in Vienna Josph II., the Enlightement Emperor, closed contemplative orders and their abbeys and founded the first (state operated) insane asylum. In Germany Rudolf Virchow, pathologist, delegate to Prussian Abgeordnetenhaus and later on German Reichstag, founder of numerous city and state medical institutions for prevenion, hygiene, diagnosis and treatment and proclaimer of the idea that Medicine is a Social Science for the benefit of everybody, a Positivist, a Liberal Left, helped together with the Conservative Chancellor Bismarck to install the Social Security system in Germnany in the second half of the nineteenth century. Austrias conservative Habsburg emperor Franz Joseph adopted this concept.

I myself for the last 15 years of my medical career was employed at the largest Austrian "Medicare-Medicaid" insurance (Wiener Gebietskrankenkasse )- they all are nonprofitable, self - managing and government - controlled and compulsory - mutually : You have to pay your contribution and they have to provide the insurance for the costs of your necessary treatments.

I have insider knowledge of the problems with the bureocracy, with control, with abuse of the system, with the exploding costs. But I never heard of a patient falling into depts because of the treatments he had needed.I never have heard of a patients necessary treatment being cancelled because of the coverage expiring.

WWJD ? here and now ?

Jesus spoke to individual, real people. He did not advise governments nor other collectives. He told a man how he should fund health care for someone in need in his famous parable of the Good Samaritan. Here it is from the Gospel of Luke, chapter 10. The numbers are the verses in the New International Version:

29But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, "And who is my neighbor?"30In reply Jesus said: “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he fell into the hands of robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead. 31A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. 32So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. 33But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. 34He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, took him to an inn and took care of him. 35The next day he took out two silver coins[e] and gave them to the innkeeper. ‘Look after him,’ he said, ‘and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.’ 36″Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?”
http://www.jesus-on-taxes.com/JESUS_ON_OBAMACARE.html

37The expert in the law replied, “The one who had mercy on him.”
Jesus told him, “Go and do likewise.”

So you see, Jesus explicitly told the man to use his own money as the Good Samaritan had used his to care for one's less-fortunate neighbor. He most certainly did not tell the man to use OPM! (OPM: sounds like opium, is equally addicting, stands for other-people’s money.) Perhaps the priest and Levite were hoping someone from the government would come along and help the poor fellow with some tax-funded healthcare, but Jesus realized there is nothing generous or noble in voting to spend OPM to secure the poor.