commentary

God’s Health Care Plan: Healing the World

M G Kizzia Leave a comment

It was 2000 years ago a man named Jesus came out of Galilee saying, The Kingdom of heaven is at hand.  It is near, or as some rude person in our day might say, “It is in your face.”  Curious… 

The people in that time and place were under the thumb of the Romans and many were not happy with that reality.  The society was fragmented.  Pharisees and Sadducees were like Democrats and Republicans: in charge of things more or less, but fighting each other and even fighting among themselves.  Many people had dropped out altogether, to form communes or live as hermits in the wilderness.  Zealots, what the Romans described as terrorists, were committing great acts of rebellion or great crimes of murder depending on who was describing those acts.  And the common people were looking for a way out: they wanted a leader, they wanted hope. And there were plenty of men and some women no doubt who were glad to step in and be that leader.  The countryside was littered with teachers, preachers, prophets, healers, miracle workers, the wise and the foolish, the sincere and the charlatans.  Many people were wary.  

That fellow John gathered quite a few followers at one time, but then he had the stupidity to insult one of the Roman Provincial Executives and he got himself arrested and eventually got the death penalty.  People might not have thought that was fair.  There were plenty of worse offenders, mass murderers and the like, sitting on death row filing appeal after appeal; but you know, when such things are decided for political reasons, they aren’t always fair.

So now this fellow named Jesus has come saying Repent (like John said), and adding The Kingdom of heaven is at hand.  That was the new part, sort of.  Some scholars asked him once, “Is this a new teaching?”  It was not.  Not really.  Back then, the people basically understood what this “Kingdom of Heaven” or “Kingdom of God” was all about:

They understood that God did not approve of any sickness, trouble, hardship, social collapse, disease or death; but then they also understood that God did not break the world.  We did.  God did not sin.  We did.  God didn’t start the trouble.  We are the ones who rebelled.  We turned our backs, and some are still turning their backs on God and we began all the trouble by our rebellion.  Now, this broken (sin filled) world plagues us and our brokenness has come back to haunt us in the form of struggle, disease and death.  That isn’t God’s fault.  Everyone understood that.

And they also understood that this broken condition was not supposed to be the end of the story.  Clearly, it was not God’s intention that we be stuck in this brokenness forever.  The prophets made that clear, for example in Isaiah (35:1-10):

            The desert and parched land will be glad; the wilderness will rejoice and blossom…

            …Then will the eyes of the blind be opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped.

            Then will the lame leap like a deer and the mute tongue shout for joy…

            …and the ransomed of the Lord will return.

            They will enter Zion with singing; everlasting joy will crown their heads.

            Gladness and joy will overtake them, and sorrow and sighing will flee away.

The Kingdom was the place (and time) when all of the brokenness in this world would be fixed, which included every disease being healed.  It was the place of no more tears.  But this Kingdom; it was like a nebulous thing, a promise for some far off future that had nothing to do with present day living.  People had to deal with their troubles, today’s being enough for today, and not live in some La-la land.  So here comes this Jesus fellow saying the Kingdom is near and you can be sure many scoffed.  “Yeah, right!  What Kingdom?”

I imagine Jesus smiled and responded something like, “This Kingdom,” and someone got healed.

The deaf dumb and blind could hear, speak and see.  Skin conditions, paralytics all got healed.  Some, so they claimed, even got raised from the dead and restored to life.  No wonder he gathered such crowds.  Yet he took the most curious position on it all.  “Don’t tell anyone.”  He would say.  Of course, they did tell, and the crowds reached the thousands where he had to borrow some fish and bread to feed them all.  But why would he say don’t tell?  How curious?

Well, it seems to me he did not want to be lumped in with all of the charlatan miracle workers and so-called healers already gallivanting around the countryside.  Obviously, he did not want to be seen as just another mumbo-jumbo magician.

Peter was perhaps the first to understand when Jesus asked, “Who do you say I am?”  I always imagined Peter stuttering a bit as he was inspired to respond.  “You are the K-K-King.”

Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.  And Peter understood that Jesus was the King of God’s Kingdom, which of course meant that Jesus was God.  Who else would be King of God’s Kingdom?

Enough people understood this on Palm Sunday to lay palms at his feet.  The Sanhedrin understood this in the last week, enough to accuse him to each other:  “The man makes himself equal with God!”  They told Pilate:  “We shall have no King but Caesar!”

But what they did not grasp was:  He did not come to heal and restore God’s rule over the earth right then and there. NOT YET.  God!  That HAD to be a disappointment to a lot of people.  But instead, he came to tell us about the time (the Kingdom) that was coming – still in some nebulous future – but also to demonstrate it in his life so we would know it was a REAL promise, no matter how far in the future it might be, and then he came to offer himself up on the cross as the Lamb of Sacrifice so that when the time DID come we could receive mercy, not condemnation for our rebellion.

Now he is gone.  He has ascended into heaven, as the confession says, and we are left to carry on.  We are to “Walk in His Steps,” to live with the question “What would Jesus do?”  We are the disciples now.  We are the Peters of the world, and it is now in our hands to demonstrate God’s Kingdom to the world.

Consider where Jesus, in his ministry, showed the power and the presence of God’s creative, loving Spirit and brought healing to our spiritual, mental, emotional, and physical lives.

  • Where there was evil, he brought goodness.
  • Where there was condemnation, he brought forgiveness and mercy.
  • Where there was darkness, he brought light.
  • Where there was prejudice and hatred, he brought Love and justice.
  • Where there was emptiness, he brought fullness and meaning.
  • Where there was war, he brought peace.
  • Where there was sickness, he brought health.

All of this is healing in the broadest and best sense.  The gospel of Mark begins with the words, “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.”  The Good News is news about the reign of God in the whole of our lives.

Now, I cannot speak for non-Christians, and might not be able to speak for all Christians, but for those who are followers of Christ, here is what I see:

We are to pray for those who need wholeness of every kind and as we pray for the physical, spiritual, mental and emotional well being of others, we can do so with the sure and certain knowledge that these prayers flow from the heart Christ himself.  And sometimes, even in our broken, rebellious day, God heals.  The details of where, when and how the healing of persons takes place is totally in the hands of God; but the faith and trust that this is the will of God is in our hands.  (Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven).

After that, we are to heal in every way we can; healing “even the least of these” without regard for what people can pay. 

We need to NOT heal the left hand while destroying the right as in healing the body while throwing the family into bankruptcy. 

We need to heal without regard to “pre-existing conditions,” without exclusions by insurance companies (in employer monopolies) or limits by “cost benefit analysis” (as in the proposed government monopoly). 

No one should ever be put in the position where they are made helpless and hopeless and are encouraged to die and as Scrooge said, “Decrease the surplus population.”

We need to reward those who have dedicated their lives to the healing professions and find a way to protect those who do their HUMAN best from being sued. 

We need to encourage the drug companies and hospitals, through the use of profit and fair competition or by some other EFFECTIVE means to develop new and better drugs and therapies in order to stay on the cutting edge of what we humans can do to heal.

We need to each do our part to bring wholeness to this broken, troubled world.  This is what Jesus did, and it is what we should do as well.

That is what I think.  What do you think?

–Michael   “Word & Spirit: The testimony of two.”

Reflection: Tyranny by any other name still smells…

M G Kizzia Leave a comment

Tyranny deletes freedom by definition.  It limits or eliminates choices.  Others make decisions on your behalf: what you must do, where you can go, and at times even what you must wear.  German Jews in the thirties wore the Star of David.  There was no debate.  The face of democracy in Myanmar is currently under house arrest — at least through the next election.

The military is a tyrannical system (perhaps by necessity) where people with rank tell those without rank where to go and what to do and even what to wear.  The fact that the military is often successful in its missions is to be considered.  Tyranny is not necessarily cumbersome or inefficient – not like democracies.  Mussolini made the trains run on time, and the people of Italy rejoiced.

But to succeed, there are two things tyranny must do: it must dehumanize people, and it must insulate (isolate) those at the top so their decisions are not touched by people (common humanity). 

First:  Sometimes, tyranny may demonize people, like the Jews in Nazi Germany or like the Nobility in the early days of the French Revolution; and it is not uncommon to so characterize the perceived enemies of the prevailing tyrannical order.  And to be sure, enemy lists are common:  keep that in mind all of you wacko-liberals and conservative, right-wing extreemists!.  Yet for most people – those not actively engaged in some form of dissent – at the least, tyranny must dehumanize.  This is the only way to insure that “a few people” can make those hard decisions that may mean life or death for “most of the people” living under the tyranny.  It might be hard to deny Bob or Mary their daily bread.  It is not so hard to deny 276-B and 617-M.

The military is well known for name, rank and serial number.  That the men and women have names is nice, but what really matters is the rank and serial number.  In the military, people are not people, they are numbers; and if you doubt the dehumanization that the military does in order to function effectively, try some basic training.

Second:  It is imperative that those at the top be isolated in order to make the hard decisions without being swayed by genuine human considerations.  This follows like night and day from the need to dehumanize.  Those at the top and also those on the job need to live in a psychological bubble, if not in a real one.  This is the way bureaucrats have worked successfully since the beginning of time.  The chief defense for death camp prison guards at Nuremburg was “I was just doing my job.”  It did not matter to them that people were being gassed and thrown into ovens.  “I was just paid (required) to do my job, and that is all I did.”  The bubble is imperative for any tyrannical system to operate effectively.

Why is this important?  Because too many people are suffering and I cannot see any relief on the horizon.

Tyranny through the last century and into this one has come in many forms.  One primary form has been in the board room and the upper reaches of the corporate world, and it is particularly apparent when a company becomes “Too big to fail.”  Hundreds of thousands of jobs have been lost over the past several months at an alarming rate.  Do you think anyone has lost any sleep over that fact?  Corporate Executives generally cannot even name a person on the “front lines” in their own business.  It’s just numbers.  We had 50 in that department.  Now we have 30.  (And to be clear, those 30 now have to work like slaves for fear of their own job).  Meanwhile, 20 more have joined the ranks of people who through no particular fault of their own have been discarded.  Yet the company goes on, telling people what to do, where to go (if they want to keep their job) and even what to wear (dress code).

And, of course, there is the government.  Now, you knew this was coming so don’t get your partisan knickers in a twist.  Instead, let’s go back a bit in time.  One (if not the) primary purpose of the United States Constitution was to guard against tyranny.  The Great Experiment, so-called, was to have a severely limited and deliberately restricted central government which would be responsible for the minimum duties deemed necessary for unity.  The central government was to keep its hands off and fingers out of everything else…everything.  Life was to be in the hands of the states, the local communities and with certain individual liberties guaranteed.  I don’t believe anyone would argue with the fact that we are a long way from the American ideal.  These days, it is nearly impossible to find any aspect of life where the federal government does not have some stake – a finger if not a whole hand.  So what happened?

It is debatable, but just as fast as I can put it: I believe the tipping point came when the Union (central government) forces beat the States (we called it the Civil War).  And Lincoln was a Republican.  By the time of Herbert Hover (another Republican) things had slid so far (and the central governors had become so isolated) the answer perceived for the stock market crash was MORE regulation and HIGHER taxes.  (Can you say, “Let them eat cake?”).  Of course, this led to the election of FDR, (a Democrat) who, far from pulling the government back from intervention in life, actually accelerated the process.  (Crisis you know: Depression and then the war).  The agricultural business in this country was socialized so long ago by price supports and subsidies, we don’t even question it.  Likewise steel, railroads, well… etc.  Then, LBJ (another Democrat) further accelerated the process by designing federal programs that actually encouraged dependency which, to speak plainly, encouraged the tyranny of the central government to tell people what to do, where to go, where to live and how much they were worth!

I believe both Kennedy and Reagan (in their own ways) did try to slow down the growth of tyranny, but more recently, Clinton sped it back up again, and so did Bush.

So now we have Obama and we find we are going to be told what kind of cars we can drive, what our salary will be, how much money we can make with the warning that if we make too much, it will be taken from us.  We are to be told what doctor we can see, what treatment we can get if we get ill, how we can heat or cool our homes, what energy we are allowed to use, and how much it will cost us… and what can you do with your own property without getting nine million permits and plan approvals first, not the least from the EPA.

With all of this, do I blame Barak Obama?  Absolutely not.  He is the conclusion, not the premise.  So what then, is the Great experiment over?  Despite all of the safeguards built into the system by the founders, have we slid into tyranny anyway?  Perhaps we have.  What I really want to know, though, is what our uniform is going to be.  It can’t be brown shirts.  That’s been done.  Personally, I vote for green shirts.  That would seem to fit the current culture and climate.