Luke 10 ☀
I’ll second what AZSpot said and add that the goals of health care are relatively straight forward. Prolong life. Reduce pain. We can find questions of biomedical ethics—but generally speaking, we agree on 99% of what a medical system should provide.
The same is not true of religion. I want the state to avoid as much entanglement with my church as possible—because I value freedom of conscience. When the state gets bungled up in religion, things get bad fast. The goals of the state are frequently incompatible with the goals of religion.
Or, to put it differently, if Bellatoris recommended a doctor, I would take the recommendation seriously. I can trust Bellatoris, who I have never met, to have a pretty good understanding of what I’m looking for in a doctor. I would not have the same trust regarding a church.
I don’t mean to say that religion is a personal thing, that we’re all equally right, or some other such hogwash. I’m just pretty sure that Bellatoris is a heretic. (No offense, Bellatoris. I’m pretty sure he’d say the same about me.) The state is not institutionally competent to handle religious matters. And, unfortunately, the several churches have proven themselves institutionally incompetent to handle medicine for the poor.
My questions for Squashed (and others):
1) Are we to assume that health care falls outside of the religious realm - that is, that it is a public matter, and religion should have no bearing on it? If so, how do religious arguments for government intervention fit in? If not, how should religion properly influence health care?
2) Does religious funding for health care necessitate conversion experiences?
3) Has the government proven itself “competent to handle medicine for the poor”? If government has failed in the past, why do we assume it can work now? If church has failed in the past, why do we assume it cannot be fixed?
4) On what basis do you make the claim of my heresy? (I will note, this question is perhaps best suited for private discussion.) As an aside, how can one claim calling one a heretic is not meant to be offensive?
1) It’s not an either/or choice. But the admonition of Jesus to care for the “least of these” should be manifested in whatever way possible. That 45,000 people die a year (according to a peer reviewed medical study) is a tragic truth that beckons a remedy.
2) No. But compassion motivated by the spirit in Christ can claim a heart.
3) Here we go again with the bromide of government failure. Yes, government is “we the people”, comprised of fallen brothers and sisters, prone to corruption and frailty. But for all the libertarian decrying of government inefficiency, just about every modern marvel we are blessed with today was the result of the work of that dreadful, evil government. Electricity, interstate highways, pharmaceutical advances, computers, modems, the internet, space travel, etc.… all forged by government, not private industry (or via state sanctioned monopoly). And programs like medicare, social security, WIC, etc.… have indeed been successful in granting life and thwarting death. Ask an elderly person (GI generation or silent generation) that can recall firsthand history from the time of the New Deal, and the depredations that afflicted the elderly and sick. And how those “redistributive” programs made in a difference in the matter of life and death.
4) Far be it from me to absolutely ascertain intent here, but I think squashed is stating that each individual brings a unique envisioning of faith into the social dialog, and that the ascribed of one set of religious tenets tend to cast other collectives of believers as “heretical”. One man’s orthodoxy is another’s heresy. That the Christian faith has diffused so greatly, that in a sense, all other divergent adherents are viewed as heretical.
