Schaeffer says that the Christian world-view offers the only rational explanation of why there is such moral confusion in the world: this condition is abnormal. The report of the fall from grace in Genesis three is not just a morality play; it is the basis for everything that has gone wrong since. Trying to make sense of the human condition without understanding how we got here is like explaining email without reference to the Internet.
We are moral creatures; this is a moral universe; the Creator made it that way. But we are, as G. K. Chesterton says, "broken gods," or in Blaise Pascal's formulation: "fallen princes." We know intuitively that some things are right and some things are wrong; we often wish to right those wrongs which appall us particularly. But as one dear soul recently complained, how do we know who to help when we are bombarded by needs every day?
When Philip Yancey was visiting Russia in 1991 after the fall of communism, an editor of Pravda, once an atheistic mouthpiece, ironically complained, "We don't know how to motivate people to show compassion.... How do you reform and motivate people? How do you get them to be good?" Yancey's reply: "Goodness cannot be imposed externally, from the top down; it must grow internally, from the bottom up."
Which leads me to the political situation we find ourselves in regarding health care reform. Universal health care stands as a symbol for the human desire to rage against the effects of the fall. Physical sickness plays as a metaphor for the metaphysical disease that plagues the whole world system. Most conservative politicians understand this no better than their progressive counterparts. Conservatives have allowed the premise to be assumed that health care is a right guaranteed by the Constitution. The whole gang in Washington D.C. is trying to negate the consequences of the fall through legislation. They are trying to get us to be good, as the Russian editor put it.
Study the history of health care, hospitals in particular, and you will find that for millennia the care of diseased or injured persons was thought to be a responsibility of religion. The Council of Nicea in 325 A.D. urged Christians to build hospitals in every cathedral city. Well into the nineteenth century virtually all health care in the west was either provided by non-profit religious institutions or paid for by the recipients. The growth of the insurance industry in the last century finally made health care profitable, shifting the burden away from the church. Shared risk allowed people to bear the costs health care without relying on charity.
But insurance used to be optional; those who could afford it bought protection. The debate in Washington now seems to assume that either health care itself, or at least the insurance to pay for care is a human right. Some proponents of universal health care equate their opponents with those who stood against civil rights in the last century. But is the right to vote or work or live where one chooses on the same plane as the right to a free tonsillectomy? Or free birth control or free Viagra?
I am not unmoved by the plight of those who have need of physical care they can not afford. I am unmoved by the argument that the government has the right to force me to pay those unmet costs. (See my "Open Letter to Debbie Stabenow.") Helping those in need is good; forcing people to be good is not. Call me Pollyanna, but I believe that if the health insurance industry and its related costs went away today, there would be enough charity in the hearts of men to care for everyone who truly needed care, but could not afford to pay for it. That would be the Christian way; but as President Obama recently opined, we are not a Christian nation anymore.
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