Who Would Jesus Heal?
Featured, The Remedy — By Sarah Thebarge on October 8, 2009 at 12:00 am
In 1883, Emma Lazarus, a young American woman from a wealthy Jewish family, wrote a sonnet called, “The New Colossus.”
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
In 1886, the sonnet was read at the dedication of the Statue of Liberty. A plaque with this inscription was to have been mounted on the pedestal for the Statue’s unveiling, but this detail was overlooked and no plaque was made.
Emma Lazarus died of lymphoma the following year. One of her friends took up the cause to have the poem engraved on the Statue, and in 1903 it happened: an engraving was mounted in the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty. The Statue and its silent summons became familiar and comforting to the immigrants sacrificing all they had to accept Lady Liberty’s open invitation.
I was thinking about this poem the other day, in the context of the vitriolic dialogue our country has been having about health insurance. I thought of the heated words that have been expressed about extending health insurance to the uninsured, and, even worse, to the illegals.
I thought of these people who embody Emma Lazurus’s words. Many uninsured Americans, and most illegal immigrants, fulfill the criteria listed on the Statue.
Tired? More like exhausted. Poor? Yes. Destitute, even. Huddled masses? I thought of the immigrants who’ve suffocated in crowded trucks on the long journey from Mexico to the U.S. border. Yes, huddled. Yearning to breathe free? Check. (Suffocating in cargo holds of ships and wheel wells of airplanes probably constitutes yearning to breathe.) Wretched refuse? To some, yes. Homeless? Uh-huh. Tempest-tost? I thought about the people drowning on homemade rafts en route from Cuba to Miami. Yes, tempest-tost.
And yet, we do not stand with Liberty at the mouth of the harbor and invite them to find refuge on our shores.
We tell them to get jobs, but we won’t give them working papers. We tell them to feed themselves, but even those who are working don’t get paid enough to buy basic necessities like food – let alone luxuries like health insurance. We arrest them for sleeping on our streets, but God forbid they should try to move into the house next door. We purport to welcome the world to our shores, but not if they have communicable diseases or speak Spanish. We’ll let them sew our clothes and scrub our toilets and change our oil and add fries to our Value Meals while we’re busy building our capitalistic empire, but they’d better not take one single cent from the money we make standing on their backs.
It seems to me if the poor among us took America to court, they’d have a strong case for a successful class-action lawsuit. All they’d have to do is point to the invitation on the Statue of Liberty and argue that it’s false advertisement. And they’d be right. So far, we’re all talk, and mournfully little action.
As I’ve followed the recent healthcare discussion, I’ve been most interested in how Christians enter into the debate. Various sides contend to have the answer to the question, “Who Would Jesus Heal?”
Granted, the question is a bit contrived, because Jesus didn’t need health insurance policies or medicine or hospitals to make people well. He just did it. With a touch of His hand, with a word from His mouth, with the strength from His robe, He healed the sick.
But His ascension left us in a lurch, and now we have to figure out how we as Christians, who claim to be the tangible presence of Jesus on the earth, should handle this critical issue.
One side of the aisle argues Jesus would support a privatized system where health insurance is synonymous with employment. Capitalism, with its privately-run companies, is the only and obvious way to run a country, they say. The other side of the aisle argues Jesus would support a government-sponsored healthcare system because it does the most good for the most people.
Both sides can point to examples and verses from the Bible to support their positions. (Although it seems to me both arguments have their fair share of holes.) And yet we argue on, playing tug-of-war with Jesus, intent on proving whose side He’s on.
But if our behavior as Americans disappoints the Lady of Liberty who stands in the harbor with a torch in her hand, surely our conduct as Christians devastates the Man of Sorrows, who stretched out his arms on a cross and invited a world of lost and hungry sinners to come to Him.
We may not be able to clearly conclude from the Bible whether Jesus would favor universal health care for Americans or not. But what we know for certain is whose side Jesus is on: not the Republicans or the Democrats or even the Independents, but the orphans and the widows and the hungry and the weary and the sick and the lost.
It seems to me that while we are busy shouting at each other from opposite sides of the aisle, Jesus is in the middle, sitting with the huddled, tired masses dying on the floor.
124 Comments
James, you said “The reason I said the 46 million number isn’t correct is because it includes many people who IMO shouldn’t be included, including those who can afford insurance but don’t have it by their own choice.”
The numbers I gave are statistics- they don’t change because of your opinion; they are what they are. When you find the study that shows the number of uninsured who actually want to be uninsured, please let us know. But until you have that data, how can you make such presumptions?
In the meantime, these numbers are the crux of the debate. If you can’t even agree to this, then like Jordan said, we can’t even discuss it further because we’re operating in different realities.
You also said that the James passage refers to the poor, not the under/uninsured (this is my paraphrase, correct me if I’m wrong.) But when 60% of bankruptcies are caused by medical debts, how can you not conclude that it’s the health care crisis that is making the majority of these individuals poor?
You can wait until they go bankrupt and then step in (although the church seems to be failing even on that level), or you could intervene a step sooner and save them the grief and the pain.
In the meantime, these under/uninsured are dying at faster rates than insured people. If you don’t think that’s a problem, I guess the debate ends there.
Dan, sane or not, the Obama plan is in fact an overhaul. And “option” is a misnomer; it is forcing taxpayers who chose to find jobs with insurance, or those who chose to pay for their own, to ante up not only for those who are so poor that they cannot pay, but also for those who can but choose to spend their incomes on other things. There is nothing about that that the word “public option” could rightly apply to.
I hate talking like this, because ultimately, being forced to part with my money is not my main reason for being against this plan. The increasing dependence on government is very harmful, IMO, and that’s my main problem with it.
@James: Listen, I pay for a lot of things I might not care for and that don’t benefit me directly. It’s part of living in a society. Maybe you would make the same argument about government subsidized small business loans or parks for children or sidewalks or medical research, but if you’re not, there’s a logical inconsistency. My house hasn’t caught on fire yet either, but I’m ok with my neighbors using the fire department if they need fire fighting services. We already pay far, far more per person than any other country for health care, so why not modify the system and cover more people?
I feel like you’re thinking of people who need a government option to afford health insurance as weak or failures (based on the line about “choosing” a job that offers insurance, but as companies cut and cut and cut what they offer their employees, those sort of benefits will be rapidly further and further in most American workers rear view mirrors.
Logical inconsistency in political opinion is unavoidable. As an example, you wouldn’t be for a complete government takeover of the entire economy, would you? Clearly, government does a lot more than it did 220 years ago, when the Constitution came onto the scene. IMO, more govt control will make things worse. I stand by that. But we can’t take away parks, social security, Va benefits, or the zillions of other govt-run institutions in the US. I get that. The fact that we can’t do that, while it leads to some inconsistency, doesn’t change my point one bit: a govt takeover of healthcare will result in worse care, a stronger mindset of govt dependence, and many other undesirable fruit. I stand by that assertion. I hope we never get a chance to prove me right or wrong. But I suspect we will.
Emily said:
“I was remarking more on the fact that Greg J seemed to be spelling people who he disagreed with’s names wrong intentionally”
Nah. Greg misspelled a lot of words that weren’t even names.
True, but most of those words weren’t bolded in red above the comments he was commenting on. Jaimesonster.
I can’t believe I did it, but I actually read through all of these comments before replying again. Ok, not totally thoroughly, but enough to get the idea.
Let me through a different log on the fire. A few Sunday back, I ended up in the ER with severe abdominal pain. I had no idea what it was, but when I was initially examined, they were certain it was appendicitis. I won’t go into the details of the 4 hours I was there, but in the end it wasn’t appendicitis, and I was sent home after some doses of morphine and a referral to see another specialist.
This week I got my insurance statement of benefits for this treatment. Actually, I got 4 of them. I did some quick math in my head and found that the insurance company paid, on average, 33% of the cost of my care. For some things it was as high as 50%, for others as low as 20%. Fortunately for me, all of those included the code for “The provider has agreed to not bill you for the difference.”
So here’s what I don’t get. Who is paying for the difference? Everyone else who is being billed from that hospital, and tax payers who elect legislatures that fund hospitals with tax dollars.
What I haven’t really seen in any “debate” or “discussion” on this issue is the pure economical reality that we are already paying for it. Whether there is a government option or not, we are already paying for it.
The system is broken for everyone. And while I have no problems with anyone choosing not to have health insurance, if/when a person goes into the ER – regardless of their health insurance status – everyone in the system is paying for it. So maybe I’m interested in paying a little less.
As far as those that think the market should decide, it has to be pointed out that there really is no pure economic market for health care. The vast majority of insurance is provided by employers. If your company offers you choices of insurance, it is only within a very small subset within the same contract. You don’t really have a choice. If you work where I work, you cannot even choose to opt-out. You are required to have health insurance. I don’t think that is a bad mandate, btw, but it would be nice to have more choices.
I am an former republican who always voted purple, and now an independent, also known as the purpose-driven centrist (who is way overdue for a column) who still votes purple.
Now in all honesty and complete sincerely, I think the solution to this problem is in the center of both arguments. There needs to be choices, there probably ought to be a government/public option (because realistically that’s what pays for the uninsured now in an inefficient, uncompetitive manner now), and there needs to be more retail competition of private insurance options. There needs to be the same tax-reduced scenario of premiums, but it does come down to choices and availability.
Now I’ve made it this far without mentioning anything about what I think is the “Christian way”. And I’m not going to add anything at this point.
I agree with you, I do think! Might this be practicable to be able to get your blog post translated in to Spanish? English is my second language.
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