This is some of the clearest writing I’ve seen yet on the topic.
Read the whole article, but here’s the take-away to whet your appetite:
In many ways, foreign health-care models are not really “foreign” to America, because our crazy-quilt health-care system uses elements of all of them. For Native Americans or veterans, we’re Britain: The government provides health care, funding it through general taxes, and patients get no bills. For people who get insurance through their jobs, we’re Germany: Premiums are split between workers and employers, and private insurance plans pay private doctors and hospitals. For people over 65, we’re Canada: Everyone pays premiums for an insurance plan run by the government, and the public plan pays private doctors and hospitals according to a set fee schedule. And for the tens of millions without insurance coverage, we’re Burundi or Burma: In the world’s poor nations, sick people pay out of pocket for medical care; those who can’t pay stay sick or die.
This fragmentation is another reason that we spend more than anybody else and still leave millions without coverage. All the other developed countries have settled on one model for health-care delivery and finance; we’ve blended them all into a costly, confusing bureaucratic mess.
I’m a Church of Christ minister. If you aren’t familiar with Churches of Christ, the key point for this post is that we have no denomination hierarchy whatsoever. No judicatories, no dioceses, no bishops, not even a convention. There’s not a missions board or a Sunday School Publishing House. There is nothing whatsoever happening above a congregational level, except what is provided by Church-of-Christ-affiliated universities–which is helpful, but not a true substitute for a governing board.
Therefore: no denominational health insurance plan. Some of the larger congregations provide a group plan, but most C of C ministers are on their own when it comes to insurance.
My wife is a teacher, so after we married I was covered on her plan, which was a good one. But when our first child was born, Sandy wanted to stay home with her. We dragged out her insurance coverage for as long as we could, by taking a one-year family leave from the school district. Then we paid $1300 a month for COBRA coverage. At that point we were scrambling for a way to get health insurance when COBRA ran out. Sandy has a pre-existing condition, so no one was willing to write an individual plan for us, at any cost. We were told that when COBRA ran out, we could apply to be part of North Carolina’s High Risk Insurance Pool, which is prohibitively expensive and even so, we couldn’t count on being accepted.
So here we are, a preacher in a conservative tradition and a stay-at-home-mommy. We’re living the kind of live that my Republican friends say that they admire. And yet, those same friends are actively against the very reforms that would have made it possible for us to have insurance coverage. We’re not slackers, or undocumented immigrants, or same-sex partners or any of the other anti-liberal caricatures–just a preacher and former teacher who would love to do the responsible thing and purchase insurance for our family, if only someone would take our money and give us a policy.
Luckily, in just the nick of time, we found out that an arrangement had been made through the Disciples of Christ denomination (our close relatives in church history), that allowed Church of Christ ministers to enter their group plan. If it hadn’t been for that, either I would be switching denominations or Sandy would have had to go back to work and put our kids in day care. What do the “family values” folks say in response to that?
Would it really undermine our country for the government to provide a plan than anyone could purchase? We can’t be the only ones who fall through the cracks. And how many budding entrepreneurs out there can’t leave their 9-to-5 job to start their own business because they can’t risk being without health insurance?
It’s really shameful how many of these movies I recognize. Almost all of them.
Ever since the publication of Christopher Hitchens book, The Missionary Position, I keep hearing from people who believe that Mother Teresa was twisted person who intentionally perpetuated poverty rather than relieving it because she believed things were better that way. I attended a discussion for an unrelated book last night in which one of the audience member commented that Teresa kept people poor because she thought it would help them get to heaven. The moderator pushed back at that idea, but it obviously had some currency with those present.
I’m not an expert on Teresa, and I haven’t gotten around to Hitchens’ book. So no answers here, but I do have this question. I wonder whether its the case that Mother Teresa’s admirers and detractors would all essentially agree on the facts of what she did, but interpret them in almost opposite ways. Could it be that she chose to focus on comforting the sick and dying rather than relieving poverty because that was her calling, her charism, and she needed to focus on bringing a personal touch to as many people as possible in Calcutta? Those who fell under the influence of her ministry certainly seemed grateful. Hitchens, whose vision goes no further than the material comforts of this life has no appreciation for a touch of grace to the dying because it doesn’t solve anything he can see. It has no tanglible results. But with every hug, every bath, every spoonful of soup brought to the lips of an invalid, Teresa was sowing grace amidst despair.
I’m not opposed to poverty relief efforts–quite the opposite! But I do recognize that there is more than one kind of good work in the world. I’d be cautious about criticizing someone for doing a kind of good work different than the one I prefer. There’s room for both.
And I’m definitely of the opinion that Teresa is just too tempting a target for my atheist friends. There’s a little too much glee in the criticisms. What a delight it is to show that the woman so admired around the world was a fraud! If the iconic holy woman of the modern age was really a pathological deviant, then there can’t be anything to that Christianity stuff after all, can there?
Not For Sale: There are 27 million slaves worldwide right now. Here’s a map of where they are.
For many people, awareness of modern slavery—especially slavery in America—began with John Bowe, when his article “Nobodies” was published in the New Yorker in 2003. That was subsequently followed by a book of the same title, part of which became the basis for This American Life #344 “The Competition.” Here’s Bowe on NPR’s Marketplace as well.
Now ethicist David Batstone (interview) is devoting his time to abolishing slavery, through his book Not For Sale, and through co-founding the Not For Sale Campaign, which “equips and mobilizes Smart Activists to deploy innovative solutions to re-abolish slavery in their own backyards and across the globe.” Here’s an excerpt from the book.
So all the elders of Israel gathered together and came to Samuel at Ramah. They said to him, “You are old, and your sons do not walk in your ways; now appoint a king to lead us, such as all the other nations have.”
But when they said, “Give us a king to lead us,” this displeased Samuel; so he prayed to the LORD. And the LORD told him: “Listen to all that the people are saying to you; it is not you they have rejected, but they have rejected me as their king. As they have done from the day I brought them up out of Egypt until this day, forsaking me and serving other gods, so they are doing to you. Now listen to them; but warn them solemnly and let them know what the king who will reign over them will do.”
Samuel told all the words of the LORD to the people who were asking him for a king. He said, “This is what the king who will reign over you will do: He will take your sons and make them serve with his chariots and horses, and they will run in front of his chariots. Some he will assign to be commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and others to plow his ground and reap his harvest, and still others to make weapons of war and equipment for his chariots. He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive groves and give them to his attendants. He will take a tenth of your grain and of your vintage and give it to his officials and attendants. Your menservants and maidservants and the best of your cattle and donkeys he will take for his own use. He will take a tenth of your flocks, and you yourselves will become his slaves. When that day comes, you will cry out for relief from the king you have chosen, and the LORD will not answer you in that day.”
I Samuel 8:4-18
In this text, God sees a human king as a rival, a false god. The king will claim divine prerogatives for himself. Notice that the problem here isn’t exactly that the king will institute a tax, but that the tax is, overtly, presented in the language of a tithe. He wants a tenth, and he wants the best that the fields produce. But the best is supposed to go to God! The people will have to choose–who gets our best now, God or the government? Your sons will be caught up in the military-industrial complex, and your daughters will be perfumers and cooks and bakers for the king–the same kinds of servants that the demigod Pharaoh was surrounded by.
I know that the force of this text is somewhat ameliorated when David comes along and is the apple of God’s eye. But we shouldn’t let the force of this critique slip away from us too easily. This is God’s initial reaction to the idea of human governance. And he says people won’t be able to serve both him and a king. It’s a long way from here to the current evangelical position, which is that serving government and serving God are almost always the same thing.
At what point does participation and support of government become idolatry? Or do we think that isn’t possible any more? After all, in the West, we are democratic. The people themselves hold the reigns (in theory). And we would never set ourselves up as gods, would we?
From Greg Boyd’s blog:
I am passionately convinced that if Mennonites will hold fast to (and in some cases, return to) their historic vision of a non-violent, self-sacrificial, counter-cultural Kingdom that transcends nationalism and politics, and if they are willing to become very flexible with their distinctive cultural traditions, Mennonites are positioned to provide a home for the increasing number of people such as myself who are discovering this vision of a beautiful Kingdom and who therefore are repudiating “Christendom” (the traditional “church militant and triumphant”). Many of us want to be rooted in a historic tradition and fellowship that espouses this vision, and this makes becoming a Mennonite very appealing.
I only know one Mennonite–a local pastor in town who was raised in a different denomination (Baptist, I think) and wanted to be part of a church that would understand and support his vocal pacifism. He found that among the Mennonites. We had lunch a while back and I was telling him about the peace tradition in Churches of Christ, folks like James Harding and David Lipscomb in the 1800’s who believed that human government was inherently corrupt, and worse, idolatrous. They knew that the tendency of government–any government–was to exalt itself to rival God, and demand blood sacrifice. Governments would send their young men to die and to kill others.
Lipscomb wrote things like this:
The children of God are so mixed and mingled with the kingdoms of the world, that God cannot destroy the wicked kingdoms, without destroying his own children. Hence the call of God is:
“Come out of her my people that ye be not partakers of
her sins and that ye receive not of her plagues.” (Rev.
xviii: 4.)This is spoken of the Babylon of human government. We cannot find one word of ground, in all the New Testament, for the children of God participating in the kingdoms of the evil one. The practice weakens the church of God; deprives it of the service, the talent, time and devotion of its children, gives its strength to the building up of what God proposes to destroy. It brings the spirit of the world kingdoms into the church of God, corrupts the church, drives out the spirit of God, destroys the sense of dependence upon God, causes the children of God to depend upon their own wisdom and devices, and the arm of violence, and the institutions of earth rather than upon God and his appointments; weans them from trust and faith in God, and from service in his kingdom, diverts their minds, means and service from the church to the kingdoms of the world, and so defiles and corrupts the church that God cannot bless that church.
I know about this, and at one point, a bunch of people did. And they respected it. There’s a university named for Lipscomb in Tennessee, and one named for Harding in Arkansas. These guys weren’t outliers, they were in the mainstream of our movement.
I’m not enough of a historian to know when those views lost currency. When I was growing up, I never even heard of non-government involvement and pacifism as faithful options. Good Christians were supposed to vote Republican and support the troops. I suspect it was World War II that sounded the death knell for the radical kingdom of God versus kingdom of the world theology in Churches of Christ. I’ve aligned myself with that strain of our tradition, but as a movement we’re so far away from our pacifist roots that it’s like I’m speaking a foreign language when I try to talk about this stuff.
Which is a real shame. I would like for Churches of Christ to be appealing for a guy like Greg Boyd, but most people aren’t going to think of Churches of Christ the same way they think of Mennonites. Because that’s just not us anymore. Maybe we’ll recapture the pacifist tradition. I know some younger people who are attracted to that posture. But most of them are on their way to a different denomination. I don’t know if they’ll stay among us long enough to help us change.
Which is fine. We’re far from the only outpost of the kingdom. Peace be unto them.
A side note: a couple of weeks ago the associate minister at our church asked for suggestions for what message to put on the church marquee. I recommended “Praying for the Peace of Iran.” He thought that would be controversial. Which is right. But that’s wrong.
How many times did Jesus tell us to pray for our enemies? How often do we?
How many times did Jesus tell us to pray for our troops?
From an email I sent today answering a question that followed-up on a recent sermon.
I think you understood what I was saying exactly right. And, wow, that’s a good question. If troubles are valuable here for our growth, will we not have them in heaven?
I think it’s hard to figure out exactly what is going to happen in the world to come. On the one hand, the lion will lie down with the lamb, and God will wipe away every tear, and there is no more sorrow or pain or death. On the other, it seems to me that there will still be meaningful work to do (although what kind of work I really can’t imagine). Since the saints will reign with Christ, doesn’t that mean that they will be overseeing some kind of divine project? For a long time I’ve thought that the verses that say those who are faithful with few things will be trusted with many things imply some kind of continuation on the new earth–if we are faithful here, God will give us even more (and more meaningful) work to do there. Since human fulfillment seems to depend a lot on creatively overcoming obstacles to accomplish purposeful work, I have a hard time thinking that God would wire us that way and then the resurrected life would wind up being one enormous, overly long summer vacation. There’s more there, although the Bible only hints at it.
I guess my working theory is that in our incorruptable states, pain and loss won’t work any more as a means to growth. Peace can permeate everything. But somehow I don’t think that means we give up on excitement–it’ll just turn into the kind of excitement when things get gradually better and better, in surprising ways, and each new step forward is an unexpected delight. But I can’t provide book, chapter and verse for that! It just seems to be to be the overall trajectory of the scriptures.
Thinking out loud here,
Kirk
There’s an interesting discussion going at over at Metafilter about Jimmy Carter’s decision to leave the South Baptist denomination because of their views on the status of women. MeFi is made up of 50,000 liberal atheists, 15 conservatives and me, so you can imagine the tenor of the conversation.
The church I’m currently serving in is almost completely egalitarian. Well, that’s an exagerration, but women lead singing, pray, read scripture, make announcements, and lead communion meditations, which is miles ahead of any other Church of Christ I’ve been a part of. It’s why we are here. But I certainly haven’t forgotten the rhetoric of the patriarchal churches. One of the most interesting things to me is the vociferious insistence that men and women have equal value, all evidence to the contrary inside their congregations. It’s a weird definition of equality.
As I say in the MeFi thread:
“Equal value” is a pointless kind of equality. I think by it people mean that God loves women just as much as men, and their souls are worth just as much, or something completely ineffable like that. But when it comes to expressing equality where it counts–equal voice, equal status, equal opportunity, it just isn’t there. If men make all the key decisions, if only men can serve as pastors, if men can teach women but women can’t teach men, but you still can’t see “how that would make women less than men,” I don’t know what else we can say to you.
And, a bit later in the conversation:
And most of the folks who say that men and women should have different roles in the church don’t mean it. They mean women should be denied some of the men’s roles, but men can do anything they want. I have never, in all my years in patriarchal churches (and those were quite a few years), seen a man denied any position he wanted. If a man wants to cook for the potluck, volunteer to watch the toddlers, serve on the clean-up crew, teach seven-year-olds in Sunday School, he gets to do it. No one ever says, “Now, brother, men and women have different roles. God didn’t make you to be a cook and a nurturer and a teacher of children. You have to stick to the men’s roles you were created for.” If he is gifted and interested in a traditionally women’s job, he gets to do it. But if a woman is gifted for and interested in a position reserved for men, she gets shut down. I saw it over and over. Whatever is really happening here, it isn’t a strong belief in role differentiation. Because that only gets enforced on one side of the line.
I used to be more tolerant of the 1950’s gender roles in the church, but I’m really tired of it. Keeping the sexes unequal because of a fairly unsophisticated reading of two verses in the New Testament that overlooks the strong biblical trajectory toward equality just grates on me. I want something different for me daughter–and, just as important–for my son.
Alicia Shepherd, NPR ombudsman, explaining why they say “torture” when Gambia does it and “interrogation” when the US does the same thing:
It’s not wrong when the right people do it. It’s not even torture.
This is part of why it’s so hard to have an honest conversation about this stuff. We have to start by admitting the facts.
Good stuff here. I’ll weigh in if I can find the time.
It’s not the most profound thing ever, but I just presented a conference paper on Alasdair MacIntyre and moral formation. You can get to it by clicking the articles link in the upper right, or find the link under “pages” in the sidebar.
My current favorite song by my current favorite singer, Sandra McCracken.
