Pastoral Letter: Health Care & Our Obedience to God

In their 2009 pastoral letter on health care, the officers of the United Church of Christ reflected upon Jesus’ story of the Good Samaritan.  They wrote:

Jesus reminds us of what it means to love our neighbor; it means we stop and assist in a caring manner that nurtures the neighbor back to health and wholeness. Persons in need are not to be passed by, nor are they to be left abandoned and ignored by the side of the road. Those who would be caring neighbors cannot rest until proper care and services have been obtained for the ones in need.

Healing is one of the things we Christians are called to by our God.  Healing is intimately tied to the good news we proclaim.  We care for other people because they are the image of God.  They are sacred.

So, healing, and by extension health care, is something we care deeply about.  For Christians this isn’t about economics or politics, but about discipleship.  About obedience to God.  About the salvation of the earth.

For us any health care policy must take as its starting point caring for the least of these.  Any system that leaves someone out or provides inadequate care or creates excessive and probative financial burdens is a system that falls short of the will of God.  It is a system that violates our sacred worth as the image of God.

Which means that for us Christians even the current health care system created by the Affordable Care Act did not go far enough.  We therefore resist any efforts to move backwards instead of forwards into the reign of God.

We go further.

We label these efforts as blasphemous and idolatrous.

Peace,

Scott