Discernment a necessary Christian virtue in health care debate

September 28, 11:37 AMSt. Louis Presbyterian ExaminerAlicia Donathan

Previous Next

Comment Print Email RSS Subscribe

Subscribe

Get alerts when there is a new article from the St. Louis Presbyterian Examiner. Read Examiner.com's terms of use.

Email Address   Include other special offers from Examiner.com Terms of Use

Photo: Flickr.com

One of Jesus' exhortations to His followers was that they exercise discernment.  "Be shrewd as snakes," He said, "and innocent as doves." (Matt. 10:16)  He had the book of Proverbs to back Him up: Proverbs is fundamentally about learning the skill of living well, which is why it repeatedly emphasizes discernment--the ability to understand the world and its inhabitants, in order to distinguish right from wrong, good from best, an honest person from a dishonest one, a fool from a wise person.  And of course, this teaching is given so that we might choose to follow the good, the best, the honest, and the wise.  

This perennial requirement of Christians--that we be discerning--is as pertinent today as ever.  It is an especially imperative skill in the current health care debate.

Nobody should be reassured by politicians' declarations that the legislation under consideration "will not" do thus-and-such, or "does not include provisions for" such-and-such.  The mantra, "There's nothing in this bill that does x," ought to do little to reassure us.  Just because something is not explicit in the legislation does not mean that it cannot or will not happen.  And it does not mean that the legislation is harmless.  Governments historically do not get away with atrocities by suddenly drafting a law that says, "We now have the authority to commit atrocities x, y, and z."  It did not happen that way in Hitler's Germany; it did not happen that way in Mao's China; it won't happen that way in a country like ours.  We did not come to the point of legally protecting child-sacrifice (abortion) by a direct and crude road.  We came there subtly, by applying a sinister, yet consistent, logic.

It happens in small increments, with new laws that open up possibilities and imply certain things.  It happens when legislation is drafted that assumes certain things to be true.  Then, it is only a matter of time and reasoning according to the logic of those assumptions before the implications of such attitudes become realities.  It is a step-by-step process, and it is imperative that we recognize the initial steps before the whole process gets started.  

If we think that health care reform legislation will not or cannot lead to horrific situations, we need to read between the lines.  Health care legislation, in whatever form, lays the logical foundation for the sort of nightmare imagined by its opponents.   "Death panels" have been scoffed at because they are ostensibly not in any legislation under consideration.  But they make perfect sense within the assumptions that underly the drive for health care reform: the assumption that the majority have the right--excuse me, the responsibility--to dictate health care terms to the minority; the assumption that doctors and patients are not making and cannot make good health care decisions without some form of interference--excuse me, "support"--from the government; and the assumption that bureaucrats, of all people, are competent to oversee health care for others and make judgments about costs versus benefits in the abstract.  Given these assumptions, "death panels," no matter how far-fetched they may seem to some, are not an unreasonable development.  They make sense given the framework that governs the drive for a government role in health care reform.

Christians need to be able to recognize this.  If we are called to be discerning, then we must not look merely at what politicians are telling us; we must look at the assumptions that lie behind what they are telling us, and we must understand the internal logic of those assumptions, how they work together, and what they mean if we accept them--and allow people who believe in them to govern us.  We must, above all, jettison our myopia and be able to look beyond the immediate to the future.  We must understand the meaning of sea-changes in presuppositions.  It is time to connect the dots.