Acts 3:1-10
We have lived our lives by the assumption that what was good for us would be good for the world. We have been wrong. We must change our lives so that it will be possible to live by the contrary assumption, that what is good for the world will be good for us. And that requires that we make the effort to know the world and learn what is good for it.
-Wendell Berry
There are so many healing stories in the Bible we could choose for today’s topic of health care! I like this one from Acts. A beggar wants a coin or two to buy bread for the day. Peter and John have no change to spare, but instead they heal his twisted feet so he can work and feed himself. Being made well doesn’t just fix his body, it gives him a productive place in society, lets him participate in the community in a new way, and restores his dignity. In every age health care is about more than medicine.
From the earliest days those who followed Jesus have been healers. In the first century some used energy healing to perform miracle cures. In the middle ages monasteries and convents opened the first hospitals and cared for the sick and dying. In the years of the great missionary movements people traveled the world bringing not just religion but education and health care to far-flung places. Today my brother-in-law started 20 years ago as a doctor in a remote clinic and now in that same place he oversees a hospital, a clinic, a TB sanitorium, trains nurses and doctors, funds training for teachers and more. Faith and health care go hand in hand.
In this first of our summer justice series, Brad Gibbens is going to help us have a conversation about health care. Brad is the director of the Center for Rural Health at UND where he’s spent decades helping rural communities provide care for their people. He’s going to help us reflect on that experience and on next steps in health care in our country.
Brad, would you start us off by telling us some things that have improved in the time you’ve been working in healthcare in North Dakota? What are we doing right?
If you could name just one or two ways we could improve health care in our country, what would you like us to do differently?
We want these messages to be conversations this summer, and I know you have a question to pose to us for discussion.
As we close this conversation today, I want to bring us back to the Wendell Berry quote for a minute. Berry suggests that we need to reframe our perspective as we think about the common good. Whether health care is a right or a privilege fits with his reframing. Health care as a privilege of those with resources benefits us in many ways. Wealth funds research and brings important advances in knowledge and treatment. But that system leaves many people out. Worldwide there are many treatable diseases which go without care. In our own country those who can’t afford insurance are treated for advanced disease rather than receiving preventive care over a lifetime. How does seeing health care from a global perspective benefit us as well as others?