Amnesia

I have a low-cost solution to propose for our current health care crisis. A great awakening. Returning to God. Revival. That should solve it.

About 70% of health care costs deal with behavioral choices, from homosexuality to junk food. A physician might call it "lung cancer." Others might say it's reaping what cigarettes have sown. A doctor might diagnose it as diabetes. Another word that might work is "gluttony." A specialist might call it liver disease. A prophet would call it drunkenness. So much of what ails us physically has a deeper root. Unfortunately, our society has become sophisticatedly ignorant. We are experiencing moral amnesia. As I complain to my doctor about my aching knees, I conveniently overlook the fifty pound tummy that those knees are being asked to carry, and the late night bowls of ice cream that were penultimate. I am not the greatest example of taking care of myself. And I guess that's my point. We're asking our health care system to change, and do better. Maybe we should be the ones doing the changing. But first we have to wake up to what's really going on, and quit holding to the unscriptural idea that we can sow personal destructiveness, and somehow, someway have the corporate health care system get a different crop to come in (and by the way, we don't want to pay as much for this modern miracle).

When I told someone recently that I had a personal goal of taking better care of myself, they said something that was very politically incorrect. They said, "Food addiction is the only 'acceptable' addiction in the Christian community." Alcohol? Nope. Pornography? No way. Gambling? No go. Potato Chips? Now that's a tolerable sin! She went on to say that "it is only at a church potluck where a 350 pound person can go back for their fourth plate of food and no one will bat an eyelash." Ok, now you've stepped over the line! That is getting dangerously close to hurting my feelings. But all joking aside, the Old Testament prophets often scoffed at the futility of mankind trying to "perfume the pile" - to make sin smell better. In so many ways it is time for our country, but particularly God's people, to shake off our amnesia. Spiritual problems cannot be solved with political, medical, or psychological solutions. We simply can't come up with enough ingenuity to keep from reaping what we sow.