eShape of the Christian Life 17: Health and medicine
"Give the physician his place, for the Lord created him; there is a time when success lies in the hands of physicians" (Ecclesiasticus 38:12).
How fascinating: if I ask for prayer requests, 9 out of 10 are related to illness. We have thousands of things to pray about, but we pray most often and passionately about health issues -- all the more remarkable since we are the healthiest people with the most brilliant medical protection ever to live on the planet. Does prayer become, then, another "treatment," with God (like the minister) a "physician's helper" or even a last resort? Health issues confuse us about God, and about prayer. Think about it: before the introduction of antibiotics, vaccinations, and public health measures (such as insuring a clean water supply), suffering and death were more "normal" - no less grievous, but normal. Women died routinely in childbirth; in a family of 12, 7 might survive to adulthood. In Bible times, life expectancy hovered around 28 or 30. But now, if someone gets leukemia or has an aneurism, we wonder why. Our ancestors knew we were mortal, vulnerable - but modern medicine has raised the expectation that we can live long and well, so when we do not, God's very existence is questioned.
Perhaps instead of questioning God, we might give thanks. If you are reading this email, you treasure the lives of several someones who, a century ago, would have died without God's blessing of medicine, which has come so far, so fast, that many physicians wind up in a double bind: "They must do everything they can to keep us alive. but then they must endure our blame when, inevitably, they fail. Almost as perplexing is the fact that although doctors are obligated to use every possible medical technology to keep us alive in order to insure that we will die ?only when everything possible has been done,' we complain that doctors go to unreasonable lengths to keep us alive" (Stanley Hauerwas).
No matter what titanic heights medicine might scale, you and I (and our descendants) will never be delivered from our mortality, our vulnerability to suffering. In fact, the very progress we celebrate can breed new, unanticipated problems! As believers we can humbly acknowledge the limitations of human life, and not chafe. Many ethical issues dance around the human desire to be godlike, our preference not to bump up against any limits at all. Medicine touts that you can craft the life you want: a pill to make you feel good, a little surgery to make you look good, selecting your child's gender (and more) as if shopping in the mall. But we were not made by God to be masters of our fate, nor even to be flawlessly healthy; the spiritual life is all about accepting what is given in the rough wrestling with difficulties. A dark mood may not always be an illness to be treated, but a spiritual nudge toward God. A physical feature that isn't all Hollywood may be sheer loveliness in God's eyes. Children have pressures enough.
Watching his father die, Thomas Merton wrote, "Behind his walls of isolation, he communed with God who gave him light to understand and make use of his suffering, to perfect his soul. This terrible illness which was relentlessly pressing him down into the jaws of the tomb was not destroying him after all. Souls are like athletes, that need opponents worthy of them, if they are to be tried, extended, pushed to the full use of their powers. My father was in a fight with his tumor, and none of us understood the battle. We thought he was done for, but it was making him great. And I think God was already weighing out to him his reward."
Another email series would be required to explore issues of medical ethics. As believers, we support science and discovery; we are patient as we think wisely about issues that are mere toddlers (remembering that most quandaries in medical ethics are newer than my children!). But we never forget that the God who gave us souls like athletes (and does not afflict us with illness), is determined via our struggles to make us great. So we pray, to the one who helps not just the physician but all of us in our battles, zealous for the reward only God can give.
James
james@mpumc.org
