I was reading CS Lewis’s The Four Loves and came across the quote below. Obviously, Lewis is not specifically addressing universal health care or liberalism or the question of using the government to administer love. Even Christians can be found thinking that it is a noble expression of a loving society to have the government do the loving… and this with no apparent thought to the actual effect that this ‘loving’ will have on the people ‘loved’ and the attitude it fuels in the people-government doing the ‘loving.’ The most important thing seems to be that, well, people’s intentions are good, and it’s better to do something rather than nothing. Here is the quote:
This [is] Gift-love, but one that needs to give; therefore needs to be needed. But the proper aim of giving is to put the recipient in a state where he no longer needs our gift. We feed children in order that they may soon be able to feed themselves; we teach them in order that they may soon not need our teaching. Thus a heavy task is laid upon this Gift-love. It must work towards its own abdication. We must aim at making ourselves superfluous. The hour when we can say “They need me no longer” shall be our reward. But the instinct, simply in its own nature, has no power to fulfil this law. The instinct desires the good of its object, but not simply; only the good it can itself give. A much higher love- a love which desires the good of the object as such, from whatever source that good comes- must step in and help or tame the instinct before it can make the abdication. And of course it often does. But where it does not, the ravenous need to be needed will gratify itself either by keeping its objects needy or by inventing for them imaginary needs. It will do this all the more ruthlessly because it thinks (in one sense truly) that it is a Gift-love and therefore regards itself as “unselfish.” (pgs 50-51)
Some discussion.
In the conversations I found myself in objecting to health care, I heard repeatedly how selfish I was being. In the comments on blog entries I saw the same thing. “If you really loved people you would support this bill. You’re just selfish. You just don’t want to pay taxes.”
I oppose universal health care, especially when put forward on secular grounds, precisely because I do love people. I do not believe it is in the best interest of most people in either the short term or long term. The Lewis quote above alludes to some reasons why. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Last week I posted a very long post explaining why I was against universal health care. There was a comment posted that I’ve seen in various forms all over the place:
I certaintly don’t see any “christians” coming into the neighborhoods where I work offering a solution to why a mother of three who works 40 to 50 hours a week to support her family by herself is not entitled to see a doctor.
As a Christian, I don’t believe we’re entitled to anything. If anything, we deserve everlasting punishment but by God’s grace through Christ we do not get what we deserve. That aside, the ‘mother of three’ certainly can go to the doctor. Who said she can’t? Nothing is stopping her even now. Unless we want our doctors to work for free, all we expect is that she pays for it. And if she can’t pay for it, is it really morally justified to take money by force from others to pay for it? If she really can’t afford it, is there a way to help her without committing other immoralities in the process?
This post is not about that, though. I want to focus this post on the first half of the sentence. There is no way to verify her statement here. We don’t know where she works and we don’t know what the people actually believe who ‘come into her neighborhood.’ Moreover, if they were Christians (as I expect many of them are) we’d not know it if they took to heart Jesus’ injunction not to boast about our good deeds or even “let the right hand know what the left hand is doing.” (Matt 6:1-4).
It’s one of those devilish ironies where Christians obeying Jesus can be taken to task for not obeying Jesus. (ie, doing good deeds in secret earns the ‘Christians aren’t doing good deeds’ accusation)
The Christian Church has a PR problem.
In the first place, any regular reader of this blog knows that I take the Church to task like the best of them. The Church could, and should, do much more. But let’s be honest: they actually are doing quite a lot.
Historically, it has been the Church at the forefront in doing good works. For example, Julian the Apostate in the fourth century realized that if he didn’t enact government programs to take care of the poor he’d never be able to make the claim that Christians were pernicious. Slavery was ended by Christians standing up against other Christians. Institutions of higher learning like Harvard and Yale (and hordes of others) were all founded by Christians. Hospitals and medical clinics were founded first by Christians with Christian charity in mind. What tends to happen, though, is all of the good things that Christians have done end up getting secularized. You cannot call Harvard and Yale ‘Christian,’ any more. Nor can you call the local Lutheran-in-the-name hospital in my area, ‘Lutheran.’ WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
“the “right” within the church attempt to leverage the gov. to legislate morality. The “left” within the church attempt to leverage the gov. to legislate compassion. Both approaches fail miserably and are an abdication of our responsibility to be the voice, hands and feet of Jesus in this world.” – spoken by a friend.
Someone slid this article across my desk that inquires as to why evangelical Christians are against universal health care. Now, strictly speaking, I’m not an evangelical. Also, I don’t think that all Christians oppose universal health care, and I will not presume that Christians who do will share all my reasons. I hope this caveat spares me the litany of comments accusing me of ‘generalizing.’
I will take the article as my foil as it is one of the finest expressions of liberal hubris and arrogance that I’ve seen in a while. The author begins by indicating he seriously wanted to know why Christians who are supposed to be all about love would oppose health care. The end includes a long screed:
(p.s. this opinion is reserved for those Christians who have not actually thought about the consequences, and decided that more people are harmed than helped by the new law. They are being consistent with their beliefs. That being said, if you think you are in that camp of people excluded, you probably aren’t. You probably are just being geedy [sic], selfish and jerkish, but convincing yourself that this is why you oppose it, while the truth remains you just dont want taxed, or adhere to some abstract notion of how this bill is UnGodly).
My ministry will be hosting an online apologetics conference this May with the theme of ‘literary apologetics.’ The general idea is to impact the culture in intentional ways to pave the way for better reception of the Gospel of Christ. So culture is on my mind.
Something I’ve been pondering for awhile is this: Is the culture war over? And did we lose it?
I part company with those who seek to Christianize the culture as though this in itself is a noble goal. It seems to me that this would in effect merely make our culture a ‘white washed tomb.’ More important than the culture are the people within it and their state of mind and eternal fates. Nonetheless, people are strongly influenced by the culture at large whether they know it or not or admit it or not. An unfriendly culture will make it harder for people to receive the Gospel.
I believe that. To an extent. I note, however, that the Christian Church itself exploded into existence within a culture that was not yet, by virtue of the fact that there wasn’t a pervasive Christianity to Christianize, Christian. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
A reader of Gilbert Magazine has forwarded to me an article in their latest edition that cites yours truly! The article author stumbled upon my brief review of Chesterton’s Orthodoxy that I posted on the ChristianPost.com. In a discussion on the resurgence of all things Chesterton, the author quotes me saying,
[P]eople will instinctively dismiss the writings of a man that are a shade over 100 years old. The truth, however, is that nothing he confronted then has actually gone away. He confronted the materialistic view of Man in his own life, determining finally that Christianity offered the truest account. He stood against the Darwinists, the eugenicists, the relativists, and the liberal theologians. All these are still here and with us. The only difference is that they have been re-packaged and re-presented.
I suppose many readers have heard the outcry against Planned Parenthood soliciting donations to restore ‘family planning’ services in Haiti. I’ll leave others to reflect on the weirdness of this. I’d like to focus briefly on the hypocrisy of it, for, after all, given Planned Parenthood’s real goals, their only complaint about what happened in Haiti can only be that more people didn’t die.
I have discussed the malthusian nature of abortion proponents at length on this blog so I won’t rehash it. Essentially the point is this: if you really believe that over population is the worst crisis facing the planet, then the mass destruction of tens of thousands of people must be, ultimately, something to celebrate.
For the person bobbing along in the waves of life, such an assessment will be seen as outrageous and insensitive. Still, the assessment is true. In the article I linked to begin with, there is this little quote:
“There are reports of women giving birth on the side of the road as hospitals and houses have been demolished,” said Ms. Stacey, noting also that Planned Parenthood is encouraging donations to Americans for UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund, which is also bringing assistance to pregnant women in Haiti.
“The donations (Planned Parenthood is promoting) will help UNFPA provide emergency reproductive health kits,” said Ms. Stacey. “These kits could essentially function as OB wards as they contain essential drugs, equipment and supplies to provide lifesaving services to pregnant women.”
Now, an ‘emergency reproductive health kit’ is obviously a euphemism for an on-the-run abortion kit, right? Whether or not they really have the capability to ‘provide lifesaving services’ or only have that capability ‘when the life of the mother’ is at risk, I don’t know. What I’d really like to point out that PP is getting these kits from UNFPA- the United Nations Population Fund. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
