Writing for the Washington Post, Matt Franck steps back from today’s ruling and asks how Christians should respond:
Although the Supreme Court has upheld President Obama’s signature health care law, we are bound in this election year to have a renewed conversation on what the federal government’s responsibilities are in the health care field.
Will liberals rest content with this achievement, or press for even more steps on the road to their long-sought goal of a “single-payer” health care system on the Canadian or British model?
Will conservatives pull together what have, up until now, been disparate threads of policy ideas into an intelligible fabric for conservative, market-based reform? Or will they simply stump for “repeal and replace” without much concrete talk about what would replace the president’s system.
One thing is certain. Christians will continue to argue among themselves about the gospel command to love our neighbors, and the gospel admonition, “as you did it not to one of the least of these, you did it not to me” (Matthew. 25:45). Christians are called upon to heal the sick, feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit the prisoner, and comfort the afflicted. The corporal works of mercy and charity find expression in the tradition of Christian hospitals, schools, soup kitchens, homeless shelters. Catholics in particular have been major contributors in the health care field, training doctors, nurses, and other professionals, and operating many of the country’s great hospitals. Just look around and notice how many hospitals near you have “Saint” or “Holy” or “Sacred” or “Good Samaritan” in their names. But is there a single “Christian view” on health-care policy—or even a single Catholic view?
More here.
June 28th, 2012 | 1:29 pm
Yes many hospitals have the Saint or Holy name, but even so money is the thing that makes them tick. I often wonder in this way as I also notice places like St Francis cat and dog hospital in Toledo.
June 28th, 2012 | 3:01 pm
Thank you for your comments. Caring for each other *is* the Christian thing to do–it represents Jesus’s single commandment, and it can’t be revoked by complaint, protest or partisan bickering.
June 28th, 2012 | 3:45 pm
David, Very few people, Christian or atheist, liberal or conservative, would disagree that caring for each other is a good thing to do. The question is what is the best way to take care of each other. A related question is how do we take care of each other now without bankrupting ourselves, hence destroying our ability to care for each other in the future. It’s a complicated question with lots of room for reasonable people to disagree.
June 28th, 2012 | 5:27 pm
The purpose of good works is to bring glory to God. When the government is in charge of good works, man gets the glory.
Matthew 5:16, In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.
1 Peter 2:12 Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us
Matthew 9:8 When the crowd saw this, they were filled with awe; and they praised God, who had given such authority to men.
June 28th, 2012 | 5:37 pm
Thank you for your comments. Caring for each other *is* the Christian thing to do–it represents Jesus’s single commandment, and it can’t be revoked by complaint, protest or partisan bickering.
If everyone agreed that Obamacare = “caring for each other”, there would be no disagreement.
I don’t know of anyone who is upset at the idea of people being cared for.
June 29th, 2012 | 6:56 am
Matt. 25:45 is not a generic command to care for others. The “least of these” refers back to v. 40, where it reads “the least of these my brothers“. This is a specific reference to Jesus’ followers. Jesus is making an eschatological claim here: one’s destiny in the coming kingdom will be determined by how one has treated Jesus, and that will be determined by how one has treated “the least of Jesus’ brothers”.
So the implication is the opposite of the generic liberal religious implication. Liberal religion (in the sense of J. Gresham Machen’s classic formulation) says that Jesus’ saying is teaching a generic compassion, rooted in a generic heavenly Father, before whom all men are brothers. As Machen pointed out, this religion is not even historically correct: Jesus’ teaching was that, quite literally, “it’s all about me,” it’s all about Jesus eschatological identity and one’s relationship to that identity.
June 29th, 2012 | 2:53 pm
David WL,
Your interpretation of Matthew 25:45 is supported by the notes to the (Catholic) New American Bible:
However, wouldn’t you say many other passages in the Gospels (for example, the story of the Good Samaritan) do indeed imply that the followers of Jesus have obligations to those other than Christians? And in fact, isn’t it an obligation of Christians to bring the Good News to all, so non-Christians are a major concern of Christians as potential recipients of the Good News and potential converts.
As an interesting aside, I remember reading that the Ten Commandments did not begin as a universal code, but a tribal code. There was, then, no general prohibition against stealing, murder, and false witness. There was a prohibition against stealing from a member of ones own tribe, against murdering someone within one’s own tribe, and against bearing false witness against a member of one’s own tribe.
June 29th, 2012 | 5:37 pm
Mr. Nickol:
thanks for the info from the NAB. I knew of similar arguments from other commentaries, but didn’t have that particular resource at hand.
I agree that the Ten Commandments began as a tribal code, and that Judaism and Christianity gradually universalized this code. Certainly Christians have the obligation to bring the Good News to all, which may initially be manifested in deeds of mercy. (The ministry of the early Christians in the plagues that hit the Roman Empire in the 2nd & 3rd centuries, described by Rodney Stark in The Rise of Christianity, comes to mind.)
The problem I was trying to address is the effort–which I regard as exegetically and theological specious–to claim that Jesus’ teachings and Christian ethics are primarily about universal love. There can be no universal love that is not grounded in the particular incarnation of God in Jesus Christ, and the supernatural “unpacking” of that incarnation in the sanctification of the Christian. In my tradition that would be described using the category of the “fruits of the Spirit” (Gal. 5).
June 30th, 2012 | 5:55 am
Galatians 6:10 may be in point here, “So then, while we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, and especially to those who are of the household of the faith”
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