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God is Concerned with Life's Trivialities
Health-care reform is an economic, political and medical issue. But On Faith panelist and evangelical leader Jim Wallis says it's also a "deeply theological issue, a Biblical issue and a moral issue." Do you agree? Why or why not?
It was only three days after the greatest miracle humanity had ever witnessed - the parting of the Red Sea and the deliverance of the Israelites from the hands of their oppressors - that the people began to kvetch (that's Jewish for complain relentlessly). Walking across the Wilderness, they came to a place called Marah, which had no water suitable for drinking. And so they surrounded Moses and started to whine: We're thirsty! What are we supposed to drink?
In 1964, lecturing on race in America, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel claimed that this moment of profound anti-climax is actually one of the most decisive and informative moments of human history:
This episode seems shocking. What a comedown! Only 3 days earlier they had reached the highest peak of prophetic and spiritual exaltation, and now they complain about such a prosaic and unspiritual item as water. The Negroes of America behave just like the children of Israel. Only in 1963 they experienced the miracle of having turned the tide of history... the March to Washington. Now, only a few months later, they have the audacity to murmur, "... We want adequate education, decent housing, proper employment." How ordinary, how unpoetic, how annoying!... That prosaic demand for housing without vermin, for adequate schools, for adequate employment... seems so trite, so drab, so banal, so devoid of magnificence. [And yet,] The teaching of Judaism is the theology of the common deed. God is concerned with everydayness, with the trivialities of life. The prophet's field of concern is not the mysteries of heaven, the glories of eternity, but the blights of society, the affairs of the market place...
God is concerned with everydayness, with the trivialities of life. God is concerned with the women who don't receive proper pre-natal care because they lack coverage. With the parents who wake up each morning and pray that their children don't get sick, or fall off a bike, or get a cavity, because they can't afford the medical bills. God is concerned about the leagues of newly unemployed who now need to add to their list of worries their inability to seek proper medical treatment for injury and illness.
Of course Rev. Jim Wallis is right: this is not just a political issue. It is a moral issue - one that all people of faith and conscience must see as their concern.
And this controversy alerts us to another issue of grave moral concern:
Last week I participated in a gathering of several hundred people demonstrating support for health-care reform. A handful of protesters stood holding life-sized posters of President Obama with a Hitler mustache and tried to drown out our prayers with accusations that Obama wants to murder our grandmas.
Not only is the question of health care a moral concern, but the way that we conduct our conversation about it is as well. The bedrock of our country is healthy and vigorous debate over the issues that matter most. And yet it is deeply disturbing to watch respectful debate degenerate into name-calling and accusations. As a Jew, I find the comparison of Obama to Hitler to be obscene - that the image of my people's deepest suffering would be used to avoid serious discussion and instead instigate anxiety and hatred is unconscionable. As an American, I am concerned that the growing trend of protesters showing up at rallies armed with semi-automatic weapons shouting about Death Panels undermines the very constitutional principles the protesters purport to defend. People of faith must demand that we bring civility back into the national discourse.
And so our obligation is two-fold: to recognize the fiercely urgent need to address the drab, banal, unpoetic questions of how the most vulnerable will receive the medical care they need, and to ensure that we engage in that conversation with humility, respect and civility.
By
Sharon Brous
|
August 19, 2009; 2:20 PM ET
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Posted by: rotcod | August 21, 2009 11:08 AM
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Freedom from fear and freedom from want. The resources of the earth are more than enough for everybody. Politicians create false shortages to later provide hope. They create the famine as a weapon in the struggle. Then they feed you crap.
Posted by: Dermitt | August 21, 2009 8:59 AM
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These "trivialities" are not trivial at all. Life is a test of whether one chooses love and compassion or greed and selfishness.
Love and compassion exists in the kingdom of Heaven; selfishness and greed exists in the kingdom of Hell. Jesus and other great teachers urge us to choose wisely.
Posted by: ppease5 | August 20, 2009 8:49 AM
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All comments and article seem correct. The issue at hand however is whether it is the government's responsibility to solve this problem. I suggest it is not. The more we turn over our responsibilities to the government the less power we have as individuals and communities to create the type of society we wish. The Torah says we will never rid ourselves of poverty although a worthy objective. The government will only create a nightmare bureaucracy that will make medicare look like tic-tac-tow...