Them bones -- Prov 3: 7-8

I was wrong about yesterday's post being the last in this series. One more. Brace yourselves: it's pretty weird.

"Be not wise in thine own eyes: fear the Lord, and depart from evil.

It shall be health to thy navel, and marrow to thy bones"

As my wife could testify, I am quite often wise in my own eyes. I even spend excessive amounts of times, some Sunday mornings, staring at myself in the mirror, just checking out how wise I look, and we end up late to church.

Last summer, at an appointment for my testicular cancer follow-up, the doctor noticed that my white blood cell count had been well below normal for as long as they'd been keeping records, and seemed to be dropping. He was a little alarmed, and, as doctors often do when alarmed, suggested that a needle be used to take a piece of me out so that we could both calm down and feel safe again. As usual, I consented.

The subsequent bone marrow biopsy revealed that, in a surprisingly literal fulfillment of Proverbs 3: 7-8, my bones actually have an abnormally high percentage of fat and an unusually low percentage of marrow. It wasn't really dropping, just taking a routine dip in its lifelong course below the bottom end of normal. This is why I get sick a lot whenever I don't sleep or otherwise put stress on my under-producing immune system. This is probably why, in fact, I currently am sick and sitting at home writing this very post!

Now, along with my poor qualities (e.g. excessive intellectual self-admiration), I have many good qualities--some of which I don't need very much at all. My special love of emptying dishwashers and drainracks, for example, has been much more useful since I married a woman with a particular and inexplicable dislike for those specific tasks.

I am wondering today whether God sprinkles trials and their complementary solutions into completely different places and lives in the hope that we'll finally get a clue and put the whole puzzle together. Is it possible that for every problem, there is an answer: but the answers we have are seldom the ones we most need, and the problems we have are not only for our own growth, but to be there for someone else's answer?

Maybe it's this persistent idea that gives me hope in shared/interactive efforts over individual efforts: be they for faith, for writing, or for health care.

Would Universal Healthcare Decrease Free Agency? -- Mos. 7: 32-33

This may be the last post in my recent thread on universal health care and the gospel. I don't want to speak for any specific plan so much as to explore ideas about how the abstract ideal of universal health care interacts with various doctrinal concepts. I'd like to thank you for your patience and for participation in discussion thus far.

"The Lord said unto Enoch: Behold these thy brethren; they are the workmanship of mine own hands, and I gave unto them their knowledge, in the day I created them; and in the Garden of Eden, gave I unto man his agency;

And unto thy brethren have I said, and also given commandment, that they should love one another, and that they should choose me, their Father; but behold, they are without affection, and they hate their own blood" (Mos. 7: 32-33)

If Satan's plan had been accepted, he would have given people choices over what clothes to wear, which restaurants to eat at, whether to go skiing or mountain biking, and every other eternally meaningless decision elevated by capitalism. He would do this to hide the emptiness we would have in the place of our hearts, which would never know love or hate, never know anguish and happiness.

The agency God protected was our fundamental ability to choose love or hate, good or evil.

Taxes can neither increase nor decrease our God-given agency, because moral agency is not proportional to our economic means but is defined by our contextual decisions about love and hate, good and evil.

Even if a tax to support health care seems to be forcing us to do good, the triumph of God's plan means we will still be left with the vital moral choice alluded to in Moroni 7: 8.

The Parable of the Simple Disciple--3 Ne 27: 27

I'd like to offer my deepest apologies for turning to the overtly political, but I've heard too many people compare plans in various countries to provide even basic health care to the public at large, regardless of economic status, as against a gospel plan of free agency and personal accountability. I don't want to advocate any specific political plan, but feel compelled to suggest that the gospel may actually be more for than against the abstract ideal of basic universal access to health care. Thank you for your patience over the next few days.

"And know ye that ye shall be judges of this people, according to the judgment which I shall give unto you, which shall be just. Therefore, what manner of men ought ye to be? Verily I say unto you, even as I am." (3 Ne 27: 27)

It happened once that three American businessmen (men well respected in their communities and free of almost every sin except for the sin of pride, which they possessed in overabundance) were on a plane flight to Damascus together when a light filled their airplane's cabin and struck the three of them, out of all the passengers, temporarily blind. Each of the three heard the same voice calling him to repentance, each emerged a radically changed man, determined to live a life more like Christ's.

The first immediately stopped cutting his hair and grew a long, old-style Hebrew beard. He gave his $300 shoes and fine Italian suits to the poor and bought some sandals and a loom-woven semi-course robe. He broke bread and fish with his company's board members instead of taking catered business lunches. He started making plans to relocate to Israel.

The second began to speak, whenever possible, using quotations from the gospels. At dinner, he'd ask his wife to pass "the salt of the earth." He'd answer the phone by saying "What seek ye?" And instead of counting to three when preparing to discipline his children, he would tell them "even now the axe is laid at the root of the trees."

It was not easy to tell, just by watching him, how the third had changed. But the truth is that he let go of the resentment he had once felt for the various taxes he paid, and thanked God instead that he lived in days when instead of simply supporting the household of a king, his taxes were used to help feed the poor and oppressed, to educate all the nation's children and turn none away, to heal the sick and rehabilitate the injured, to make sure that weights and measures were conducted honestly, and that the widow and the fatherless were not turned away.

Luke 9: 11

I'd like to offer my deepest apologies for turning to the overtly political, but I've heard too many people compare plans in various countries to provide even basic health care to the public at large, regardless of economic status, as against a gospel plan of free agency and personal accountability. I don't want to advocate any specific political plan, but feel compelled to suggest that the gospel may actually be more for than against the abstract ideal of basic universal access to health care. Thank you for your patience over the next few days.

"And the people, when they knew it, followed him: and he received them, and spake unto them of the kingdom of God, and healed them that had need of healing."

What was Jesus' primary criterion for healing, according to this verse?

Need.

Why shouldn't we work toward a day when our society sees things like Jesus?

Universal Healthcare -- Gen 4: 9

I'd like to offer my deepest apologies for turning to the overtly political, but I've heard too many people compare plans in various countries to provide even basic health care to the public at large, regardless of economic status, as against a gospel plan of free agency and personal accountability. I don't want to advocate any specific political plan, but feel compelled to suggest that the gospel may actually be more for than against the abstract ideal of basic universal access to health care. Thank you for your patience over the next few days as I say things that would probably not be appropriate to say in Sunday School.

"And the Lord said unto Cain, Where is Abel thy brother? And he said, I know not: Am I my brother’s keeper?"

We are all partially accountable for the well-being of every one of our spirit brothers and sisters. Even if Cain had not touched Abel but seen accident befall him and then idly watched him bleed to death in his field, Abel's blood would have cried up from the earth against Cain.

Our accountability increases with our stewardship, influence, and means to lend help. Just as we are more accountable for the suffering of members of the church if we withhold our fast offerings and tithes from God, we have an increased accountability to God if we ignore the plight of the sick and the poor in our democratic society.

If we enjoy the material wealth and medical capacity God has given our nation and age and do nothing to see that the suffering are granted access to it, their blood will cry up from the earth against us.