Low-tech Healing

The church may not always be able to cure sickness, but it should never shirk its duty to care for the sick and dying.

Experts predict that two out of every five hospitals in the U.S. will close during the 1990s. That is just one of many striking statistics that illustrate the rate at which the availability of health care in America is shrinking. Yet, while the problem seems insurmountable, we believe that Christian citizens need to remember three things as we face the health-care crisis.

First, we need to remember that a Christian view of health care combines acts of caring with acts of curing. Health care is more than medical science and amazing technological breakthroughs. It is also the interpersonal connections that build a healing atmosphere of hope, confidence, and faith. In our time, medicine has become almost entirely a matter of curing. But it was not always so. A brief chapter in the history of medicine (recounted more fully in our CT Institute supplement, which begins on page 27) illustrates this tension:

In eighteenth-century Paris, the nursing sisters at the Hötel-Dieu were appalled when the hospital’s First Surgeon attempted to transform it from a custodial to a medical institution. They were afraid, they said, that poor patients might be discharged as soon as they had recovered from their illness.

That protest sounds odd in a day when “managed care” systems minimize the length of hospital stays. But we must remember what those nursing sisters knew: People are not, as retired Surgeon General C. Everett Koop says elsewhere in this issue, carburetors. Unfortunately, many medical personnel are not trained to treat patients in a holistic fashion. Because of the economics of modern medicine, they are, in fact, more than likely to treat them like carburetors.

This presents a wonderful opportunity for the church to provide transportation to and from medical care, senior-citizen day care, child care, respite care, and good, old-fashioned visiting of the sick. While curing costs what the church does not have—billions of dollars and scientific knowledge—caring costs precisely what the church has plenty of—heart and soul.

Second, we must remember the church’s role in preparation for death. In this issue, journalist-pastor-physician G. Timothy Johnson reminds us that we cannot afford to postpone indefinitely biological death in certain “hopeless” cases.

Of course, hopeless is precisely what many terminally ill cases should not be. The church once spent much of its effort preparing people for death and the afterlife. As Andrew Wear notes, “Seventeenth-century ministers enjoined their congregations to keep in mind the possibility that ‘every day is my dying day.’ ”

Today we defy and deny death in many ways, but expensive medical technology is certainly one of the most notable. As that technology is increasingly priced out of availability, the church must once again turn its attention to spiritual preparation for dying.

Third, we must keep in mind the magnitude of the need. To focus the debate instead on limited resources is likely to result in inaction. To focus on possibilities will mean expanded service. When Jesus was confronted with the hunger of the five thousand, he did not focus on the limited resources of two fish and five loaves of bread. Rather, he began to feed the people. In the handling of our health-care crisis, we need a miracle every bit as much as the hungry mob did. But no miracle will occur if all we do is wring our hands over the lack of resources. The sick offer every Christian an opportunity for service for Jesus’ sake.

By David Neff.

Early next February, you’ll be licking a 30-cent stamp to mail your sweetheart’s valentine or Aunt Evelyn’s birthday card. That’s a 20 percent boost from the present 25-cent first-class stamp. You will also be pulling this magazine and others from your mailbox, for which the publishers will have paid 25 to 50 percent more postage than they are now paying.

What you face in a more costly postage stamp is faced more severely by those of us whose calling is to bind the Christian community together through informational and edifying publications. We don’t like subscription rate increases because they inhibit circulation. So we entertain other options: reduce the frequency of publication, cut the number of pages, reduce or eliminate color photography, trim the editorial staff, buy cheaper paper.

No matter which combination we choose, the readership suffers. And since denominational and organizational periodicals serve the function of connecting their members to one another and to their organizations’ programs, higher postal rates eventually weaken the fabric that holds the church together nationwide.

According to the U.S. Postal Service’s proposal, postage for magazines like this one, mailed at nonprofit, second-class rates, will increase an average of 28.3 percent. For many church magazines, however, the increase will be larger. One denominational magazine mailed in Memphis, Tennessee, is looking at a 34.3 percent increase, for example.

Much harder hit will be those periodicals now mailed at third-class nonprofit rates. Perspectives, a theological journal that I edit for the Reformed Church in America, faces a 48.8 percent increase. All the editorial work on that publication is done for free. The governing board members serve free of charge. The authors are not paid for their contributions. Even the accounting is done for free. The only expenses are for paper, typesetting, printing, and postage.

Many churches and Christian organizations produce and mail magazines like Perspectives—with generous volunteer labor, reserving their limited cash for postage and other essentials. If you belong to a nonprofit organization that sends a magazine or newspaper under a third-class permit, it is facing the same 48.8 percent hike.

Ironically, letter-sized bulk mail will receive a noticeable price break if the Postal Service’s proposal is adopted. Most of the fund raisers, solicitations, and sales offers that arrive in our mail boxes are letter-sized. So, we should brace ourselves for an onslaught of that type of mail.

More Junk Mail

I know the U.S. Postal Service expects its new, automated equipment to handle letter-sized bulk mail efficiently. And it is prepared to pass the resulting savings along in lower postal rates for letter-sized pieces. But there is something inherently irritating and subtly destructive about a proposal that will make it easier for unsolicited, often unwanted, “junk mail” to clutter our mailboxes than for the informational, often inspiring or instructive, church-sponsored periodicals to reach us.

I’m worried about denominational magazines and the other religious periodicals that bind us together. Already, the industry experts are predicting the demise of many of these publications.

If you share my concern over these stiff postage increases, write the Postal Rate Commission (1333 H Street N.W., Washington, D.C. 20268–0001). The commission is now hearing and evaluating the Postal Service’s proposal and could still adjust their proposed increases.

For your sake—and mine—I hope they will.

Guest editorial by John Stapert, editor and publisher of the Church Herald, and managing editor of Perspectives, official publications of the Reformed Church in America.

Talk about irony. Two opposing factions of the Chinese Christian community have finally discovered something that unites them: their distrust of yet another group of Christians (see “House Church Struggles with New Converts,” CT, Aug. 20, 1990, page 39). Apparently, both the official Three-Self Patriotic Movement (TSPM) and the unofficial house-church movement are not willing to welcome the many young Chinese intellectuals and professionals who have recently converted to Christianity.

The TSPM and house-church believers have always been too suspicious of each other. But now there is a new wrinkle in their relationship. Some of the new Chinese converts were Communists—and still are. They have decided to maintain their party membership in order to be in the best position to exert political influence.

To the TSPM, it seems these new believers cannot possibly be loyal party members, and to the house-church leaders it seems the young converts are trying to serve both God and Deng Xiaoping. Just when we thought Communism—as well as Marxist-oriented liberation theology—was dead, it appears we may have to confront the notion of born-again believers who also hold membership in the Communist party.

Conflicting Ideologies

We worry about any alliance between faith and communism. The house-church leaders know that when the party asks its members to inform on believers, so-called Christian Communists will have difficulty sorting out the demands of conflicting ideologies.

Yet we recognize the complexities of living out one’s commitment to Christ in hostile environments. And we confess to our own tendencies to put flag and political party on the same plane as our faith (or sometimes a bit higher). Making Christ supreme is both a universal command and challenge.

One thing is certain, however. It would not be beyond God’s sovereignty or economy to redeem Tiananmen Square with a brand new cadre of followers.

By Lyn Cryderman.

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