More On the Health-Care Debate...

On one of my favorite blogs - Scot McKnight's "The Jesus Creed" - I recently responded to a question posted related to whether Obama-care is the right way to address our nation's health insurance problems. I am obviously very strong in my opinion on this, but I am open to being shown that I am wrong. Feel free to read and comment whether you agree or disagree. We're all FRIENDS here! My response was as follows....


"I agree with Skip above. Health insurance is no more a human "right" than owning a house or a car simply because it is difficult to function without them. Health care is a service industry - and while there are numerous problems to fix in our system, going the dismal and disastrous way of Canada and Great Britain is not wise, ethical or freedom-promoting. Ironically, I write these words less than 48 hours after Canada has announced that its health care system is broke and unsustainable!

No artist who graduates from art school is forced by the government to subscribe to a regulated standard for what his or her work can sell for. The market determines that scale. As imperfect as it may be, the free market is the best way to maintain both quality and equality. We are entitled by our founding documents to "life, liberty and the pursuit (not guarantee) of happiness." Nowhere do those documents suggest that we are guaranteed "health, wealth or prosperity."

I am a politically moderate pastor with obvious conservative leanings in this area - and someone who is actively involved in humanitarian and compassion ministries globally. Our church's efforts to alleviate hunger, train workers and plant churches in places like Rwanda, Mexico and the Middle East represent the heartbeat of the church where I pastor. I say that to assure anyone reading this that I am committed to seeing lives transformed by the compassion of Christ through His church and other private means of goodwill. I also affirm responsible but limited government intervention in various ways.

That being said, the government has no place to stand between patients and medical professionals who have spent a multiplicity of years and dollars preparing to be the very best at the art and science of their chosen practice. Even with our multiplicity of imperfections, the United States already has the most compassionate, ethically sound system of medicine in the world. Yes, there is corruption and greed and such - and those are the issues that if stopped will bring costs way down. But under the Hippocratic Oath taken by all doctors in this country, emergency room services cannot be denied to anyone - including illegal aliens. In essence, we already have free health care.

I'd like to also comment on the so-called 47-million uninsured. It is well substantiated in bi-partisan research that if we subtract the number of people who could afford health insurance but choose not to have it, those who already qualify for state or federal coverage but do not take advantage of it, illegal aliens, and those classified as "under-insured" because they choose only to carry catastrophic coverage, the real number is around 15 million. Additionally, upwards of 85% of Americans are happy with their current plan. Am I supposed to be convinced that the 250+ million Americans who are happy with their insurance plan should be forced into a government-run system because of a problem that exists for 15 million? How about fixing the problem for the 15 million without punishing everyone else?

There is a reason that the DMV is less popular than going to the dentist! There is a reason that the postal service is struggling to turn a profit while Fed Ex and UPS thrive. There is a reason programs like Medicaid and Social Security are unsustainable by every bi-partisan report and opinion out there. Simply put, over the long-haul the government cannot manage things as well as the private sector. And I haven't even begun to address any of the ethical atrocities in the language of the current House and Senate bills (which anyone can get online if they're looking for a cure for insomnia)...

Finally, the original question posted suggests there are "30-million of us right now" who are unemployed. This is also patently untrue. Unemployment is at just over 9% of the work force - not the American population. We don't count children, retirees, stay-at-home parents, etc. in that figure. The actual work force is about 130 million. 9% of that leaves us at about 12 million without jobs. Don't get me wrong - this is way too large a number! But there is a huge difference between 30 million and 12 million, for the record. As for solutions - they include a plethora of things from eliminating frivolous malpractice suits, moving from paper-based to an electronic-based system, tax reform, and the list goes on. Please GOD don't let us go down this unethical, disastrous path when there are so many superior options..."

Those are some of my thoughts...what do YOU think?

The Good Old Days (Is There Even Such a Thing?)

Almost everyone who grew up in America has his or her own version of "the good old days." Even if you grew up under less than desirable circumstances, you probably have at least a few cherished memories from childhood. Perhaps a safe place of escape. An activity that allowed you to become lost in healthy creativity. A memory of spending time with a relative or friend. Ahhh...if only we could go back to that moment and put life on "pause".

For me, I grew up very poor. Our family of six lived in a 700 square foot house throughout much of my childhood. My parents struggled to make ends meet. My parents eventually divorced after many years of dysfunction and turbulence in their marriage. Yet as imperfect as life was, I still recount many great memories of those more innocent years. Now when I watch my own kids play, fight and roughhouse, I relive similar moments of when the world was much simpler.

Don't get me wrong - many blessings continue to fill the adult lives of those who are learning the art of thankfulness and contentment. But when I talk honestly with my adult friends, there is among us an overwhelming sense of angst. Life is difficult. At times it seems torturous. Whether we are walking through the fire or empathizing with those who are - we admit that something about this beautiful world is out of whack.

C.S. Lewis said "If we discover a desire within us that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were created for another world." The Bible claims that this planet is Eden-gone-wrong, and suggests that this is why we often live in limbo between joy and sorrow, beautiful and ugly, pleasure and pain. What is so unique about Christianity is that while other faiths claim that humanity can reach up to find God through human effort, Jesus is the exact opposite: God reaching down to humanity.

Perhaps you have never considered this crucial difference. Perhaps you believe that all religions are basically the same. With no intent to offend, I must say that such a claim is both ignorant and insulting to ALL religions. Clearly, religions do NOT all teach the same thing. And among them, Jesus's claims are by far the most distinct. He empathizes with our pain. He enters into the mess we've made in our sin. When someone tells me they can't believe in a God who allows kids to starve to death, I am compelled to remind them that this planet has been endowed with far more than enough resources to care for 10 times the current population. Let's be honest - God has not been the stingy one. If indeed He created us - He has given us more than enough to go around. The annual collective spending on ice-cream in America is enough to provide clean drinking water to the entire continent of Africa. What if the problem is essentially US? What if WE are the reason kids starve to death? I know it's much easier to blame God for this stuff. But what if it's true that He has called US to be His hands and feet - the ones who drill wells and feed the hungry?

Suddenly, when we begin to view the world through this lens, the randomness of life begins to seem far less random! We begin to discern a greater purpose for WHY we have been placed here! As followers of Jesus, WE are ambassadors of a kingdom that is not of this world, and as such we are to implement the compassionate, redemptive and healing work of Jesus until He returns to bring in the fullness of that kingdom. God invites us to be more than just part of the audience watching a cruel story pass us by. He invites us to be part of the CAST of characters in His grand story of redemption - and heroes rather than villains no less! This makes life worth getting out of bed for every day! This changes everything! This allows us to quit wishing we could return to the "good old days" (which never really existed in the first place) and to make someone else's days on earth better than they would be without us! Would you agree? I'm interested to know your thoughts. Please leave you comments! :)

Zestfully Clean!

The following was written from a youth camp we recently did at Spirit West Coast...

So I'm sitting here at 6 AM waiting for the showers to open at Spirit West Coast in Monterey, CA. In fact, I've been here for almost an hour already - I've got an hour left to wait. I'm not the only nutty one. I recruited several other guys from our camp to sit here with me - ALL waiting for the first hot showers of the day. In awhile, there will be dozens lined up - then hundreds and even thousands throughout the day! It got me thinking about why we crave being clean. I mean, when I am camping, I expect to get dirty, but I still crave the opportunity to feel clean.

I remember being in Rwanda - one of the world's poorest countries - and seeing a little boy being given a bath by his mother out in the wide open. The toddler was ecstatic as his mom washed him in a small plastic basin of hand-carried H2O. Quite simply, no matter what side of the planet we live on, we long to feel clean. You can see where I'm going with this...

It causes me to ask questions about the attractive opportunity we have in Jesus. Unfortunately, man-made religious rules and traditions have smothered Jesus with so much baggage that many people - even professing Chistians - lose sight of the primarly reason we came to Jesus in the first place! We came to get clean. We came for forgivwness. We came not to attach ourselves to more burdens and religiosity. We came to find life and freedom and reconciliation to God. We came to get clean.

Do you know anyone who resists Jesus because their experience with His professed followers has been negative? Its a shame how my life complicates Jesus for others. I don't MEAN to do so. I just sometimes get distracted from the joy available to me in what I've been given by Jesus. When I fail to rest in that joy, I become legalistic, judgmental and prudish. I unintentionally turn people OFF to the Jesus who simply wants to make them clean too. As I sit here now watching dozens of others assemble in line for the shower, I'm reminded of our universal human condition: we all desperately need to be clean. We can only disquise our odor for so long before we must face the fact that we need a shower! If you are a follower of Jesus - why did YOU originally come to Him? If you are not yet a follower of Christ - what's keeping you away?

Is God in Control or In Charge?

Our Executive Pastor preached a great sermon this past week related to the sovereignty of God. This issue of God's sovereignty has been at the center of debate among Christians for many centuries. In one sense, to be a monotheist of any kind requires a belief in the sovereignty of that Deity. By definition, belief in the existence of only one God implies that no one else is equal to that Deity. But what exactly do we mean by "sovereign"?

Does God literally "cause" everything to happen in this universe? Is evil, sickness, pain and suffering the result of God "causing" it? Or does God "allow" it, while ultimately still guiding the events of the universe toward an appointed end? Certainly God is never surprised or caught of guard by anything. That would be "open theism" - a position I unequivocally reject. But when we say that God is "in control" - what do we really mean? Without clarification, the words "in control" might imply that God is pulling the strings that force babies to die in genocides, or mothers to be raped and die of AIDS, or disabled people to suffer unthinkably.

I believe that God is sovereign. He can do whatever He wills - however and whenever He wills for it to occur. He is "free" in the truest sense of the word - able to act entirely in and of Himself without any influence to hinder or interrupt Him. I think most Christians would agree with this. But is agreeing that God CAN and daily DOES intervene sovereignly in His cosmos necessarily synonymous with believing that He "causes" evil, pain and suffering? For purposes of clarification, would a better term be that God is "in charge"? Those are just a few incomplete thoughts and questions I have on the matter. I'm interested to know...what do YOU think? I'm pretty sure we can solve this in no time if you'll contribute your thoughts (wink, wink)! Please chime in.... :)

Is Socialized Health Care Wise?

I try to monitor journalism with a discerning eye and ear, and I am assuming you do also. With the recent media spotlight on our President's agenda to socialize health care in America, I have been forced to (again) ask a series of important questions related to this hugely important issue, and to try to cut through the sound-bite rhetoric coming from alarmists on both sides. On some media outlets, commentators are demonizing our president's plan - suggesting that his motives are a calculated and sinister move toward Marxist ideology. Others embrace such an uncritical acceptance of the plan that one would think the Messiah had arrived at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

As a Christian who believes in limited government and human freedom, I struggle with the idea that higher powers (elected or otherwise) should be able to take money from wealthy people to re-distribute it to the poor. To me, stealing is stealing. Yet on the other hand, I believe that whatever limited government we do have must be compassionate and should seek to keep the playing field as level as possible without punishing higher achievers. There seem to be no easy answers here - as much as either extreme would suggest there are.

If this proposed health-care initiative is signed into law, will the lack of a competitive market eventually lower quality of care across the board? It seems to have done so in nearly every other society or spectrum in which it has been attempted. Why is it that - with the rare exception of those seeking alternative or experimental treatments not offered in the U.S. - virtually NO ONE from America leaves the country to seek the services of foreign health care when being treated for serious illness? On the contrary, why do tens of thousands annually travel to America from other countries in search of the excellence of our services and specialists? Certainly our current system is imperfect - but these questions should shed light on where we are by comparison to other developed countries.

I pray for our President regularly - and I have never known a President (whether Republican or Democrat) whose policies I have been 100% in agreement with. So my issue here is not to impugn the motives of our nation's leader. But ideas have consequences. After all, this would be the largest economic and societal re-structuring of America since the New Deal. Only 60 years after F.D.R., we see what a STELLAR job our government has done in managing social security! If they cannot be trusted to manage such as simple retirement strategy, can they really be trusted to manage something as morally nuanced and financially complex as health care? I only hope that our house and senate do not rush this bill through without weighing EVERY potential consequence. I also pray that journalists would begin reporting the details of this plan to Americans in an unbiased fashion - both pros and cons - so that people can contact their representatives to let their voices be heard (well, you can always dream, can't you?).

Other important questions include:

1) Is it true or untrue that health care is a basic human right?

2) What can we learn from the disastrous stories of Canada, Europe and other socialized systems in order to safeguard our own?

3) Is it really honest to claim that people will still be able to "choose" to keep their current insurance plan - if over time the government puts private insurance carriers out of business by drastically under-cutting their prices?

4) And perhaps the most important question - can we really call something a human "right" if the government has sovereign control over it or can take it away at its discretion (say, for example, dictating who gets what services and when)?

I will close with the following and then invite YOUR comments. During ABC's Town Hall meeting awhile back, the President was asked by a woman about her 105 year old grandma. Five years earlier, the grandmother had been told by one specialist that her heart condition wasn't worth trying to "fix" at her age. After a second opinion, she was given a pacemaker and is still thriving at 105. The President was basically asked what would happen in such a situation under socialized health care. Would her mother have been pushed to the back of a waiting line or told "no" in regard to the surgery due to the needs of someone "younger" or more "deserving"? I sat there thinking to myself....where in the heck AM I? Cuba? Nicaragua? North Korea? I never thought I'd see the day when an American citizen would have to ask her President whether her mother would be allowed to fight for her life! What do you think? Is this a hill worth dying on...or a slippery slope that will eventually kill us? Your thoughts?

At Least ONE Thing I Know About You...

Have you ever stopped to consider that you are a worshiper? Yes, you. And so am I. It doesn't matter whether we claim to be Christian, Buddhist, Atheist or Agnostic. No matter the color of our skin, our socio-economic background or walk of life. There is one thing we can be sure of about each of the 6.5 billion people on this plant - as well as the billions who have lived before us: We ARE worshipers!

The question is never "do we worship?" The question is "which god or gods do we worship?" Worship in its most simple definition is "the act of ascribing supreme worth to someone or something." Some people relate this way to their money - or the stuff their money can buy. Others worship their power, fame or influence. Still others worship their bodies, their egos or their dogmas. And of course, many worship a vast array of competing religious deities.

Perhaps you've never stopped to take a long, detailed inventory of what YOU deem as worthy of ascribing supreme value. There is a Catholic retreat center near where I live that I enjoy visiting a couple of times each year. When I go there, I try to spend at least several hours - if not the entire day - in silence. One of the things I challenge myself with during these miniature silent retreats is to evaluate my worship, because as I already stated, it is not a matter of WHETHER - but of WHAT or WHO - I am worshiping at any given season of my life.

As a pastor, I wish I could boldly state that I live every day in unequivocal allegiance to the God of the Bible. But the truth is, I battle daily against some combination of selfishness, greed, lust, pride, arrogance, judgmentalism, etc. There are so many "gods" in the smorgas-board of life that the battle can seem overwhelming at times. For example, I realize that the greatest things in life are not things - and yet I can easily find myself feeling jealous or coveting someTHING that I wish I had.

Fortunately for the Christian, the God we worship understands our brokenness - and rather than kicking us to the curb, has decided to be patient and compassionate with us, sending Jesus to forgive our countless sins and shortfalls. It's that kindness that makes the Christ-follower WANT to continue on in the journey toward becoming gradually more like Jesus. Living in the confident reality that there is nothing we can do to make God love us more OR less than He does at this very moment takes a lot of pressure off - freeing us to be able to get up and try again and again when we fall short.

It is largely this depth of mercy and grace that drove me to conclude that Jesus IS the God exclusively deserving of my worship. He is the only God I know of who has come to planet earth to rescue us. Many popular religions seek to explain how humanity can reach UP to find Deity or higher consciousness (through human effort, discipline, good deeds, etc.). But in Christ we find the exact opposite. In Jesus we find God reaching DOWN to humanity - loving us exactly the way He finds us - and loving us WAY to much to simply leave us that way.

This weekend at Valley Church, we will be closing out our 6-week series from the Book of Acts called "Vintage: Ancient Values for a Relevant Faith". And our topic is - you guessed it - worship. We will be learning from a CRAZY story in Acts 16 about 2 guys who get the crap beat out of them, are falsely accused, and thrown into prison. Yet rather than becoming bitter or angry, we find them chained in the darkness of their cells...praying and singing songs to God. What gives a person the ability to trust and rest in God on the worst day of his or her life? Come find out this Sunday by joining us at one of our three gatherings...8 AM, 9:30 AM or 11 AM. And feel free to chime in with your thoughts related to this blog!!!

Did Michael Jackson's Memorial honor Jesus?

On the way home from work, I heard a Bay Area radio personality entertaining the question "Did Michael Jackson's memorial service bring honor to Jesus or make a mockery of Him?" Knowing that we had DVR'd the service in order to watch it this evening, I was even more interested after hearing the diversity of opinion from callers.

As I watched the memorial, I was again reminded of what an incredible talent Michael Jackson brought to his art. Love him or hate him, he was simply the best - from a talent perspective - in his genre when he was at his prime. As I listened to the spiritual content, I heard many of the familiar comments I hear at memorials coming from those desiring to comfort and be comforted. Stuff like "He's in a better place" and "Michael's smiling down on us" and "We needed him, but God must have needed him more".

Those sentiments aren't bad. In fact, they are very good - and they prove one thing for sure: When we are grieving the loss of a significant other, we all reach for that hope of a hereafter. Even the most devout atheist - when confronted with losing a loved one - will often admit that they at least momentarily consider the possibility of an afterlife. Is this just wishful thinking? Or perhaps is it a part of an ordered creation - as one philosopher called it "a God-shaped hole" in the heart of every human - that is placed there by the Creator and a restless void within us never settled until we find our rest in the knowledge of that very God?

When Jesus' closest friends were worried about His impending death, He assured them with the following words: "I am the Way, the Truth and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through Me." (John 14:6). These words came just after He had encouraged them with a promise that He was going to Heaven ahead of them to prepare a place for them - and by extension to every other Christ-follower who would come after them.

Was Michael Jackson a follower of Christ? I know he had early childhood roots in the church and Gospel music. I know he was very generous in his quest to help the helpless worldwide (something the Bible calls "pure and undefiled" religion). But a follower of Jesus? I'm not sure. In his worst moments, he certainly didn't seem like one. And yet, his fame made certain that his worst moments were plastered everywhere for the world to see. Which one of us who considers himself or herself to be a follower of Jesus would want our WORST moments laid open before the entire world to see?

God's love certainly covers a multitude of sins. The salvation issue is not about who lives the squeakiest-clean life. The issue boils down to whether or not those sins are forgiven. And according to Jesus Christ, that forgiveness is only available through TRUST - or as the Bible puts it, FAITH - in His redeeming work on the cross. I don't know if Michael Jackson truly understood God in this way. But God knows. And in answer to the question "Did the memorial bring honor to Jesus?" I answer with an emphatic YES! Any time the culture is talking about Jesus, it is a time for His followers to engage in the conversation - and when we do it graciously and wisely, it brings honor to Him.

I would like to know your thoughts on this cultural phenomenon we know as the death of Michael Jackson. Feel free to chime in if you have an opinion or question......