Top Posts of 2012

Here's a rundown of our top 5 posts of 2012:

1) Not surprisingly, our number one spot belongs to Obamacare: Problems and Hope.

2) Portrait Unveiled

3) Needlessly Inflated Medical Costs

4) More Insurance Is Not the Answer

5) Contentment

Marriage as Preventive Medicine

While much disputed, there are indications that marriage, per se, is protective [of health], not merely that people with poor health habits or pre-existing health problems are less likely to become or remain married. Do ministers who preach God's word on marriage regard their sermons as preventive medicine? Do they advocate marriage for those who do not have the gift of celibacy? If not, why not? Parents who demonstrate a good marriage and promote marriage before their children are practicing preventive medicine. Are they aware of this? They should be told by their pastor and their physician. The potency of the marriage-health connection exceeds many preventive medicine tactics the medical profession uses. Keeping of the seventh commandment in its fullness would eliminate all venereal disease within a generation. The medical profession offers the material solution of the condom. It is ludicrous in comparison.


Excerpt from "How Would God Have Us Practice Preventive Medicine?"

Improperly Isolating Medicine

A young man I have known for several years came to the Emergency Room. A professing Christian, he has a quick, hot temper. I had noted it before but never mentioned it. This night he had received the worst of it in a fight which included a knife in the other fellow's hand. I sewed him up with nylon monofilament. I still did not address the temper. I was acting in faith that my nylon stitches would help the knife cut mend. I introduce the nylon into his flesh but abstain from introducing applicable scripture to his spirit for spiritual healing and the physical health consequences which could result. Thus I practice 1 Tim. 4:8 backwards; it comes out something like this: "For godliness is of some value, but physical treatments -- that is where the real power is!" I certainly believe that the Holy Spirit acting through the Word can mend the young man's quick temper which led to the knife fight. I know that he is under the oversight of a church, but I didn't refer him to them for their help in dealing with the real root of his "medical" problem. When I practice this way, I practice as though I believe medicine is a secular art, isolated from a person's spirit.


Excerpt from "How Would God Have Us Practice Preventive Medicine?"

Consider Spiritual Causes for Medical Problems

Christian physicians routinely bypass obvious ungodly behavior which has possible adverse health consequences in their patients -- a quick temper, unforgiven sin, unconfessed guilt, etc. We don't even think of these as health issues, or, we put them aside as “not in our field.” After all, we weren't called to preach. I have kept problem lists on my patients for years, diligently noting down Congestive Heart Failure and such. Never have I entered "Quarrelsomeness" on one, despite the fact that I have treated many patients whose quarrelsomeness earned them injury.

There are practical reasons for not writing "spiritual" problems in the medical record. The record exists partly to communicate with other physicians, and some would not understand. There is no code, for instance, for "gossip" in the International Classification of Health Problems in Primary Care (ICHPPC). Insurers would refuse to honor their contracts with patients who submitted a claim with such a "diagnosis" on it, not to mention that patients wouldn't take kindly to it. We can excuse ourselves for not writing it, but we have a serious problem if, as Bible-believing Christians, we can't even think of it as a health maintenance issue, or that it is remediable.

As for not being called to preach, check yourself out, if you are a physician. Chances are you have a spiel on some practice that damages health -- obesity, smoking, failure to use seat belts, etc. It is not our reluctance to preach that holds us back but our habit of sticking to the material aspects of the world for our subject matter. This insistence on addressing only physical issues has been inculcated in us by the humanist worldview. In a biblical worldview the material aspects of our being are important but not ascendant over the spiritual aspects. We are commanded by Jesus to disciple others. He has not exempted our medical practices, and we should not allow our unconscious adoption of a humanist value to prohibit us from wise use of opportunities to make a spiritual connection for our patients to consider.


Excerpt from "How Would God Have Us Practice Preventive Medicine?"

Godliness and Physical Exercise

1 Timothy 4:8 “For physical training is of some value, but godliness has value for all things, holding promise for both the present life and the life to come.” Note that godliness not only has promise for the life to come, but also for the present life. The thrust of the verse is not to point to the virtue of physical exercise or all that it may imply, but to use it as a contrast to something which is really valuable -- godliness. An application of the verse today might be as follows: a pretraining stress ECG for a middle-aged man is of some value, but if you really want value now (physically) and in the hereafter, be exercised in godliness.

Medicine can certainly teach us something about body maintenance, yet it is godliness that has the most to do with the maintenance. Somehow, things have gotten turned around. Christians routinely seek physicians' advice on health maintenance while remaining heedless of ungodliness in their lives. Christian physicians routinely bypass obvious ungodly behavior which has possible adverse health consequences in their patients -- a quick temper, unforgiven sin, unconfessed guilt, etc. We don't even think of these as health issues, or, we put them aside as “not in our field.”


Excerpt from "How Would God Have Us Practice Preventive Medicine?"

South Carolina Citrus

Those of you who remember Dr. Terrell know of his love of tropical plants and his uncanny ability to get them to grow outside of their normal zone. In case you were the recipient of some of his juicy, South Carolina oranges, try this delicious recipe:


ORANGE WALNUT BREAD
Makes 1 loaf  

2 1/2 c. flour
1 1/4 c. sugar
2 t. baking powder
1/2 t. baking soda
1/2 t. salt
2 eggs, beaten
1/4 c. butter, melted
2/3 c. freshly squeezed orange juice
2 T. orange extract*
1 c. coarsely chopped walnuts (or pecans)

Mix flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Combine eggs, melted butter, orange juice, orange peel, and water; add all at once to flour mixture. Stir quickly until dry ingredients are moistened.  Stir in nuts. Turn into greased and floured 9x5x3" loaf pan.

Bake at 350 for 1 hour or until done. Cool in pan 10 minutes. Remove from pan and cool on wire rack. Slice and serve with butter.

* Or freshly grated orange peel. Dr. Terrell's oranges have a very thin peel which makes grating it for zest very difficult, so extract was substituted.

Economics and Preventive Health

Preventive health is a big factor in the health care discussion. President Barack Obama claims that preventive care saves money, and provision for preventive care is included in the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare). The data, however, does not support the money-saving claim, as the New England Journal of Medicine discussed. The data didn't support it when Dr. Terrell wrote about it earlier in his career, and it still doesn't support it. Furthermore, as Dr. Terrell wrote, preventive care ought not to be justified merely on an economic basis.

A U.S. Senator from Florida wrote one of his constituents to state that if “seniors” would allow themselves to be diagnosed earlier, then “the chance of successful treatment” would be greater and the treatment would be less costly. Even if that were so, which it by and large is not for those near the end of life, it would not save money. What would happen is that the elderly person would live to require other services of dependency and to acquire yet another chronic disease which is likely to be more costly to treat, simply because he will be older and more frail.

In crass economic terms, it is cheaper to die young and expensive to die old. Preventive medical care for the elderly should be defended on the grounds of compassion and what is best for God's kingdom, not societal economics. Socialist arguments grounded in “what the country can afford” are hollow and will echo back awful things in the near future. Pro-life people should avoid them! Economics must be taken into account but by the proper authorities (individual, family and church). We do not hold our bodies in stewardship before the state. The state will not consider the Bible as authoritative in making decisions about health expenditures. Having sold us the economic argument for health maintenance, the state will turn around to plead the same argument when it first permits, then mandates euthanasia.

Excerpt from "How Would God Have Us Practice Preventive Medicine?"

Godly Preventive Medicine

[P]reventive medicine is an idea thoroughly consistent with scripture. God has granted life, and He requires that we be good stewards of each life. God is “pro-life!” Each human being bears His image. Though the image is not our physical appearance, we are to honor God's image in all people by supporting their life and refusing to take innocent life. The answer to the Westminster Larger Catechism question #136 includes preservation of life under the sins forbidden in the sixth commandment: “... the neglecting or withdrawing the lawful or necessary means of preservation of life; ...immoderate use of meat, drink, labor, and recreation, provoking words, oppression, quarreling, striking, wounding, and whatsoever else tends to the destruction of the life of any.” Obedience to the sixth commandment is more fully accomplished by godly living than it is in preventive medicine (as it is presently conceived).

Excerpt from "How Would God Have Us Practice Preventive Medicine?"

God's Law for All

The moral law in Scripture is not just for Christians. It does have different functions for Christians and non-Christians. For Christians are under grace, and we see in the law what Christ has done for us and also how He expects us to behave in serving Him. For non-Christians the law shows them the deadness in which they exist and their need of deliverance.


Excerpt from "Trusting God or Trusting Ourselves"

American Individualism

Americans are reflexively individualistic. Don’t tread on me no longer means don’t mess with the state of Vermont corporately as it did originally. It means don’t tread on me, individually. I am my own boss. No one tells me what to do. The hero of many movies, especially action and adventure movies is the rugged individualist. Did John Wayne ever stop to consult with his family, with his church, with the governor? I don’t recall it ever happening. It was John Wayne against the bad guys, and the only touchstone was his conscience.


Excerpt from "Trusting God or Trusting Ourselves"

Ready to Die

The death of Moses in itself could almost compose a foundation for a study of dying. The account is found in Deuteronomy 32 through 34. He died at 120 years of age. “His eyes were not dim nor his natural vigor abated.” [Deut. 34:7b] In this natural vigor he sang a song, which is most of the 32nd chapter of Deuteronomy.

No long period of declining vigor for Moses. No faltering memory, uncertain steps, failing voice. There was vigor, utility in God’s service, then he was taken. Moses’ last words were many and well-composed. Many people would like to die this way. But, to die this way, you have to be ready to die at every moment. God graced Moses with notice where Moses’ bodily decline did not give him notice.


Excerpt from "Are We Christians Dying to Meet Him?"

Power and Authority

Power is not the same as legitimate authority.

Mao Tse Tung said that political power proceeds from the muzzle of a gun. That seems true enough. It does not follow from that, however, that rightful authority to exercise power through a civil government proceeds from the muzzle of a gun. Rightful political power proceeds from God, to people individually, who then collectively transmit a portion of this authority given to them by God to a civil government.


Excerpt from "Trusting God or Trusting Ourselves"

Our Personal God

God is a God of names. He is a God individually. He is not vague and engaged only remotely in time and only in the general outline of matters. Though we can and ought to discern principles in the way God operates, He is a very personal God. He knows us by name. He knows us by family. He knows every hair on our head.

Obamacare: Problems and Hope

Dr. Terrell's close friend Dr. Ed Payne recently wrote the following article for Chalcedon's bi-monthly magazine Faith for All of Life. We are reposting it here with permission of the author because the ideas presented here are ones that Dr. Payne and Dr. Terrell shared and discussed regularly.

Obamacare: Major Problems, But Hope Remains in American Medicine and Health

By Ed Payne, M.D.

In perhaps the most bizarre and heinous act of Congress in the history of the United States, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) came into being. As Nancy Pelosi said, "We have to pass it to find out what is in it."  Well, the American people will find out what is in it, will pay for its virtually unlimited costs, will experience its ineffectiveness, and will suffer all the consequences of a state controlled entity.

But I do not want to talk about Obamacare so much as underlying Biblical principles. Up front I must mention my partner of over thirty years in medicine and medical ethics, Dr. Hilton Terrell, who died three years ago. Without our "iron sharpening iron," I would never have comprehended what follows here, and made grave mistakes. My work is essentially his work-except any errors are my own.

In addition, Rousas John Rushdoony was light-years ahead in prophecy and analysis of the issues, particularly in his twelve Chalcedon Medical Reports from the 1970s and 1980s reprinted in Roots of Reconstruction, one of which appears in this issue of FFAOL.

I have written extensively on medical and medical-ethical issues for thirty-five years and cannot cover everything here. Interested readers can visit my websites and track down the three books I published on these issues through various used book services (see Resources), one of which is available for $10.00 postpaid.1

More Negatives Than Positives

What I want to cover here is a basic understanding of health and medical issues, and surprisingly suggest that the ACA can bring about positive health benefits for the American people in general and for regenerate, Biblically knowledgeable Christians in particular. But let me say clearly that the deadliest effects of the ACA have to do with economic burdens and increasing totalitarianism by the state, not its effect on health and medicine. Rushdoony provides the proper perspective:

There is no reason to suppose that a socialized and federalized medicine will be any more benevolent than the Internal Revenue Service. The IRS, after all, was created with at least equal idealistic motives. Anyone who can think of the IRS as the people's friend will be no better than the IRS and potentially far worse. Any and everything which puts us into contact with a powerful state and its bureaucracy is dangerous, and socialized medicine will place us in a very close relationship to that power-state: at pregnancy and childbirth, in ill health and accidents, for a variety of required medical examinations, and much more. Also, as euthanasia becomes an accepted practice like abortion, the more the state knows about you, the less safe you are.2

I will focus on the negatives of modern medicine because the negatives outnumber the positives. But I do not want to leave the impression that practitioners are intentionally deceptive and evil. They are just blinded by the noetic effects of sin and a functional belief in humanism, as in other professions. For all these limitations and for the most part, physicians do have good, even the best of intentions, for their patients. It is just that good intentions, in the absence of Biblical and rational truth, are often as destructive as evil intent.

Again, Rushdoony puts health and medicine in perspective.

The doctor cannot guarantee health, nor can he guarantee healing. He cannot even guarantee to bring the best available knowledge and skill to bear on a particular illness, because no doctor is omnicompetent, and no patient can legitimately expect his doctor to be the outstanding practitioner with regard to a particular ailment.

Such unreasonable expectations have their origin in resentment against aging and dying, and this resentment manifests itself in hostility against the clergy and against doctors.3

As one grows older, one attends an increasing number of funerals, provoking my wife and me to comment that we do not want more than basic life-sustaining measures in our own dying process. The most common response to this is, "Oh, no, we want the best, most comprehensive treatment, especially for our loved ones." And we have seen this tenacious embrace of earthly life, as persons suffer through intravenous needles, catheters, noisy machines, an increasing array of medications (often to combat the side effects of previous treatments) many of which cloud the mind for final farewells, constant interruption of sleep of patients and families for nursing duties, isolation from families, and a host of other actions for "sound medical practice." For what? Heroic measures that will give only a few more hours or days with no hope of eventual physical recovery and continuing days of prolonged agony?4  Recently, we attended a conference that was definitively Biblical and pro-life where one of the themes was "to avoid starving grandpa" and using all measures available to sustain life for as long as possible. But the Apostle Paul said, "To live is Christ, to die is gain." God has promised a better life ahead!

Now-hear me clearly. Food, water, and air should never be withheld from those who can take them naturally. And all means of comfort should be used in the dying process. Euthanasia should never be perpetrated. But euthanasia is the removal or withholding of food, water, and air with the intent that the person (patient) is to die.5  It is not necessarily the withholding of, or failure to implement, these life-prolonging measures by medical means.6  These latter actions, if implemented in every dying patient, would bankrupt our entire society in less than a year. We cannot violate one commandment (not to steal) in an attempt to honor another (not to kill or preserve life). I cannot go into all the complex details of end of life issues, but have written at other times on this subject.7

Perhaps Biblical economics may be well understood among theonomists. But I have found that medical care often distorts what otherwise are well-known principles. As all theonomists and Biblical ethicists know, "You shall not steal," and by logical extension, "... for any reason!"  If your family is starving and you know that your neighbor has food, it is wrong for you to steal to feed your family. With all the wrong notions of modern medicine, how much less should the impulse arise to steal from others to provide medical care?

What if you steal for the "good" of others and discover that you have actually harmed them? You committed a sin that is doubly heinous. If people could grasp the lack of efficacy, and even harm, of medicine in so much of what it does, there would not be the plaintive and heart-driven desire to provide it regardless of cost to taxpayers and society.

Quackery and the Nature of Medicine

I doubt that medicine is any better or worse than any discipline, but it is my field of expertise. We live in a time where logical positivism, as scientific method, reigns supreme in the practical epistemology of the marketplace. Education at the primary and secondary levels has virtually no clue what truth is, much less a "unifying" theory for "uni-versities." I need say nothing about economic theory to FFAOL readers. Likewise, politics, art, management theory, archeology, mathematics, and other disciplines are well-known to you. Rushdoony places medicine in this perspective.

We have quackery all around us, in the church, the school, and in politics. Quackery in the church is not limited to the cults; it is present wherever men offer something short of God's Word as the bread of life. In the state schools, we have educators promising us the best kind of education as their stock in trade, while turning out (millions) of functional illiterates in America. Politics, of course, is our most fertile ground for quackery, because it is for most people the central area of life ... We live in the Golden Age of Quackery, and, instead of merely giving an Oscar to our top quacks, we have been giving them the White House with increasing frequency. Quackery is in great demand.8

On medicine in particular, he says:

The difference between a quack doctor and a good one begins with a sense of limitation. A quack medicine and a quack doctor both promise too much. A sound medicine offers limited help for a limited and specific problem. It offers no miracles and works none. It cannot replace good hygiene, sound nutrition, and healthy habits. The wise doctor makes no large promises; he knows how limited his role is, and yet, within those limits, very important. The more we demand of a doctor or his medicine, the more likely we are to fall prey to quackery.9 (His emphasis)

Few people are more anti-modern medicine than I am, yet I do not embrace much of alternative medicine, either. I fear that Christians have been more than gullible in this area. They make the same mistakes that orthodox practitioners make: they conclude that X medicine or procedure given at a certain point in time caused the healing.  That is, they make the fallacy of association with causation. In an orthodox practice, I estimate seventy percent or more of problems are self-limiting. That is, the problem will get better no matter, even in spite of, what the practitioner does. In my retirement, I supervise physician assistants. They are equal to any physicians with whom I have worked, and better than many. However, I estimate that they over-treat at least seventy to eighty percent of the patients that they see.10

The great difference between orthodox and alternative medicine is that the former attempts a scientific approach in spite of its limitations, whereas alternative medicine is mostly based upon individual testimony. There has been a significant attempt, with little impact, towards evidence-based medicine. I say "little impact" because patients want something done, and practitioners are quite willing to satisfy such requests to have a "happy" customer and get paid their fee. We live in a drug-seeking culture, whether legal or illegal.

I believe in the Biblical free market of supply and demand. As long as a person or family has the money to pay for a service, and it does not violate Biblical precepts, then he or they should be free to purchase it--alternative or orthodox. But I caution Christians not to make the same mistakes that modern medicine, as logical positivism, has made. The problem is that any science of medicine generally is extremely difficult, approaching impossibility.

There are some bright hopes in particular areas of orthodox medicine. Technology has greatly advanced in artificial limbs, lab and surgical procedures, monitoring devices, emergency room treatment of severe injuries, antibiotics in certain situations, treatment of burns, and some other areas that do not come readily to mind. But there are the negatives.

With precious few exceptions (leukemia, lymphoma, and especially in children), the "War on Cancer" begun in the 1970s has been lost. Drug treatment of irregular heartbeats (arrhythmias) in the 1980s and 1990s resulted in tens of thousands of deaths.11  The fall in heart disease and deaths from it is not due to modern medicine, but likely to a decrease in smoking and other lifestyle changes. Tens of millions of adults are on mind-altering drugs, and millions of children are on similar drugs, mostly for behaving like children. To make the greatest use of modern medicine would require the application of Biblical principles throughout the practice of medicine. These are just a few examples. Others can be found in the resources that I have provided.

Evangelical Christians could have prevented statist welfare, which inevitably led to Obamacare. Too many Christians who address medical ethics believe that government welfare is consistent with or equivalent to Christian charity. I do not need to develop the Biblical position on welfare with the audience of FFAOL, but readers should note this fact. Perhaps, Obamacare and the totalitarian steamrolling of Christian institutions which apply moral constraints to medical care will open some eyes to the true Biblical position: charity is personal and must be administered personally by individuals, churches, and other social groups. The Gestapo-like mandates to provide contraceptives and other measures for immoral activities is just the tip of the future iceberg.

Biblical truth is not complete without rational thinking about medical science. It is here that many Christians, and some theonomists, may go astray. Biblical thinking requires that one be a logical thinker, not just about the Bible, but in all areas of knowledge. Modern medical care, for all its glitz, glamour, and nearly three-trillion-dollar cost has a net negative benefit for the American people. One could call this recognition the Prophetic Calling of medicine for the thinking Christian.
 Medicine as Priestly Calling

Rushdoony repeatedly states that medicine is a "priestly calling," in the same category as being a pastor. I will mention only two reasons why this is so. First, man is a psychosomatic unity--a material (physical) and immaterial (spiritual) component.12 Today, medical students are taught, and physicians practice upon, the metaphysical belief that man is only material--only a chemical structure, a mere confluence of subatomic particles. Thus, their answer for any malady is a chemical. "Mental problems" are seen as chemical problems, so they are treated as such. Interestingly, patients have bought into this metaphysical position--with rare exceptions, they want a chemical "fix," not a spiritual one. Most Christians follow the crowd, seeking sanctification through their local drugstore.

Second, because man is a psychosomatic unity, health is inescapably tied to health of both body and spirit. Many Christians may not know the intimacy of bodily and spiritual health that is represented in Scripture. In Mark 10:52, Jesus said to Blind Bartimaeus, "Go; your faith has made you well." "Well" in the Greek derives from sozo, the word from which soteriology-salvation-is derived. The Apostle Paul speaks of being "saved" (sozo) from shipwreck (Acts 27:31). "Hygiene" (hugaino) is used for spiritual health in the context of Luke 5:31. "Therapy" or "therapeutic" is translated "healed" after Jesus cast out a demon in Matthew 12:22. There are many other words in the Old and New Testament that clearly demonstrate that health and salvation are dependent upon conditions of both body and soul. In the first several chapters of Salvation and Godly Rule, Rushdoony has the fullest development of the totality of Biblical salvation that I have seen anywhere.13  I have a more thorough discussion of such words pertinent to health and salvation.14

Implications for Christians

(1) Neither the health of the body nor that of the soul can be neglected. For a period of time, I was the pastoral counselor for a church. During that time, very few counselees I met with led lives that reflected physical and spiritual health (regular Bible study, strong church attendance and involvement, vigorous personal and corporate prayer, etc.). Most lives were chaotic, lacking family worship, regular meal times (especially with the whole family), regular sleep, and periods of quiet. Schedules were top-heavy with church activity, childrens' (and parents') sports and other "cultural" activities, and television-watching. While Jesus cautioned against linking physical illness with sin (John 9:1-7), He does state that sin must be considered as a cause for illness (James 5:13-16). Unfortunately, most Christians seem to lead "lives of quiet desperation" on a par with their pagan neighbors. Such lives invite illness, even severe illness, which may have these covert origins but is nevertheless sin-engendered.

(2) There are only two reasons for any Christian to pursue the practice of medicine. The first is to practice medicine on the mission field to promote evangelism. The second is to reform, or in Rushdoony's words, reconstruct medicine. I see no reason for a Christian to simply practice medicine in the common way that it is practiced in America today-which actually promotes ill-health on the whole (as argued above).

What does reconstruction entail? There are the obvious moral battles (abortion and euthanasia) but there are others. The National Association of Evangelicals has been embracing birth control for single women and accepting funding from the liberal National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy.15 Children have been co-opted and will eventually be forced to be vaccinated for sexually transmitted diseases. Many readers may not know that it is legal in all fifty states for their children to be "treated" without parental consent or knowledge (including distribution of birth control, treatment for sexually transmitted diseases, and abortions).

We must also confront the long-neglected empirical nature of medicine mentioned earlier. As Christians we are called to study and proclaim truth. Like evolution, medical science is not truth. In fact, any basic book on logic teaches that empiricism is a fallacy because it extrapolates from an extremely small, well-defined area to the entire universe. One of the most egregious examples in present medical practice are lipid-lowering drugs that affect cholesterol, triglycerides, and other fats in the blood. They are promoted on the basis of a statistical trick. In a study of a hundred patients, one might see a 33% reduction of cardiovascular events (from six heart attacks down to four). This 33% statistic is how the efficacy of these drugs is reported. But note that only two people out of a hundred benefit-one out of fifty! This value is called the "Number Needed to Treat" (NNT). The numbers for these drugs range from one in twenty to more than one in 200. In addition, drugs used in clinical practice are much more loosely controlled than in formal research--the informal fallacy of universalization from a small sample to the entire universe of patients.

Other issues showing poor efficacy are various cancer screens (e.g., breast, prostate, and colon), use of anti-arrhythmic heart drugs, carotid artery surgery for strokes, treatment of common conditions (e.g., colds, sinus infections, sore throat, cough, and fever), and many others. While individuals may benefit from these actions, there is no way to identify who these are without treating the entire group, leaving only a small net benefit.

Ultimately, all healing comes from the body's own extraordinary powers created by God. No medicine can make skin and other tissue grow back together. No medicine can mimic the two dozen or more chemical sequences that cause each heartbeat. No medicine can cause skin, liver, and intestinal tissue to replace itself. Surgery may remove diseased tissue, but the body must repair itself from the surgery. Ultimately, all healing comes from God's reparative mechanisms that are built into the body's systems. Medical practice is merely an aid to that process. Further, all medical practice to a varying degree harms the body, so the body must also thwart and overcome the destructive nature of the treatments themselves, even though there might be positive overall benefits.

The will to understand and expose the fallacious nature of medical "science" is almost non-existent among Christians. I know of no other orthodox practitioner other than myself who has spoken or written on this subject. There are naturopathic, homeopathic, and other alternative medical practitioners who have done some of this reporting, but they have their own agendas with which I do not always agree. But I have reported on numerous non-Christians who have written on this subject and have cited some of their work here.16 There is a science of medicine--an extensive science of medicine--but it must be carefully discerned through Biblical ethics and the best empirical evaluation. For all my criticism of empiricism, it is the only method that we have to discern the practice of medicine, so we have a science of medicine that should be used carefully for God's glory with Biblical understanding.

Thus, Christians should see only Christian physicians who possess such discernment. As Rushdoony has shown, the body cannot be isolated from the soul, and medicine is a priestly calling. Given proper analysis, we might be amazed to find how many of our medical problems are actually spiritual problems. Unfortunately, the needed cadre of physicians does not yet exist.

Obamacare Can Bring Better Health!

I conclude that Obamacare will not significantly change the efficacy of modern medicine which has been thoroughly naturalistic and anti-God for decades. Again, Rushdoony puts medicine in perspective.

Most Americans, where their health is concerned, are guilty of malpractice in taking care of themselves. They are totally tolerant of their life-time health malpractice, and yet highly intolerant of an occasionally real or imagined malpractice by a doctor. They forgive every kind of health malpractice in themselves, and they forgive nothing in doctors.17

I have briefly but strongly argued here that, taken as a whole, American medicine has a negative effect on our health. However, if readers educate themselves and act on that information to better their family's health in the face of Obamacare, then they can improve their chances of not needing medical care, or needing it less, in the future. With the Internet, almost all knowledge available to physicians is available to non-physicians.

Are the readers of FFAOL who are physicians, or their children, willing to develop a truly Biblical model as I've sketched out? Apart from my work with Dr. Terrell, I know of no other efforts that even begin to approach medicine via Biblical law and a discerning empirical basis. The nature of medicine, as Rushdoony argues, calls for Christians to be treated only by Christian physicians, but there are few who can fulfill this role.

It is possible that economic restrictions may actually improve the efficacy of medical care, as more and more provisions have to be curtailed. Already hospitals and nursing homes are dangerous places;18 Christians will have to care more for their own. Across the country, psychiatric institutions are being closed and their patients returned to families and others. Medicaid is already the largest item in many state budgets and cannot continue to be increased.19  Families can learn to eat more nutritiously and exercise more. More importantly, they can "trust and obey, for there is no other way, to be (healthy) in Jesus, but to trust and obey."

It may be possible for physicians to work "outside the system" under Obamacare for a while. Christians and others could provide services for free or even pay-as-you-go, but this activity will likely be criminalized in short order. We ought to consider it for as long as we are free to do so. I currently work in a family practice office which emphasizes "urgent" care. Eighty to ninety percent of the charts I review involve minor, self-limited problems handled by physician assistants and nurse practitioners. Families could be taught how to deal with such matters on an ongoing basis without long lines at government clinics.

Obamacare provides an opportunity to develop what medical care ought to look like in a theonomic society. This issue is the most important one for us here. Christians, even evangelicals and Reconstructionists, continue to neglect applying Scripture to medicine. Rushdoony gave us the foundational tools to do so with his Chalcedon Medical Reports. Dr. Terrell and I worked for more than thirty years through conferences and publications that have been virtually ignored while medical costs skyrocketed and medical ethics imploded. This article is only my third published in the last twelve years, during which I've had only one speaking engagement of any consequence despite the number of worldview conferences sponsored nationwide by serious Christian ministries. Because of this lack of interest, I have mostly moved on from medical ethics, but someone--many someones--must pick up the mantle or we will never build a biblically-consistent medical ethic and practice. Dr. Terrell and I only started the process--others now need to develop it towards a better finish.

I am grateful for this opportunity to speak to Chalcedon's readership. May God use it as He sees fit to advance His Kingdom through Biblical reconstruction.

1. Biblical Healing for Modern Medicine, Covenant Books, P.O. Box 14488, Augusta, GA 30919.
2. Rousas John Rushdoony, Roots of Reconstruction (Vallecito, CA: Ross House Books, 1991), 501-502.
3. Roots, 470-471.
4. While costs should not always be an issue, 18-26 percent of all medical expenditures are in the last year of life.
5. I wrestled for two years for a definition of euthanasia, and I believe that this one covers our responsibilities.
6. A clear distinction should be made between what is "medical" and what is common and natural.
7. See References at the end of this article.
8. Roots, 496.
9. Ibid., 495.
10. I have been able to influence them somewhat, but they are actually practicing the legal standard of medicine that will stand in a courtroom-the legal, not the Biblical or scientific standard of practice.
11. David H. Freedman, Wrong: Why Experts Keep Failing Us..., (New York, NY: Little, Brown, and Company, 2010).
12. The Bible variously calls the immaterial part of man: soul, spirit, mind, heart, and will. The reader will have to pursue his own research to how these are manifested in the person.
13. I have summarized these chapters and added some further details of my own here: http://www.biblicalworldview21.org/Theology/Salvation_Full_Meaning.asp
14. Biblical/Medical Ethics (Milford, MI: Mott Media, 1985), 101-126; Biblical Healing for Modern Medicine, Appendix 1, 195-204.
15. World Magazine, July 12, 2012, 9-11, 88. A later issue reported that NAE is regretting their position and changing their policy.
16. Nortin M. Hadler, Worried Sick: A Prescription for Health in an Overtreated America, (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 2008); Gary Null, Death by Medicine, (Mount Jackson, VA: Prakitos Books, 2010). An immediate online source is: http://webmail.medscape.com/service/home/~/feardie-1.pdf?auth=co&loc=en_US&id=131330&part=2
17. Roots, 476.
18. Death by Medicine, cited above.
19. Inability and unwillingness to fund federal medical mandates may be a major stumbling block to the implementation of Obamacare.

Resources
www.bmei.org This website contains all issues of The Journal of Biblical Ethics in Medicine, our major journal, and most of the issues of Biblical Reflections of Modern Medicine, my newsletter. Neither is published any longer.

www.biblicalworldview21.org My website that covers a wide range of ethical and worldview issues.

www.biblicalphilosophy.org My current work in philosophy and related issues.

Davis, John Jefferson. Evangelical Ethics, 3rd Edition (Phillipsburg, PA: P&R Publishing Company, 2004).

Report of the Heroic Measures Committee Presbyterian Church in America
http://www.bmei.org/jbem/volume2/num3/report_of_the_heroic_measures_committee.php

Payne, F. E. Biblical/Medical Ethics (Milford, MI: Mott Media, 1985)

Payne, F. E. Making Biblical Decisions (Escondido, CA: Hosanna House Book Publishing Company, 1989). Birth control fertilization issues, genetic engineering, and end of life issues.

Payne, F. E. What Every Christian Should Know About the AIDS Epidemic (Augusta, GA: Covenant Books, 1991)

Rushdoony, Rousas. Roots of Reconstruction (Medical Position Papers) (Vallecito, CA: Ross House Books, 1991), 457-517.

Google or other internet search engine. Virtually everything that I write about, including specific medical issues and economics, can be found on the internet with pertinent key words in the search.

Franklin E. (Ed) Payne, M.D. served on the faculty for 25 years at the Medical College of Georgia, Augusta, Georgia, where he retired as Associate Professor of Family Medicine in 2000. He then worked for five years in the Emergency Department at Fort Gordon, Georgia, retiring from there in 2006. In 1980, he began writing in medical ethics, co-founding a journal, writing two newsletters, setting up a website (www.bmei.org), writing six books and numerous articles, and giving various lectures for Christian and secular organizations. He has been married to Jeanne for 44 years with whom he has had four children and thirteen grandchildren.

Control

Ultimate control is God’s.

We are not to seek ultimate control. We are not to set our goals ultimately on desired outcomes. We are to seek to be knowledgeable of and obedient to our callings. The outcomes are God’s. His ways are not our ways and His thoughts are past our finding out.

Unfortunately, we determine “success” by outcome, not faithfulness.

Evidences for control-fixation:
Omniscience
• Multiple, interfacing, massive data bases, manipulated by computers.
• Economics honed to a fine edge on inventory control, currency exchange rates, interest rates, rapid and efficient movement of “money” so-called.
• Highly intrusive agencies seeking all sorts of information which is properly known to other spheres.
• Attitude surveys, consumer surveys, “registration” of products, the U.S. census, social security number on huge number of documents.

Omnipresence
• Video cameras, more police, use of the military against our own citizens.

Omnipotence
• Stunning regulation.
• Standing army.
• Heavy taxation.

We have a great cause for optimism – God is in control. The evil-doers are only fulfilling His plans as they rage against Him. Even we, as we do our good deeds, are accomplishing His will only by his empowerment and his grace. Otherwise, our acts are filthy rags. God will triumph. His Son will be vindicated. His children will be saved. His Church will be presented finally as a pure bride to the Son.

Gospel-based Medical Care

Proverbs 8:34-36: “Blessed is the man who listens to me, Watching daily at my gates, Waiting at the posts of my doors. For whoever finds me finds life, And obtains favor from the Lord; But he who sins against me wrongs his own soul; All those who hate me love death.”

Medicine cannot be Enlightenment-based and truly minister to people. It must be explicitly based on the gospel. Ignoring or rejecting the gospel is effectively hating God and thus loving death.

Medical care which confesses its dependence on and service to God can foreshadow the real healing, the final lifting of the curse which is to come. The very partial, very temporary healing which can sometimes be provided can be an image of the greater to come, as well as a temporary mercy. Medical care which does not make this connection is ministering an image of eternal death. We need to look to that tree whose leaves are for the healing of the nations. Christ hung on a tree and made available thereby to His elect this healing.


Excerpt from "Are We Christians Dying to Meet Him?"

The Fruits of the Spirit as Preventive Medicine

The Westminster Larger Catechism Question and Answer number 135 contains some of the means to preserving life:

“... a sober use of meat, drink, physic, sleep, labor, and recreation; by charitable thoughts, love, compassion, meekness, gentleness, kindness; peaceable, mild, and courteous speeches and behavior; forbearance, readiness to be reconciled, patient bearing and forgiving of injuries, and requiting good for evil; comforting and succoring the distressed, and protecting and defending the innocent.”

Here is health maintenance, preventive medicine, from 1646! “Physic,” that is, medicine, is but one of a long list of methods to preserve life. Note the generous role the fruits of the Spirit have in preserving life.


Excerpt from "Are We Christians Dying to Meet Him?"

Portrait Unveiled

Thursday, September 20, members of McLeod Health's administration, faculty, and staff as well as family and friends gathered to view the unveiling of the portraits of two well-loved and deeply missed physicians, Dr. N. B. Baroody and Dr. Hilton Terrell. Friends shared fond memories of both men and reminded those present of the lasting mark they left not only on the McLeod Family Medicine Residency Program but also on those that knew them. The new portraits will hang in the Family Medicine Center.

Read more here.

Christ Redeems, Not Medicine

1 Peter 1:18-19: “Knowing that you were not redeemed with corruptible things, like silver or gold, from your aimless conduct received by tradition from your fathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot.”

Modern medicine in the U.S. today, in the net, is one vast attempt to redeem ourselves from the curse placed on our race in the Garden of Eden, the curse of death, and with it, illness, with corruptible things, like silver and gold.


Excerpt from talk given at Westminster Presbyterian Church

On Charity

1 Timothy 5:8-10 (8) But if anyone does not provide for his own, and especially for those of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever. (9) Do not let a widow under sixty years old be taken into the number, and not unless she has been the wife of one man, (10) well reported for good works: if she has brought up children, if she has lodged strangers, if she has washed the saints’ feet, if she has relieved the afflicted, if she has diligently followed every good work.

Charity begins at home. There is a priority in view in this entire passage. Household first. Church fellowship next. Those outside the church (see v. 10) next. A side benefit of carefulness in charity is that idleness is restricted. Failure to care for one’s own household is an event so serious that excommunication is the penalty. The lack of action overrules the oral profession of faith. The principle is given here. Not every case is in view. Notice in verse 9 that a widow could be “taken into the list” (provided church welfare) only on certain conditions, including that she “has brought up children.” Now, if these were her children, one wonders where they are when she needs help. Perhaps they are dead, off on a military campaign, in prison, etc. Or, perhaps, they were themselves disobedient. Notice that there is no civil penalty mentioned here for failure to take care of parents. Under the principle of sphere sovereignty, not every sin is a civil crime.

Preparing for Retirement

Do we spend more time preparing for our retirement than for our death? While there is nothing wrong with preparing for either retirement or for some years of dependent living, is there not often a disproportion in our attention and planning? Hear the parable on the matter. “Then He spoke a parable to them, saying; ‘The ground of a certain rich man yielded plentifully. And he thought within himself, saying, ‘What shall I do, since I have no room to store my crops?’ So he said, “ I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build greater, and there I will store all my crops and my goods. And I will say to my soul, ‘Soul, you have many goods laid up for many years; take your ease; eat, drink, and be merry.’ But God said to him, ‘You fool! This night your soul will be required of you; then whose will those things be which you have provided?’ So is he who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God.” [Luke 12:16-21]

This rich man died suddenly. He was prepared for a long retirement – he had a privately held pension plan that was bulletproof. Yet, he was unprepared. Here is teaching directly on inordinate preparation. A dying man prepares to live a long time, but makes no provision for his dying.

Be more ready to die than to retire. You may not get to retire.


Excerpt from "Are We Christians Dying to Meet Him?"

Seeking Godly Civil Rule

Taken out of the context of the whole Bible, the Romans 13 passage has been misused by many to justify turning over to Caesar everything that Caesar asks for. Not so. Verse 7 tells us to render to Caesar his due. He is not due everything he demands. Actually, when Caesar no longer is a terror to those who are evil but actually becomes a terror to those who do good, it becomes the duty of the people to revoke the authority which they have given to the ruler. Not individually. Corporately. No lone rangers allowed. No terrorism or independent acts to overthrow a government. As much as we may chafe at the evil set over us now, we must know that having a civil ruler is indeed of God, and we must not long for chaos. Civil rule, by its nature, is corporate. We disobey God if we seek to be out from under civil rule. Our duty is rather to seek to be under godly civil rule.

Our so-called revolutionary war was not a revolutionary war at all. The colonies were not seeking to be out from under governance, nor were they seeking to take over London and Parliament and unseat King George III. They wanted to be under godly rule, determined that King George III was not a godly ruler, opted for their colonial parliaments, and seceded from England. Thus, our war was vastly different from the one that followed it about 15 years later in France, which was a true revolution, viciously anti-god, and has crippled France to this day.


Excerpt from "Trusting God or Trusting Ourselves"

Relationship Is Key

American dying partakes too much of a fixation on the tree of knowledge. We act as if just knowing enough will enable us to beat the curse of Eden. Better trained doctors and nurses. More pharmaceutical research. Better surgical tools. Knowing more about diet. Better computer systems to track things, to keep more nearly complete records and to keep them available to our fingertips.

No. No. While knowledge isn’t to be disdained as nothing, neither is it everything. It is not sufficient. Knowledge doesn’t give life. God gives life. In the Garden, Satan had us believe that eating of the tree of knowledge was desirable, though it had been forbidden. Knowledge without obedience to God isn’t life. It is a prolongation of death. A medical system – any system – which is set up to run apart from a real, practical, confessed connection to the God of life is vanity.

If you are inside healing arts professionally, do not mistake knowledge as the key to life. Relationship is key. Right relationship to God and right relationship to man, our patients, redeems an otherwise sterile knowledge. Relationship first with God and then with another human being – the patient – is the foundation of medicine. Without it, the finest machinery and chemistry is folly. If you are not in medicine, beware that we who are are steeped in knowledge, but by training systems not only devoid of a dependence upon the gospel, but actively now hostile to it. Medical training is a glutton at the tree of knowledge, but avoids the tree of life. Unless redeemed by explicit and specific biblical instruction, medicine is dangerous to the life of the soul.


Excerpts from "Are We Christians Dying to Meet Him?"

Belong to Jesus

There are many features to being ready for death, but the essential foundation is to be rightly related to the Son of God.

“I belong to Jesus, he will keep my soul
when the deathly waters dark round about me roll.
I belong to Jesus, and ere long I’ll stand
with my precious Savior there in the glory land.”
(Hymn “I Belong to Jesus,” vs. 5)

Belong to Jesus and, whatever the method or the timing, you will not be alone in the dying.


Excerpt from "Are We Christians Dying to Meet Him?"

Charity vs. Coercion

Hard questions need to be asked, asked by people who know that the death rate is one apiece, and who know with The Preacher, that there is a time to die (Eccles. 3:2). Charity is when we consult our wallets and our consciences and make a decision to meet a need. By definition, a civil state which collects its revenues under threat of the sword cannot do a charitable deed. It is preposterous that we have a punitive, coercive institution of God, the magistrate as the civil government is called, trying to accomplish a task that is related closely to nurturance, mercy, and tender love.


Excerpt from talk given at Westminster Presbyterian Church

"Moral" Regulations?

Christians share in our culture’s ways, including the less desirable habits. We don’t think people ought to snarf drugs up their noses – therefore we support laws against the possession of snarfable substances. There is no sense here of sphere propriety. We support burdensome regulations – how much water is in each toilet flush. How wide the doorways are in our homes. We get upset only when regulations touch us directly and egregiously. We don’t see the larger picture.

Sphere Sovereignty

“Evangelical” Christians have for decades emphasized essentially two spheres of governance: the individual and the civil state, but especially the former. One might be tempted to think that we have emphasized the family and the church also, but I don’t believe we have.

As to family governance, Christians have abdicated true family governance for a psychologized, democratized family that pretends to perform its duty of nurturance without governance. Headship is abandoned for cooperative negotiation. Children are distracted from sin but not punished for it. We have believed the “research” purports to show that corporal punishment is counter-productive. Christians now commonly buy the “positive self-concept” theory of rearing children.

Churches have lost much of their moral governance. Does your church discipline? Thank God if it does. We have let the world tell us, misusing Scripture horribly, “Judge not, lest ye be judged.” (This is itself a judgment. The point is that we should use the proper standard when making judgments – God’s Word.)

Further, though less often now, Christians have confused patriotism, which is love of nation, with unquestioning obedience to the governance over that nation.

Some means to the ends of understanding proper sphere sovereignty:

1. Personal study. Don’t seek to achieve a certain feeling at the end of a time of devotion. Our families will not be better governed than we are ourselves.
2. Read old material. Some of our fathers in the faith understood these particular matters better than we do.
3. Family worship and study. Discipline in the home. Our nation will not be better governed until our homes are.
4. Support the Church. Don’t let para-church activities supplant the church. Be careful for most end up hurting the church’s authority. Seek accountability within the Church, not some other structure.
5. As you have opportunity, tell others the reason of the hope that is in you. Reason. We have a reasonable faith.
6. Study the practical relationship of your actions to your vocation. At one time I was irritated at the preoccupation of Christians with their own spiritual life, and our ignorance and disregard of public ethics. Both are needful. We cannot have one without the other.

Knowledge vs. Life

We physicians in America have fallen too much in love with the technical aspects of our calling. We busy ourselves with calculating doses, viewing CT scans, looking at panels of blood tests. All very necessary, many times, but sometimes it is better to sit down and visit the sick. More so the dying. We have no time for that. We don’t know what to say. We are more comfortable just to be occupied with irrelevant measures. We are enraptured with the tree of knowledge. We confuse it with the tree of life.


Excerpt from "A Commentary on American Medical Practice"

Beneficiaries Are Better Shoppers

High deductible insurance not only puts the beneficiary back into the position of being a shopper of what he/she consumes, but it also makes the person a better shopper when entering the medical system to purchase services. If your doctor says that you need a $1000 MRI scan and the thousand is going to come out of your pocket, you are much more likely to ask the hard questions that patients almost never ask today: What good is it going to do me?

"Well," says the doctor, "It is possible that you have epiglootis oogagus acutus, and only an MRI scan will show that."

Says the medical shopper, or his designate if he is too ill to think clearly, "Well, just how likely is this to be epiglootis oogagus acutus?"

Now, the doctor is not accustomed to answering questions like that, and may hem and haw a little, but after looking it up finds that the chances of it being that are about one in 40,000.

The astute shopper realizes that this risk is close to the normal risks of ordinary life, such as driving to the next town on a Wednesday morning. The shopper asks further, "If it did turn out to be epiglootis oogagus acutus, what can be done for it?"

"Well, of course, we would treat you," says the doctor, as if he were talking to someone whose elevator doesn't go all the way to the top.

Pressing undeterred, the patient asks, "How successful is the treatment?"

Sure now that he is in conversation with someone with only one oar in the water, the doctor answers, "Thirty-five percent of treated people recover completely," with an air of finality, hoping to shut down this inquisitor so he can get on to the next patient.

Uncaring of his developing reputation as a lamebrain, the patient has one final question: "How many untreated people recover completely?"

The doctor has to look it up. Sheepishly, considerably later, he mumbles, "Thirty-two percent." I hate to run numbers, but roughly, for a mere $1000 MRI, a patient can have a chance of 1 in 40,000 disease diagnosed, but stands only perhaps a 3% better chance at recovery than if he never had it diagnosed at all. That would come to $40 million per case diagnosed, and to about $1.3 billion for each extra cure effected. Actual calculations are more complex than that, but this estimate rather substantially underestimates the expense.

This kind of reasoning is commonplace in medicine. Ordinary medical practices for which the actual payoff to the patient is unknown, marginal, or even negative include: the "complete physical examination," screening for prostate cancer, screening for diabetes, screening for spinal scoliosis, cholesterol screening and treatment, and, I am recently astonished to discover, even for the time-honored Pap smear in most cases. Any medical system which pretends to protect us from risks as low as one in 40,000, or even from more likely risks but at huge expenses running into the hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars, is a system of idolatry.

Where is the money going to come from? From our own better-informed pockets.


Excerpt from talk given at Westminster Presbyterian Church

Constraining Government Insurance

By whatever insurance plan, the biblical role of government in health care is much more limited than now exists in U.S. There is insufficient space to defend this controversial assertion here. The reader is referred to such biblical texts as Romans 13:1-7 and 1 Peter 2:13-14 for statements regarding the purpose of government. I fail to find any biblical warrant for a government role in the provision of individual medical care. A warrant for public health measures could be made from Old Testament texts. Whereas public health concerns may include such issues as environmental carcinogens, they do not include whether to irradiate Aunt Mae's bone cancer, whether she should be admitted to a hospital, or whether she should be put on expensive intravenous hyperalimentation if the time comes when she cannot eat.

Christians who insist upon government involvement in such issues must not only show the biblical basis for the government involvement, they must show how to constrain the government to obey God’s law in managing individual cases. A government which will sanction millions of abortions, which usurps family authority to teach and discipline children, which allows experimentation with human embryos, etc., is not trustworthy to look after Aunt Mae's best interests.


Excerpt from "Ethical Issues in Medical Insurance"

More on Lending

Exodus 22:25 “If you lend money to any of My people who are poor among you, you shall not be like a moneylender to him; you shall not charge him interest.”

Here is a prohibition against lending to poor Christians at interest. Calvin made a distinction between lending to alleviate poverty and want, and lending as a business arrangement, in which latter he thought interest was acceptable. I doubt it. Fiat money and legal tender laws combine to make obedience to this command tricky. In an inflationary economy the inflating agency (the government) can steal the value of the money you are paid back, so that receiving only the principal means you have actually not been repaid. Repayment stated in goods is a potential corrective for that, or repayment of the principal after correction for inflation.


Read more on lending by Dr. Terrell here.

Sanctioned Monopoly

Can you see the monopolistic aspects of how pharmaceuticals are devised and marketed? There has been no literal grant of exclusive rights to one company to research drugs, but a system has been created which permits only very big fish to play in the lake. These big pharmaceutical fish submit to the onerous rules, grumbling, but they are the only legal players. No one else can play. If the FDA were closed tomorrow, the first to clamor for its reinvention would be the pharmaceutical companies, as much as they rail against it. They couldn't stand the competition in a truly free market.


Excerpt from "Pharmacy and Medical Interventions"

Anniversary

Today, June 18, marks 46 years since Hilton and Marcia Terrell were married. He was a devoted and beloved husband. Although he spoke and published articles on medicine and medical ethics, he also wrote a few poems that he never shared publicly.


My Tabithite Wife

Who garbed others in scarlet cloth,
Herself will be where thief or moth,
May not steal a single stitch,
Placed with care by a heart so rich.
Clothed by Him, this Tabitha stands,
Her robes placed by His nail-scarred hands,
Presented alive to saints above,
Practical servant, imaging love.
While sewing for others, she was sewn,
To His heart, eternally His own.

Name-calling

The Holy Scriptures do not shy away from naming names of those who are doing or have done wrong. Paul says, in 2 Timothy 4:14: “Alexander the coppersmith did me much harm. May the Lord repay him according to his works.” We are not engaged in a struggle of abstractions, against an abstract evil and sin in the abstract. Abstractions have their place, but sin is downright personal. It has a face. It bears a name. A clear example of the difference may be seen in considering whether or not God hates the sin but loves the sinner. This is a true statement if one is viewing the sin and the sinner as a saved child of God, who has fatherly wrath against His erring son or daughter, but is not cancelling the salvation. Of the reprobate, however, it is not the sin which will endure eternal punishment, but the sinner. There is a judicial wrath which only the blood of Christ will cover. As a general caution, we should all be wary of imagining that our sins are in some way abstracted from ourselves.

In Philippians 4:2-3, we Paul and Timothy admonishing in a fatherly way two women engaged in some kind of dispute. “I implore Euodia and I implore Syntyche to be of the same mind in the Lord. And I urge you also, true companion, help these women who labored with me in the gospel, with Clement also, and the rest of my fellow workers, whose names are in the Book of Life.” Eternal security in Christ is not the focus here, but rather obedience. There is a cowardice among us Christians when we are, on the proper occasions, unwilling to name names which need to be named. General or private admonitions are the general rule, but there are times to be specific and even times to be specific and public.

In 2 Timothy 1:15-16, Paul writes: “This you know, that all those in Asia have turned away from me, among whom are Phygellus and Hermogenes. The Lord grant mercy to the household of Onesiphorus, for he often refreshed me, and was not ashamed of my chain;” Eternal security in Christ is a focus here. In writing to his spiritual children, Paul behaves as we would do with our literal children. We learn, I think correctly, not to be comparing our children one to the other but rather each is held up to God’s standard alone. Yet here we see Paul making a striking comparison between the good behavior of Onesiphorus and the apostasy of Phygellus and Hermogenes. He does that in part because he is identifying these two in Asia as leaders among apostates. Their names, he implies, are not in the Lamb’s Book of Life. When the Church today teaches against damnably erroneous teaching, it needs to name names. Disputes within the family may be kept within the family (or they may not be depending on their notoriety), but heresies need to be denied in the named and personal sense as well as in the doctrinally abstract. We don’t seem to make the distinction well nor to be willing to name names in a negative sense. We are very concerned, rather, with being nice.

We should be concerned lest our names be forever linked with Satan as were Ananias and Sapphira (Acts 5:1-11). The Today’s Abstracted Version of the Bible (according to Terrell) would render the account of Ananias and Sapphira like this:

“There was this middle-aged married couple, right? And they had some land and said they sold it and gave all the money to the church. But they didn’t, you know what I’m saying? They kept part of it. So they were struck down dead as an example to the church not to lie to the Holy Spirit, and everybody was, like, Wow! I’m not going to do that!”

While that is the gist of the account, we must not lose sight of the historicity of it – it really occurred – and the personality of it – these were real people whose names we still know.


Excerpt from "Names"

Taking Oaths

Through the years I have on several occasions been required to give court testimony. I have noted with dismay how the “swearing in” has on some occasions recently omitted God altogether, or on others have been so perfunctory and sing-song as to have had less gravity than reciting a nursery rhyme. Of this, Leviticus 19:12: “And you shall not swear by My name falsely, nor shall you profane the name of your God: I am the Lord.”

I am a member of a medical group that employs a defense attorney for physicians caught up in cases of alleged regulatory misdeeds. It has been breathtaking to read and hear court testimony which is not only false but was suborned by the government, all with impunity, even though the judge has on one occasion said of the key witnesses that her key testimony was “false to a dramatic degree.” Nothing happens and the case rolls along as if lying were normal and acceptable. Even if the court takes your oath lightly, Christian, you may not do so. You have affixed the name of God to what you say.


Excerpt from "Names"

Personal Responsibility in Alternative Medicine

The success of orthodox therapies has been greatest where patient participation has been least. Great things are accomplished in surgery, where a patient's responsibility is, basically, to sign an op permit and hold still for the anesthetic. Great things are accomplished in pharmacology where the patient has but to take a pill, inhale a puff, or stick on a patch. While many, too many, patients prefer that approach, there are others who wish to retain a sense of control. Unorthodox therapies, accurately or not, may offer this sense, which is one to be encouraged since God did place this responsibility first with the individual (1 Cor. 3:16,17; 7:12,19,20, 2 Cor. 7:1).


Excerpt from "Quackery"

Liberty and Gardasil

Any parents who wish for their child the protection from HPV afforded by the vaccine can give permission, leaving intact the liberty of dissenters. The benefits of herd immunity so cherished by those at central nodes of power is not well-satisfied by this approach, but Liberty smiles. Diversity… smiles with Liberty. Not only is a population strengthened by genetic diversity, so also is a body politic when the genomes of unscientific belief and attitude are allowed expression. Science is incompetent to decide these matters, on either side. Let the science be heard, let the people’s beliefs be heard, then let the people decide.


Read more of Dr. Terrell's article, "The Case Against Gardasil," originally published in the Arizona Medical Association's AzMedicine.

From the Bookshelf

It is an uncommon textbook that can span the distance between neophyte and maestro. Nonetheless, this latest edition of Sapira’s Bedside Diagnosis easily manages that stretch.

In not quite 700 text pages this volume covers the interview, detailed examination of each body part and system, and the clinical reasoning that makes sense of these data.

Orient is the editorial philosopher’s stone, changing into gold what in some other texts is leaden prose.

Read more of Dr. Terrell's book review here.

The Case Against Gardasil

The Gardasil debate frequently gets lost in statistics instead of focusing on more foundational principles. Cancer prevention ought not to be treated as a supreme good nor should only measurable entities like diseases or pregnancies be considered. There are "other outcomes, generally unintended, perhaps much delayed, which are not measured or even measurable."


Read Dr. Terrell's article, "The Case Against Gardasil," originally published in the Arizona Medical Association's AzMedicine.

Mercurial Logic

Read more of Dr. Terrell's thoughts on vaccinations in an article he wrote for the AAPS.

More on Vaccinations

I would commend spacing [vaccinations] out firmly on the grounds of general principles: there is NEVER something for nothing in life, medicine included. That is, we are fiddling with systems about which relatively little is known. It is not usually possible to achieve the good we want without some liability to harm, and the whole of life is getting the most good for the least bad.


Excerpt from a personal letter, 2004

On Vaccinations

The dangers of vaccines, while undeniable, including such disasters as large scale vaccine-caused polio several decades ago and small scale transmission today, apparently are quite small. The dangers fall into a background static that requires huge numbers of people and careful statistical study to sort out. Single case studies or testimonials are bootless to answer the question. Anyone against anything can dig up or adapt scary stories. The risk your child takes riding a bicycle for a total of a few hours may well exceed the risk you are trying to calculate.


Excerpt from "On Vaccinations"

The Appeal of Alternative Medicine

Orthodox practitioners should be intrigued by the question of why, if our therapies are superior, and [unorthodox practioners' therapies] are inferior, people continue to pursue the latter. What do they receive elsewhere that they do not receive from us? Could it be, sometimes, that our mechanistic approach omits healing of the spirit? Omits love? Even at our therapeutic best, where we understand mysteries, do we lack love? (1 Cor. 13:2)


Excerpt from "Quackery"

God's Name

Exodus 4:10-16: “Then Moses said to the Lord, ‘O my Lord, I am not eloquent; neither before nor since You have spoken to Your servant; but I am slow of speech and slow of tongue.’”

Moses thus complains and tries to excuse himself from God’s call on the basis of flawed speech.

“So the Lord said to him, ‘Who has made man’s mouth? Or who makes the mute, the deaf, the seeing, or the blind? Have not I, the Lord?’”

God, who is the maker of mouths and all that they can do, refuses Moses’ complaint.

“‘Now therefore, go, and I will be with your mouth and teach you what you shall say.’ But he said, ‘O my Lord, please send by the hand of whomever else You may send.’”

Moses persists in his complaining and excusing.

“So the anger of the Lord was kindled against Moses, and He said; ‘Is not your brother Aaron the Levite your brother? I know that he can speak well. And look, he is also coming out to meet you. When he sees you, he will be glad in his heart. Now you shall speak to him and put the words in his mouth; And I will be with your mouth and with his mouth, and I will teach you what you shall do. So he shall be your spokesman to the people. And he himself shall be as a mouth for you, and you shall be to him as God.’”

God condescends to Moses even in His anger and resolves the language issue.

May God likewise resolve our limitations with His Name. Let us not be unwilling to speak it as best we can know it, reverently, to others along with all the meaning that comes with it. The “Great I AM,” or “Yahweh” in my ignorance and suspicion are the closest I believe I can come at present to speaking the Name of God. The name of the second Person of the Trinity is quite certain, and easy -- Jesus.


Excerpt from "Names"

Licensing Monopoly

When [Steve Cooksey] was hospitalized with diabetes in February 2009, he decided to avoid the fate of his grandmother, who eventually died of the disease. He embraced the low-carb, high-protein Paleo diet, also known as the “caveman” or “hunter-gatherer” diet. The diet, he said, made him drug- and insulin-free within 30 days. By May of that year, he had lost 45 pounds and decided to start a blog about his success. 

That blog has created legal trouble for Cooksey. Because of licensing laws, Cooksey could be looking at jail time. Read the entire Carolina Journal article here and some of Dr. Terrell's comments on licensure here.

The Teacher and the Student

John 10:2-4: “But he who enters by the door is the shepherd of the sheep. To him the doorkeeper opens, and the sheep hear his voice; and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. And when he brings out his own sheep, he goes before them; and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice.”

Modern teaching methods imagine that the goal is to transmit data, information, facts, from the teacher, textbook, institution, PowerPoint slides, etc., to the students. It is a transfer of information, and information is held to be power. Interpersonal knowledge between the student and teacher is omitted. It is a terrible omission.

Luke 6:40: “A disciple is not above his teacher, but everyone who is perfectly trained will be like his teacher.” The relationship is thus not like one between a faucet and a bucket. The teacher and student need to have a fuller, personal relationship for there to be completeness in the task. Imagine teachers who are academically expert in, say, counseling and psychology imparting information in these areas to their students. Some such teachers have personal lives which are amazingly, stunningly, out of order. Yet, they teach. Luke 6:39 says, “And He spoke a parable to them: ‘Can the blind lead the blind? Will they not both fall into the ditch?’”

Exactly so. We should not imagine that education is complete just in the accurate information transfer from the faucet to the bucket, so to speak. The student needs to see something of what is taught in the teacher, and the teacher needs to see evidence (or an instructive lack of evidence) in the life of the student. For this reason, teaching by parents in the household has all of the burden and all of the advantages over that by professionals. [Deut. 6:5-9; 20-25]

Real education is downright personal. It is not abstract, though it may contain abstractions. Graduate schools, medical schools, seminary colleges have big advantages in their concentration of brainpower and wide subject matter expertise. Yet, we see medical school graduates who cannot relate to their patients, pastors who have not been mentored by more senior pastors, counselors who know theories but have not been tried by fire.

The Koran is a good example of the bad method of mere transmittal of data -- it is impersonal. Our Bible transmits data, but does it in the unfathomable depths of human experience. It is personal, from cover to cover. The abundance of names in it testify to its concern for and relevance to individual souls.

Medical Licensure

Medical licensure laws render to Caesar authority God has deposited elsewhere. God places the physical health of individuals into the hands of the individual, the family, and the church (see 1 Cor. 6:15-20). Whether such laws "worked" or not is secondary to their biblical propriety. The civil state figures in only for contagious diseases in which coercive isolation measures are called for. The civil ruler's power is coercive. Except for contagious diseases where coerced measures may be beneficial to the whole community, medical care is a business contract or a ministry of compassion and mercy – hardly fit tasks for the hand that bears a sword.


Excerpt from "Quackery"

By What Standard?

Medical ethics are those principles which govern conduct in medical decisions. It is unfortunate that most attention is paid to the "big," knotted, snarled, questions, such as: “Should this 13 year old child on Medicaid, with liver failure, the son of a Christian Scientist mother and a Jehovah's Witness father, receive a baboon liver transplant over the objections of animal rights activists and his parents, and should the state of Oregon pay for it, though it is not on their Medicaid list?” That kind of issue is a headline maker along with all those ethical decisions which cluster around the plugs of ventilators in intensive care units.

I am more concerned with the mundane decisions.

• Is mother competent to decide that she does not want surgery for her cancer, or is she too senile?
• What do you tell a 15 year old girl who tags a request for birth control pills onto the end of her visit for an ankle sprain?
• Is it right to "chemically restrain" an elderly demented person who is disrupting the home with spitting, shouting, cursing, and refusal to eat?
• How do you deal with a 75 year old man with no urinary symptoms who heard a radio ad encouraging retired men to have themselves checked for prostate cancer and wants you to do the testing?
• What about the nasty patient who has fallen out with every doctor in town, and is now furious with you, threatening lawsuit, but bound to you financially by his managed care plan?

Although it is less interesting than plunging into these questions, there are some necessary preliminaries. Before we decide the “right” pathway, we have to consider the means by which we determine what is right. It won't do to assume that we will agree, because we almost certainly will not. The first principle of an ethical decision, one that is normally overlooked because it poses difficulties, is that a standard is required by which the decision is to be made.

• Not everybody shares the same standard.
• Individual freedom of decision is a highly valued principle in the U.S.

Different standards can lead to very different conclusions. By no means do all standards share some essential elements which lead to the same outcome. One common way these problems are “solved” is to avoid explicit confrontation of the matter and slip in a standard by implication. That is cheating.

An article favoring, say, euthanasia may describe the suffering of terminal disease and conclude that, therefore, mercy killing is right. By implication, the proponent of mercy killing has decided that the suffering is the determinative factor when the situation looks hopeless. Now, if one just came out and said that baldly, it would be evident that the decision is based on a corollary to hedonism – that life is about maximizing pleasure and minimizing pain. The principle governing this proponent of euthanasia – I don't claim, by the way, that all proponents of euthanasia would own this as their principle – relates to the standard of hedonism. It should be so recognized, so stated, and defended if possible. Or, a proponent of say, socialized medicine, may support the position by saying that most of the people of the world are in such systems, and/or that most people in the U.S. favor it in some poll. Bootlegged into this statement is the assumption that right and wrong is decided by majority action. That standard deserves to be stated outright.

The difficulty of achieving a standard seems to some people so insurmountable that they bail out by asserting that the problem is impossible and we must, somehow, just go on without solving it. “You'll never get everyone to agree,” they say. Well, never is a long time, but even to say that is to imply that a right standard requires group agreement. Are right decisions invariably held hostage to group agreement? Acting on a decision may indeed be blocked by a powerful group, but making a decision, advising a course of action, are not subject to group consensus unless you presuppose that they are. I do value group consensus in medical ethics. However, I do not believe it to be ultimate. When I am having difficulty in advising an ethical course of action, I find that my desire for consensus is sometimes merely a lack of the courage of my convictions. I don't like to be different.

Another way Americans deal with the different standards dilemma is to confuse data with wisdom. We heap up information. Computers help. Estimates are that there are six million articles annually published in English alone which relate to medicine. We do computer searches. We find out how much it costs. What the risks are. What the various treatments are. These are statements of what is. We will return to them, for they are important in making ethical decisions. However, ethics is about what ought to be, or what ought not to be. Data is about what is, or what is not. Even stacked exceedingly high and heated, a pile of “is” statements will not convert to an “ought” statement. Empirical statements do not transform under pressure and heat to normative statements.

Lest I now fall under my own condemnation of making ethical pronouncements without making clear the standard, I wish to state my own. My ultimate ethical standard is the Bible. I recognize that many will not agree with that, and, of course, some who would disagree with the interpretation and application. I do not pretend to have solved all problems with that assertion. Nonetheless, to pretend to be able to go very far at all without having a standard is foolishness, and to withhold the standard or apply it implicitly is deceptive. Neither is it essential that patients agree with me on the standard. Ordinarily, we are able to work out an agreed-upon course of action though we do not share the underlying reasons for the action. If we are unable to agree upon a right course of action, we may be able to see that the failure comes from different standards. The foundation for counseling persons with questions on medical ethics, then, is to see that ethics requires a normative standard, that the counselor needs to know his/her standard and be explicit about it if difficulties arise. "Oughts" come from "oughts" not from knowledge of what is.


Excerpt from "Counseling Persons with Questions on Medical Ethics"