Our duty is to discover His will and to do it and to let Him take care of the outcomes. He is trustworthy.
Americans are characterized by a “can do” attitude. We are performance oriented. While there are many advantages to this there are also characteristic faults. We are prone to seek control beyond our rightful sphere, to take over from someone else [by unjust means]... Don’t like the employer? Just sue him. Don’t like your neighbor’s trashy yard? Get a zoning ordinance passed. Don’t like the way your acquaintance is raising her child? Anonymously report her for child abuse. Don’t think people should use echinacea for their ailments? Use the FDA to have it prohibited.
One characteristic all of these approaches use is their ends-justify-the-means assumption. God wants us to seek good ends. He also wants us to use good means. Respecting His division of authority is basic.
Excerpt from "Trusting God or Trusting Ourselves"
Monday, January 27, 2014
Monday, January 20, 2014
Patient-Oriented View
[Clinical practice] guidelines are disease-oriented rather than patient-oriented. This orientation to disease is an affliction of modern medicine which the guidelines did not originate, but which they will aggravate. The context in which problems occur, the beliefs of the patient, coexisting disease, financial issues, malpractice liabilities, and so forth, are not sufficiently in view.
Excerpt from "Practice Guidelines"
Excerpt from "Practice Guidelines"
Monday, January 13, 2014
Germ Theory and the Spirit
[The germ theory] is a powerful concept. Great things have been accomplished in medicine by application of this theory. Ask today what the cause of pulmonary tuberculosis is, and nearly every physician will answer, “Mycobacterium TB” or one of the other Mycobacteriaceae. More than just for infectious disease, the germ theory is typical of a set of models which posit a material cause for each disease.
Common to these models is the idea that each disease is caused by an unbidden, alien, and usually unseen agent which invades a person against his will. The job of medicine is to find the alien and cut it out surgically or poison it out medically. Preventive medicine is supposed to lock out the alien substance or to lock it up harmlessly -- be it cholesterol, elevated blood glucose, uric acid, or a developing nest of malignant cells. The patient's job is rather passive in all of this. The patient is basically to hold still while the doctor identifies and destroys the invader. The whole idea of prevention or therapy is to change as little of the person as possible. Only the invader needs to be destroyed. The person's attitudes, beliefs, motives, loyalties, or character are largely incidental to the process.
The germ theory has worked!
One and a half centuries later, we have become victims of our success in exploiting these models of disease which feature a "physical causative agent" that comes in willy-nilly on a gene or a germ. Thus planted and matured, this model of physical causation of disease has borne such fruit that people are trying to grow it well outside of its natural range.
Physical causation for presenting complaints of patients has been transplanted to problems which do not have a physical cause, though they may have a physical consequence in the body. In addition, though multifactorial models for disease are now in ascendance, all of the multitude of factors examined are physical factors. The spirit of the suffering person is neglected as a factor, let alone as a key factor. The idea of physical agency for medical complaints has pushed the spirit of mankind out of its proper claim.
I wish to maintain that the spirit of mankind is actually the primary factor in determining health or sickness in the United States, and that the "basic science," as it were, of spiritual matters is Biblical theology. It follows then that Medicine should be functioning from a biblical framework that makes the natural science methodology subsidiary to theology.
Excerpt from "Physician and Pastor: Co-Laborers"
Common to these models is the idea that each disease is caused by an unbidden, alien, and usually unseen agent which invades a person against his will. The job of medicine is to find the alien and cut it out surgically or poison it out medically. Preventive medicine is supposed to lock out the alien substance or to lock it up harmlessly -- be it cholesterol, elevated blood glucose, uric acid, or a developing nest of malignant cells. The patient's job is rather passive in all of this. The patient is basically to hold still while the doctor identifies and destroys the invader. The whole idea of prevention or therapy is to change as little of the person as possible. Only the invader needs to be destroyed. The person's attitudes, beliefs, motives, loyalties, or character are largely incidental to the process.
The germ theory has worked!
One and a half centuries later, we have become victims of our success in exploiting these models of disease which feature a "physical causative agent" that comes in willy-nilly on a gene or a germ. Thus planted and matured, this model of physical causation of disease has borne such fruit that people are trying to grow it well outside of its natural range.
Physical causation for presenting complaints of patients has been transplanted to problems which do not have a physical cause, though they may have a physical consequence in the body. In addition, though multifactorial models for disease are now in ascendance, all of the multitude of factors examined are physical factors. The spirit of the suffering person is neglected as a factor, let alone as a key factor. The idea of physical agency for medical complaints has pushed the spirit of mankind out of its proper claim.
I wish to maintain that the spirit of mankind is actually the primary factor in determining health or sickness in the United States, and that the "basic science," as it were, of spiritual matters is Biblical theology. It follows then that Medicine should be functioning from a biblical framework that makes the natural science methodology subsidiary to theology.
Excerpt from "Physician and Pastor: Co-Laborers"
Monday, January 6, 2014
Connecting Physicians and Pastors
We wash our hands so as not to infect patients with physical germs. Yet we carry the germs of deadly spiritual ideas from a misbegotten medical orthodoxy -- wrong ideas about the nature of people and their complaints -- and bring those wrong ideas into our examination rooms. We are infecting our patients with these wrong notions. We are harming our patients both physically and spiritually by the infectious ideas we bring with us into the medical encounter. We are also harming them by keeping biblically correct beliefs out of the medical encounter….
Consider, however, a household I have encountered that is not all that unusual. A divorced woman in her forties heads the house, one of only two employed persons in the house. Her ex-husband contributes nothing to the support of his one surviving child, who is disabled. The other child died in infancy. The mother has three daughters by other men whom she never married. Two of these three already have illegitimate children of their own, out of numerous sexual liaisons, and the third adolescent is already quite sexually experienced. Educational and vocational aspirations find little encouragement or example in the house.
Out of this household has emanated sexually-transmitted diseases galore, depression, one murder, a person with a seizure disorder possibly related to childhood head injuries, severe visual impairment, numerous infections, premature childbirth, and so forth. Into this maelstrom of medical problems, our profession has hurled, modern obstetrics, Dilantin, antibiotics galore, surgery, tricyclic antidepressants, and vitamins. Not admitted to this arena of suffering, however, is any investigation, let alone challenge, of the erroneous belief systems. What is proper sexual behavior? What is a good basis for marriage? What is the right way to handle anger? Is it right not to work, when you are able to do so, and live off the means of others? These kinds of questions are begging to be asked and answered. Yet, with a vengeance, the medical profession is refusing even to consider them. All lifestyles are now being created equal. The Scriptures have answers to these questions. They are not rhetorical questions. Medicine, however, is halted well short of the etiologies contained in values and beliefs. By means of working connections between physicians and pastoral counseling, we need to make these answers available to patients.
Excerpt from "Physician and Pastor: Co-Laborers"
Consider, however, a household I have encountered that is not all that unusual. A divorced woman in her forties heads the house, one of only two employed persons in the house. Her ex-husband contributes nothing to the support of his one surviving child, who is disabled. The other child died in infancy. The mother has three daughters by other men whom she never married. Two of these three already have illegitimate children of their own, out of numerous sexual liaisons, and the third adolescent is already quite sexually experienced. Educational and vocational aspirations find little encouragement or example in the house.
Out of this household has emanated sexually-transmitted diseases galore, depression, one murder, a person with a seizure disorder possibly related to childhood head injuries, severe visual impairment, numerous infections, premature childbirth, and so forth. Into this maelstrom of medical problems, our profession has hurled, modern obstetrics, Dilantin, antibiotics galore, surgery, tricyclic antidepressants, and vitamins. Not admitted to this arena of suffering, however, is any investigation, let alone challenge, of the erroneous belief systems. What is proper sexual behavior? What is a good basis for marriage? What is the right way to handle anger? Is it right not to work, when you are able to do so, and live off the means of others? These kinds of questions are begging to be asked and answered. Yet, with a vengeance, the medical profession is refusing even to consider them. All lifestyles are now being created equal. The Scriptures have answers to these questions. They are not rhetorical questions. Medicine, however, is halted well short of the etiologies contained in values and beliefs. By means of working connections between physicians and pastoral counseling, we need to make these answers available to patients.
Excerpt from "Physician and Pastor: Co-Laborers"
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