Facts vs. Wisdom

Doctors are concerned about keeping up with the literature, which is absurd on its face. There are millions of articles published in English alone relevant to medicine every year. If you are so aware that you could hone them down to one percent of what is published, you would have a daily reading load so heavy that you could never keep up. We have confused data with understanding, and the acquisition of massed of so called facts with wisdom. It is particularly telling that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Medical schools never mention the Lord in any positive contexts, whatever. We have grown away from the wisdom that was, perhaps, once there in medicine. Once we dropped the integrating capacity of Scripture, the data no longer makes any sense.


Excerpt from an interview with Dr. Terrell

Presuppositional Medicine

Medicine itself is an empirical endeavor; we look at how things are. We look at the natural man. Yet medicine cannot tell us how things should be. Medicine is empirical in a lot of ways -- in its application -- but in its formation and its fundaments it is presuppositional. And the only proper presuppositions are those of Scripture, which are best stated in the Westminster Confession of Faith and the Larger and Shorter Catechisms, or documents like that, such as the Heidelberg Catechism.


Excerpt from an interview with Dr. Terrell

A Passive Teacher

A father tells his four year old to go into the house. The four year old hesitates, then trundles off in another direction. The father does nothing. Mistake not. Learning has just taken place, and the learning is contrary to good health. Multiplied episodes of that sort have far more to do with the ultimate health of that child than eating meals laden with cholesterol or devoid of fiber.


Excerpt from "Pharmacy and Medical Interventions"

Recapturing Supervision

How may overarching supervision of the medical care by Christians be recaptured by the Church?

1. Church discipline of physicians who are practicing gross sins. So you have no abortionists in your congregation? Do you have those who refer for abortion?

2. Church discipline of members who are practicing gross sins. It is neither kind nor healthy to overlook gross sin.

3. Preaching the Word to the Church, with applications to health where they are present. This is not the same as locating biblical "support" for current medical practice.

4. Teaching the word to the Church, with applications to health where they are present.

5. For #3 & 4 above, the issues which relate to health taught in Scripture include: "parenting," marital relations, indebtedness, work habits, Sabbath-keeping, addictionism, education, etc.

6. A diaconal ministry instructed and involved in helping Church members ask the right questions of physicians during illnesses, politely but persistently.

7. Visitation of the sick. For the hospitalized ill, seeing to it that appropriate visitation is taken seriously by the hospital staff.

8. Anointing with oil and prayer for the sick.

9. Developing a working relationship between physicians and pastors in which the pastor is not the junior partner, for the identification of the source(s) or patients problems.

10. Nouthetic counseling for Church members. De-medicalize the management of problems-in-living through the use of cooperation with a physician who appreciates the proper position of medicine in the health equation. Not everything felt in the body is originating from the body.

11. Escape the straightjacket. The medical profession's viewpoint on health and disease is very narrowly conceived.

12. Physicians at every level of the system need to have an appreciation of the prior probabilities of disease, and to use it in helping patients prioritize their health issues among the other issues of life.


Excerpts from Physician and Pastor: Co-Laborers