Religion And Health Care

SAT., APR. 25, 1992, 6:10 AM
FARM, STUDY

Yes, o son, it is time that you heard from Me on this topic, your theme for the upcoming conference. I have spoken to you on this theme some years back. Reread that Teaching… and also your most recent Ruminations. You will not be ready to develop your presentation until, in these various ways, you have My “input.”

The religion you shall speak about is the Christian religion. There is no need, in the time you have, to even mention other traditions. Your audience will be quite partisan Christian. It is possible to be spiritual and not religious, as well as religious and not spiritual. Assume, for your talk, that these go together… that the best “practitioners” of religion are spiritually oriented people, whose spirits are truly energized by their shared faith.

Religion can be analyzed and categorized. The tenets and practices of a religion or a denomination can be described in general, even with some specifics. Yet there would be no religion if individual souls did not congregate together and share a relationship with Me, your Triune God. It is a mystical truth that the Church is the Body of Christ. My Spirit is everywhere in the earth, but the Church is My tangible Body. As an organization it can be faulted, but as My Body it is sacred. Be aware of this both/and reality.

You are comfortable in your church. Even as you contemplate eventual retirement you feel sure that you will offer various services to the church, and this shall be part of your health care. Yes, o son, I want you to first emphasize that service to Me through the church is a health sustaining and health enhancing life activity. This doesn’t mean that church members don’t become ill, have accidents, or die, even prematurely. It does mean that many of these conditions of ill-health do not occur in individuals who worship, study, are in fellowship, and serve in a church. My religion is definitely an important factor in health care.

Still, you shall be expected to focus most upon medical care and its relationship with the Christian religion. They once were closely allied. Then came the “divorce,” with medicine opting for a marriage with science, a promising newcomer to the human scene. In this context health had to do with the body and, to some extent, with the mind. The basic assumption was, and is, that the body is like unto a machine. Any malfunction has a discoverable, physical cause, and there always is a way to fix it. The skill of medicine is in knowing the right approach and executing it carefully and speedily. The machine will function well again… until the next breakdown. Scientific medicine is now even into an era of spare parts, with increased possibilities for transplanting organs, tissues, and parts, turning failure into success.

Symbolically, there is a spiritual precedent for this… as Jesus I gave My life that many others might live… and more abundantly. Yet I also died and then was resurrected, as each of you shall be. A kind of double symbol is what it is. But I digress.

Even though churches founded and maintain hospitals as a Christian service secular medicine exerted a constant pressure to be dominant. Whatever the church did, as part of its religious practice, must remain secondary to the dominance of medicine, surgery, and other high tech treatments.

Now the balance is changing. Even science must now admit that the human, even the body, is more than a machine. Spirit is a factor in the disease process and in the healing process. In fact these are only barely “processes” that can be described accurately for each individual. Spirit should be a major part of medical care, as well as health care.