Real Families

I don’t know precisely how the U.S. health-care mess should be fixed. I don’t know what God thinks of the devil in the details of that mad muddle. So I’m not seeking the one Solution.

But I am clinging to one core value: God cares about those who have less. As Christopher D. Marshall observes, “All the major legal collections of the Old Testament include protections for the poor,” but it’s hard “to find a single clause that specifically protects the rights of the wealthy and powerful” (Crowned with Glory and Honor: Human Rights in the Biblical Tradition, Pandora Press U.S., 2001). Whatever happens with health care, I believe it will have failed unless it somehow cares for “the least of these.”

Getting from values to implementation is the trick. I think here of my own family life and what it may teach. One lesson is this: We need to listen to those who don’t want to just offer people a free ride. If I dare vaguely touch on one situation, here’s one scenario: After a person became an adult he still wanted to live for a while with his parents, and they welcomed that. But faced with a choice between doing more to help around the house or paying more rent, he chose rent. I believe (a) he made a legitimate choice, and (b) his parents correctly discerned that a healthy adult who also wants to be a household member will, one way or another, pull part of the weight.

I think of a family member who, due to decades struggling with mental illness, ran out of lifetime maximum insurance benefits long before she died. Her congregation and her insurance company entered conversation regarding how to restore her insurance. Eventually they agreed that (a) the congregation would pitch in significant funding, and (b) because of life-stage circumstances allowing leeway for it, the company would voluntarily interpret its rules to reset her lifetime benefits.

The adult son living at home has a good job. Why shouldn’t he pay his way? The woman without insurance couldn’t possibly have paid her way. Help me understand: Why wouldn’t we want a society that does both? Why wouldn’t we want a society that invites paying our way when we can and helps pay our way when we can’t? Are we unable to conceptualize a world in which we simultaneously pay our way and are supported when we truly can’t?

But as much as I think we can learn from family wrestlings with questions of tough love and accountability versus giving each other a leg up when life has broken too many legs, what still drives me is that God business. My parents often enough quoted the Thessalonians 3:10 admonition that if I didn’t work I wouldn’t eat, and I passed their teaching on to my children (by which time I liked it more). But adding Marshall convinces me that if we want God to be mixed in with our culture at all, then we’re going to have to judge what happens to U.S. health care according to whether it both asks us to pay our way and pays our way, as circumstances dictate.

Marshall notes that in the “biblical tradition … the rights of three groups … are often singled out. … These are widows, orphans and the poor (e.g., Isaiah 10:1-2), sometimes together with … immigrants (Exodus 22:21-22; Deuteronomy 24:19-22). What these groups had in common … was their vulnerability.” Marshall stresses the biblical concern to care particularly for those with no husband, parents, money. “Such persons,” he writes, “possess rights in virtue of their essential humanity. ‘The rich and the poor have this in common: the Lord is their Maker’ (Proverbs 22:2; cf. 14:31).”

Juxtapose this with, “Why should I help pay for someone else?” Well, if your main concern is that government will bungle it, fine; we have lots to ponder regarding what government can or cannot do. But if you really mean it as you say it—it’s not fair for you to have to pay except for yourself—then will you put your money where your mouth is? Will you insure yourself? Will you carry your own burden if you get sick?

If not, then might the answer be, “You should help pay forsomeone else because we’re all in this together, and someday it could be you we pay for? Someday you could be the widow, orphan, poor person, stranger?”

No? You’ll always have all you need? Then any chance you’ll consider helping to pay someone else’s way just because at least once upon a time that was what God-fearing people did?

Michael A. King, Telford, Pa., is publisher of Cascadia Publishing House LLC, editor of DreamSeeker Magazine and a pastor and speaker.