Just this past week, on the plane traveling from Houston to Los Angeles I had a most delightful conversation with a young man named Alex. Alex is about to start a new phase of his life. He is a recent graduate from college and will soon begin a new job in a small North Dakota town as the operations officer for an airport. He is excited about this. Alex is a tall, traditionally attractive, obviously bright young man whose family lives in the Los Angeles area. Both of his parents are Jewish. Alex has, however, been a member of a Christian church for the past two years or so.
He is able to say that he and his family have been very blessed in many ways:
· His parents being able to earn enough so that neither he nor his sister have college loans to pay off.
· No one in the immediate family have any acute mental illness or physical illness (assumed from what he said)
· All family members having minds which work in a way which is consistent with being able to take care of themselves in the culture in which they find themselves.
He described himself as politically and financially conservative. I have long been interested in how various individuals and groups use such terms. In many respects I would also describe myself as financially conservative, but politically and theologically very liberal. Within this contexts , one of the statements he made – forgive me if I misrepresent him – seems to be that although we should help each other, it should not be done through government programs, including health insurance, but should be within church communities, even though I am sure he knows that many people are not “believers” and, thus, not members of a religious community. He also seems to think that nearly everyone has the ability to choose to make healthy decisions.
As most of us know, many people do not see the government as the organization which should provide care for the community as a whole, particularly for those who do not have what I consider to be the basics. Perhaps this is because, even in the time of Christ, the government was seen as responsible for taking care of such things as the intra- structure of the community, while the church/religion was responsible for the more basic needs such as food, shelter, ethical/moral/spiritual health of the individual and the community. Thus, Jesus might say, “render until Caesar what is Caesar’s” meaning pay taxes for roads, etc. and “Give God what belongs to God.” In other words there has traditionally been this distinction between major shared resources such as roads and spiritually, emotionally and basics needs such as food and clothing. Perhaps this is because it is perceived that when governments take on a task they built enormous bureaucracies where the goal for many within that complex can be to get rich, amass power or otherwise use the system for distancing oneself from one’s own common humanity. Perhaps it is because government run assistance programs are seen as inefficient and non-discriminatory. Perhaps, government programs are seen to help people without discriminating between who is worthy and who is unworthy. Certainly many of us have known folks who seemed to take advantage of government programs, whether it is grants for school which are spent for living expenses while not studying to get a degree or being on disability when one seems able to do a wide variety of physical and mental tasks. Another of the arguments against government sponsored programs seems to be that it takes away the motivation of people to help themselves. Some believe that smaller organizations such as churches can be more discriminatory; can more effectively separate the deserving from those who are less deserving; those who are just too “lazy” to work and those who are unwilling to work for minimum wage and just eke out a living; those who seemingly are willing to feed their addiction to alcohol or other drugs and will not do a healing/recovery program.
Part of the basis for Alex’s viewpoints seem to be his understanding and/or belief that we humans are naturally sinners and have only to adopt certain religious practices to be okay which then qualifies us to receive help. I, on the other hand, think:
· We humans are basically good and/or we just are (neither good nor bad)
· We humans seem to come into this world with a core belief that we are not enough; that we are somehow lacking and need to find something to make us enough or to avoid being with that feeling that we are lacking in something basic. Thus, we look to food, drugs, power, money, education, expensive things, being right (which makes others wrong), or some other person, place or thing to fill and/or avoid that void. This may be seen by some as the tendency of we humans to “sin”.
· A great many factors affect the ability of our minds to work at all. We know, for examples that the presence or absence of certain chemicals alters how we think and experience reality. We can artificially change our thinking with the use of alcohol or other recreational drugs or we can have an illness such as Alzheimer’s which gravely affect how we experience reality.
· Although we distinguish between physical and mental functioning it is all physical. The chemicals in the brain are different when one has a depressive illness or other so called mental illness.
· Those that function well tend, on the whole, to have access to many factors – nutritious food, family support, safe housing, good education, etc. – which help their brain to function as well as possible. Obviously this does not preclude these same folks from having mental illness or other illnesses which keep them from functioning.
· If my mind is functioning in a certain way I can make choices to eat better, not use mind altering drugs, exercise, engage in daily spiritual and intellectuals exercise and accept emotional support which, in turn, helps the mind to function better. Thus, it seems to people who are very blessed that they have free will and can make decision to be moral, healthy, productive members of the community.
· There are those people such as Sonia Sotomayor, Justice of the Supreme Court, who grew up to be successful despite the many factors which might have prevented someone else from being as successful: an alcoholic father, a mother who worked afternoon shift, childhood diabetes and having to learn to give herself shots beginning at age 8, and growing up in the projects. Why is it that despite the seeming negatives she did so well? I have no answer which satisfies me.
· If we use the argument that we are all sinners then my conclusion is that either (1) we are all deserving of love, respect and the basics of modern life including good health care or (2) none of us are deserving.
Who is right? Are the so called liberals or the so called conservatives right? Perhaps it is not a matter of being right. So far no one has designed a system which allows everyone to be a well functioning, so called productive, moral member of society. So far, no one has designed a program to justly decide who is deserving of help and how much help. We know what happens when we humans decide that the Jews, the mentally challenged, the homosexuals, the criminals and a host of others are not deserving. We get Nazi Germany (or more modern terrorists) the ghettos and the concentration camps as well as the death camps. Except for those people who still think that was a good approach or those who deny that the Holocaust or other forms of terrorism happened no one wants another Holocaust.
So what do I know. I know what in this moment makes sense to this brain; that we are all deserving of love and respect which includes the basics of health care, housing, and food. I know that I have been very blessed and cannot take credit for my mind working a certain way although once it works a certain way, I can make some healthy decisions. I know that both Alex and I are good people who are honestly striving to explore our part in making the world a more just and loving place. I know that neither of us has the definitive answer. I know that we do not have to agree in order to treat each other with love and respect. I know that it takes courage to challenge each other and ourselves to think outside of our little boxes of thought. I know that I am grateful for Alex being willing to have a discussion about such important issues. I am hopeful that we continue to have such discussions.
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