Am I My Brother's Keeper

Everyday in the news we hear about health-care reform and I am so tired of hearing about it. Don't get me wrong I am not tired of fact that we need health-care reform I am tired of all the rhetoric about it. Media saturation is one thing overkill is another. The overload of rhetoric is going to desensitize some and create antagonists on both sides of the issue out of many others.

I think the majority of people in our nation agree that we need health-care reform but the question is who and how it is to be accomplished. Who is responsible for the care of others? Are governments in general and more specifically is our government theoretically and practically organized to manage and provide health care for everyone in our nation? Our government is both to small and to large to be the health-care provider for every single person in our nation. It is two small because it does not have the monetary means or personel to accomplish it. It is to large with its multiple layers of bureaucracy to accomplish it efficiently and equitably.

So who is responsible for health-care and health-care reform? As Christ-followers we are told, "Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world" James 1:27. Throughout the Old Testament God tells us to care for the poor, the widow, the orphan, the stranger or alien in our midst. This theme is carried through the New Testament and is vividly portrayed in the Parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37) where a man cared for and provided the health care of a man whom considered him part of a hated and inferior ethnic group.

When we ask the question, who is responsible for the care of others or we want to make the government responsible are we not asking the same question that Cain asked God? He asked, "Am I my brother's keeper?" It is a question meant to evade responsibility but God's implied answer would be yes we are our brother's keeper.

I don't have the answer for America's health-care reform but it probably needs to be found on the local level and grass roots activities where each of us get involved. It would involve the downsizing of government and major corporations, the release of tax money back to the citizenry to be used to help others, the developing of co-opts and many other community based organizations. Most of all it would require a new heart a new birth in each and everyone of us. Because that will not happen, God says we will always have the poor, the needy, the helpless with us until Jesus returns. But we are still responsible and must do our part to provide for others. It has always been the responsibility of the people, especially God's people to provide care not the government. Let's start today by helping those in need taht we come in contact with.