What Would Jesus Want Us To Think about Healthcare Reform? a Quick Response
What would Jesus want us to think about health care reform?That's the question that Justin Taylor proffers at his blog, courtesy of Brad Green, theology professor at Union University. Professor Green's response to the "what would Jesus do" question has four main points:
- Conservatives don't think that big new legislation will fix the problems with the system
- Conservatives are opposed to the expansion of federal powers as an infringement on liberty
- The Constitution doesn't explicitly enumerate power in this area to the Federal government, so Health Care reform would be unconstitutional
- Christians have a "strong view of human sin and thus are often not inclined to want to grant large amounts of power to any governmental body"
2 comments
Oct 28, 2009
MJ said...
Not sure I agree with your line of reasoning concerning Green's logic. The editor of the paper took a jab at conservatives and asked them to think about what Jesus would do with regard to health care. It seems like Green is simply making the statement that Jesus surely wouldn't ask people to break the law in order to institute their prefered health care policy. He simply made some statements in the begining about how conservatives approach this issue as a way to respond to the editor's original article, however, he never linked that to how Jesus would approach it.
Oct 28, 2009
Chris Hubbs said...
MJ, thanks for commenting, but I disagree with your reading. Here is Green's first two paragraphs in full:In a recent column, Sun editorial page editor Tom Bohs asks about health care: "What would Jesus do?" The question is fair enough. However, the path from Jesus to the health care policy of a nation in the 21st century may be tricky to navigate.
Bohs takes a gentle jab at the "weak political knees" of churches or conservative Christians, since such conservatives are "the chief opponents of health care reform." I do not know if I would be considered conservative by most people, and I certainly have no mandate from the world of conservative Christians, but since Bohs has, in a sense, laid down the gauntlet, I will take a stab at it.
The way I read it, the gauntlet is "What would Jesus Do?" and this is his answer. Note also that Justin Taylor, who provided the link in the first place, appears to have read it the same way.
And with regard to "asking people to break the law to institute their preferred health care policy", that concern only makes sense if you hold a very strict interpretation of the Constitution, one that has not been held by even the Supreme Court for decades. If you really want to go down that route, we're then most assuredly asking our lawmakers to sin by asking them to vote for most of the legislation that comes through the US Capitol.
