What would Jesus do in the aftermath of the Healthcare Reform Bill?

I’m not a prophet, and I try to tread very carefully with these sorts of questions. Who am I to claim an inside track on what his reaction would be? That’s how Holy Wars get started!  Nevertheless, I will go out on a limb with a few things that our Lord probably would be unlikely to do:

 

  • I can’t imagine him making a map of where his political enemies resided, showing rifle cross-hairs over them.
  • I can’t imagine him snickering at a picture the apostles were passing around, showing some politician burning in hell (Gary: and yes, I do get the joke, fire her, and here she is in hell’s fire, yeah…got it the first time).
  • I can’t imagine him hearing about bricks being thrown through representatives’ windows and saying, “well, you know, people are justifiably upset…”
  • I can’t imagine him sponsoring a Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid ‘Burn in Hell’ Video Competition. The winners of this nation-wide contest were a pair of small kids from Dallas, who taped a puppet show that ended with them tossing “Nancy and Harry” into the fireplace while they made screaming noises. Hell is serious business, boys and girls!
  • And yeah, let’s be fair! neither can I imagine our Savior feeding the 5000 and saying, as someone recently did for the cameras, “This is a big ******* deal”. But the person who said that wasn’t claiming to speak in the name of the Lord. No excuse, but this moment I’m talking to members of my own faith, people who are representing their words as God’s words.

On Good Friday, we commemorate the morning when they beat Jesus beyond recognition…and later “he answered them not a word”. He didn’t focus on his rights. Did that make him uncommitted? Was he unaware of how things are in the “real world”? Was he “escapist”? Was he letting them keep him shut up in this little religious box? Or does it mean he was committed to higher Truth?

A friend of mine from years ago in Rhode Island – man, we probably go back to kindergarten – just wrote me on Facebook, asking very sincerely, what’s the deal with all these angry Christians I’m running into lately? I wouldn’t ever criticize my fellow Christians in front of him, but instead I offered him some positive thoughts about what the Christian gospel is about.

No, I didn’t criticize members of my spiritual family then – but I will now. How we conduct ourselves, in thought, word and deed, during times of stress is far more important than any congressional vote. Period. There are lower priorities for the believer; there are higher priorities. Let’s keep them stacked in the right order.

May I propose, as a pastor and a teacher, that we take a week and turn off the TV and radio, filter the emails, turn off the political blogs, toss the newspaper – and take our Bibles and walk with Him?

Or did you have a more pressing agenda?
 
“What would Jesus do in the aftermath of the Healthcare Reform Bill?” by Gary Shogren, Seminario ESEPA, San José, Costa Rica

 

 

4 thoughts on “What would Jesus do in the aftermath of the Healthcare Reform Bill?”

  2. Gary,

    Thanks for these helpful thoughts.

    Your musing about WWJ(not)D make me smile but are also earnest, sober, and focusing. Anger, it seems to me, is not an emotion or—more correctly—an experience that is off limits for the follower of Jesus.

    But anger that is sustained, fueled by *relatively* unimportant matters, and denigrating to other human beings who are stamped with God’s own likeness certainly is.

    Thanks for casting some light on this man’s path this morning.

    Dave

    1. Thanks! The fact that you used a couple of big words probably means it’s Dave Baer I’m hearing from!

      Righteous anger is an authentic phenomenon, right? But the Bible and history and personal experience all indicate that unholy anger is the type you usually run across. “Righteous anger”, while not a mythical bird, is rarely spotted.

      Thanks for visiting, tell your friends!

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