WWJD about Health Care and an Odd Reading of the Good Samaritan

Today I interrupt my ongoing examination of evangelical outreach (particularly the afterlife-focused, hell-first outreach techniques). I saw a link today on one of my usual conservative news websites that boiled my blood. The theme is "WWJD [What Would Jesus Do]--about health care?"

Now, I've been interested in the health care reform movement for some time, believing as I do that health care ought to be considered a right protected by our government rather than a privilege for those who can afford it. As a student of conservative popular culture in general, I've watched with growing alarm the recent outbursts by various people at congressional "town hall" meetings. Like the "TEA Party" demonstrations of a few months back, these youtubed meetings provide frustrated conservatives of a certain stripe with a national stage on which to perform their political beliefs, to make their political cases.

Typically, I'm all for political performances of this sort (I use the word performance not as a synonym for fake but in the active sense of performing a task). Indeed, my whole dissertation focused on instances of "democratic performance activism," where groups and individuals embody and display for a large audience their notions of what it means to live in a liberal democracy.

That said, I've been depressed at the degree to which the performers getting the most attention in the health care debate--the spokespeople at these town hall meetings who capture the sound byte on the evening news--these people seem to offer little more than incoherent, belligerent rage peppered with outright fabrications. Take, for example, the "death panel" myth--that Obama's plan secretly (or not-so-secretly, since apparently a host of right-wing pundits have "discovered' it) calls for the creation of soulless panels that will withhold care from elderly or terminally ill patients, mandate euthanasia, etc. Of course, none of this is so. For a sample rebuttal, see here.

I could go on, but my focus here isn't on the health care debate per se but on evangelical/Christian reactions to it. I've been curious to see how evangelicals would position themselves in relation to a drive to cover the uninsured, to make insurance companies actually pay for care they promised to cover, to prevent insurance companies from turning people down for preexisting conditions, etc. I have to say the whole thing seems open-and-shut to me. Who Would Jesus Insure? Everyone. It's even a liberal bumper sticker my father once used in a sermon. The Great Physician never refused to cure someone. Not ever. And, whatever one's views on inerrancy, it's just hard to read the plain words of the Gospels as saying anything but that Christians are to care for the sick and needy.

Nevertheless, the blog I read today did just that. Posing the WWJD question in terms of health care reform, the blogger (a pundit for the Cato institute) cited his "theologian father," who cited the parable of the good Samaritan. Now, on its face, this parable would seem to demand that Christians do what they can for anyone in need. That is: if the question is "who is the neighbor toward whom I am to show love?" Jesus' answer is "anyone and everyone in need."

Yet this blogger (or his father) renders the story thusly: The Levite and the Priest--the ones who hypocritically pass by the man in need of medical attention--represent the Government. The Samaritan represents the Christian. Thus, argues the blogger, Jesus is saying that individual Christians--and not the government--should be in charge of medical care. Government can't or won't help, so Christians should. Thus health care reform is evil.

Oy.

Conservative evangelicals will often shake their heads in wonder at the ways that liberal Christians can "warp" verses of scripture prohibiting, say, homosexual behavior or female preachers, re-reading the verses to mean the opposite of what they seem to say on the surface. I typically find myself on the side of the re-readers since I 1) do not view the Bible as inerrant, and 2) do no believe in a "plain sense" interpretation of scripture that ignores variations of culture, language, and history. Thanks to this blogger's innovative interpretation of the Good Samaritan parable, though, I have a sense of what this surreal sense of disbelief feels like--really? You're serious? That's how you interpret this?

Battling past my shock, though, let me sketch out a few problems with this interpretation.

Objection 1: Even if the Priest and the Levite represent "the government"--Jesus is condemning their inaction, not validating it. They are hypocrites because they should be helping the wounded man but do not do so. Surely, then, Jesus' condemnation of "government" would mean that we should A) see caring for the sick as government's job; and B) criticize the government as acting hypocritically when it fails to do this job. Far from supporting a notion that the government has no business in health care, Jesus (in this interpretation) seems to argue that it's absolutely government's job to ensure that people receive health care. Christians step in when the government fails to do its proper job, but by no means does this mean that governments ought to be let off the hook (Jesus didn't imply that the Priest and the Levite were somehow exempt from the duties they failed to perform).

Objection 2: The fact that the Samaritan helps the man personally doesn't mean that the only aid Christians are allowed to give is one-on-one. Jesus advocates expanding the scope of our concern, reaching out to more and more people. Never does Jesus suggest that one-on-one ministry is the only legitimate ministerial mode. Else, how would churches justify denominational or ecumenical ministries?

On a related note, this is a bizarre conclusion for a conservative evangelical to draw, this notion that Christians must restrict their moral duties to the private sphere. Certainly conservative evangelicals have been arguing for some time that Christian convictions ought to have a place in government and politics. They (and I'm generalizing here) do not back down from insisting that government respect and enforce their faith-based views on homosexuality, abortion, gambling, pornography, and a host of other such church/state issues.

Objection 3: This is more political than theological, but here's a point the parable interpretation misses: unlike the Roman Empire of Jesus' time, ours is a representative democracy. We are the government, so it does no good to pretend that there's a separation between Christian citizens and the government-of-the-people they support through their taxes and votes. Christians therefore have greater mechanisms at their disposal than merely individual charity. Surely it's at least as Christian to advocate that the government protect people's health it is to advocate that the government protect, say, the unborn or heterosexual marriage.

Whew.

Had to get that off my chest.

Back to evangelical outreach tomorrow,

JF