GRACE & PEACE
“At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore” (Ps. 16 11)
Growing Dominion, Part 21
A spirit of gratitude and contentment resists all the worldview problems that rush in whenever we are ungrateful and discontent. We are been discussing this in the realm of health care (which makes it close and personal), but the same thing is true of larger issues, what some might think of as “political” or environmental matters.
All facts are interpreted facts, whether they are purported facts about health care, politics, the environment, whatever. There are no “raw facts” out there, waiting to be discovered by objective, dispassionate observers. This means the first preparation for understanding the world as God understands it is to have the mind of Christ. In other words, we do not prepare ourselves for wisdom in any of this by the appropriate number of years in an AMA approved med school (or by lots of intensive research on the Internet). “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge” (Prov. 17).
But the fear of the Lord is manifested, gloriously, in gratitude and contentment. It is not manifested first in conservative theology or family values. It is manifested in love, joy, and peace. Ungrateful and discontent people — in short, worriers and complainers — create problems, usually for themselves, wherever they go. People who are all in a dither about paper diapers and the environment, demanding we go back to cloth diapers are probably the kind of people who never thanked the Lord for either. St. Paul said he had learned contentment whatever the circumstance. When we are talking about health, diet, environment, etc. this must go in the first place. If it does not, then everything afterwards is skewed.