Christians and how they pay for their health care is a topic that just keeps on unfolding. Here are a few extra thoughts.
My next point has to do with the nature of Christian testimony before the world. Julian the Apostate lamented how well the early Christians took care of one another, and the icing on the cake was the fact that this Christian care overflowed into the pagan world — the Christians offered mercy work to unbelievers, and were more aggressive with it than the pagans themselves were. Julian knew that this was an effective testimony against the pagan worldview — he was exasperated and annoyed by it. And given his premises, he ought to have been. Christians taking care of their own, and with plenty to spare, was a powerful refutation of the pagan system.
So flip this around. What about things that Christians might do that would reflect badly on the Christian Faith in a pagan world? This was the kind of thing that Paul is acutely aware of. It is the reason he went sideways when some of the Corinthian Christians were hauling one another before unbelieving civil courts. We really need to pay closer attention to Paul’s reasoning there.
“Dare any of you, having a matter against another, go to law before the unjust, and not before the saints? Do ye not know that the saints shall judge the world? and if the world shall be judged by you, are ye unworthy to judge the smallest matters? Know ye not that we shall judge angels? how much more things that pertain to this life? If then ye have judgments of things pertaining to this life, set them to judge who are least esteemed in the church. I speak to your shame. Is it so, that there is not a wise man among you? no, not one that shall be able to judge between his brethren? But brother goeth to law with brother, and that before the unbelievers. Now therefore there is utterly a fault among you, because ye go to law one with another. Why do ye not rather take wrong? why do ye not rather suffer yourselves to be defrauded? Nay, ye do wrong, and defraud, and that your brethren” (1 Cor. 6:1-8).
Paul is not concerned because a Christian has taken a fellow Christian before a civil court. That is where barking dog disputes, property line disputes, and defamation suits belong, and when we eventually come to “judge the world,” to use Paul’s phrase here, that is where such disputes will be settled. Nothing whatever is wrong with civil court. The problem for Paul was that Christians, who were slated to govern in the coming age, who were going to inherit those civil courts, showed their current incompetence and unreadiness for the task by taking disputes from within their own midst, and asking the pagan system of Rome to sort it out for them. Paul was humiliated by this, as he should have been, and he said it was such a big deal that a defrauded Christian should prefer to let the fraud stand, rather than to obtain redress from unbelievers.
In sum: it was a grievous humiliation for Christians to ask unbelieving judges in an unbelieving court system to determine a just sentence between two Christian disputants. Anyone who would initiate such a court case doesn’t have the faintest idea about Christian cultural engagement. Not a clue. But say it was seventeenth century England and two Christian neighbors had a property line dispute. The judge was a Christian, the legal system was Christian, everybody swore on a Bible, and the lordship of Christ was acknowledged over all. Would Paul have been humiliated by this? Of course not.
So I am humiliated for the same reason when Christians resort to programs like Medicare. The issue is not primarily family/Church/civil. The issue is believing/unbelieving. That is the antithesis.
But this Medicare humilation comes from two directions. The first occurs when we get word that a river of Obama dollars is rolling toward the sea, and then I find that a bunch of Christians are (surprise!) running down to that river with their bucket, and maybe two buckets. They are surrounded by a crowd of unbelievers, doing the same thing. They don’t need it, not really, but it is there and it would foolish to pass on such an opportunity, or so the thinking goes. The river is going to flow anyway. It humiliates me that we are not farther along than that. It humilates me that I have to explain this.
But if the need is a genuine one, it provides a deeper humiliation. Scripture teaches that the first line of provision for Christians is the family (1 Tim. 5:8). The line after that is the Church (1 Tim. 5:16). Someone with Paul’s sensitivities would not insert an unbelieving welfare system in between the family and the Church.
Someone might respond, “But if we hadn’t applied for that money, we would have been saddled with a $20,000 bill.” Well, okay. Make arrangements and start paying it off — better that than telling the pagan system that the Church isn’t ready for prime time yet. Look again at Paul’s logic in 1 Cor. 6. He doesn’t say to allow yourself to be defrauded unless the monetary levels make it unreasonable. He is profoundly concerned for the testimony, and he didn’t put a price tag on that testimony.
I don’t want parishioners acting like hungry, little piglets rooting for the federal teat. I used this image before and someone took offense at it. I was not trying to evoke the image of swine, but rather of piglets. Their salient characteristics for this discussion are that they are very hungry, they know exactly what they want, they are very cute, and they are terrible at math. When Christians who don’t really need the help are turning to the unbelievers for help anyway, this reflects badly on the Church. They are clearly not being taught well. And if I am their teacher, I can imagine Paul writing me a pretty stiff letter. “I say this to your shame. You have people who . . .” And all I would be able to do is a little pastoral shuffle, looking at the carpet.
And if the need is genuine, the whole situation is worse. The Church should be a place where we rally around. And I have seen plenty of instances where our people do rally round. When the need is unquestioned, and the resources are not there for someone, I have seen tremendous outpourings of help. But when this happens, the need is public.
But sometimes there is a combination of difficulties; there is a genuine need, but there is also poor understanding on the part of the one who has that need. Someone might have a genuine need, but they are too embarrassed to tell the saints about it. They want and need the help, and they also want their privacy. In that case, there is great pressure to go to the unbelieving goverment. Remember that the primary issue here is not civil government v. church government. The issue is unbelievers v. believers. The Church should never send any of its dirty laundry out to Ol’ Debbel’s Laundromat.
Business disputes are not the Church’s proper business. But if we have an unbelieving court system, we should jury-rig our own court system for the time being. We should do this for the sake of our testimony. Now, if we should do this in an area which is not our proper sphere, then how much more should we be embarrassed when our people are getting help in an area which is our proper sphere? If our people have a true need, then we should take care of it. If they don’t have a true need, then they have no business avoiding the deacons (who would tell them they don’t need it) in order to go to some bureaucrat who won’t tell him that.