Cause for concern. . .

With my newly minted Medicare card in my wallet, I read over the Christmas break about warning signs which ought to be cause for concern for everyone -- not just Medicare recipients -- in America.  National healthcare spending increased 7.5% year over year in 2023 to $4.867 trillion, or $14,570 per person, according to data released Wednesday by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services  -- accounting for 17.6% of gross domestic product. The price index for what the Labor Department classifies as medical care—which includes visits to doctors, hospital stays, prescription drugs and medical equipment—has risen roughly 40% faster than the overall pace of inflation.  For the half who receive health insurance from their employer, their employers are shouldering a lot of those costs. For example, the average worker spent $6,296 in premiums for family coverage in 2024, according to KFF. Employers spent $19,276.  Medicare, which pays at a discounted rate for all medical claims, is not immune from this spiral and is set to run out of money in 5-6 years -- as more and more Americans depend upon Medicare as their primary insurance.  It is not a problem but a crisis.

All of this, of course, comes after we are pretty much back to normal (except for the accumulated debt of it all) since Covid.  But that is the problem.  This has become the new normal.  Labor costs, drug costs, provider costs, and insurance costs are all increasing faster than any other aspect of our economy.  So what can be done?  I have no answers.  I do wonder why Americans face spending increases that are far in excess of the costs around the rest of the world.  While I will be okay, I worry more about my kids and grandkids.  This is not sustainable.  The new normal is sounding the death knell for our pride and our daily lives.  Surely there is somebody smarter than I am who can figure out a path forward to guarantee a level of quality and affordability for the cost of medical care in the US.  I do not think it is a matter of one thing or another but a combination of things that must be considered and repaired to make sure that our children and grandchildren will enjoy a quality level of health care and we can afford it.  

For the life of me I cannot figure out why we as a nation are not more worried about this.  I will not demonize hospitals or physicians but I have grave concerns about the for profit health care industry and the effect of all of this on how business gets done in that industry.  I worry about the decisions that insurers are making about our health care and the huge proliferation of middle level managers who are neither physicians nor medical professionals and yet they are deciding what is normal treatment, what will be covered, and what it will cost.  I worry about the government taking it all over and I worry about the government not taking it all over -- either outcome is concerning.  I worry about the constant barrage of TV commercials for things neither I nor any other consumer can purchase without a prescription.  Again, I am old and nothing will happen to change much during my lifetime but no society can sustain itself without access to affordable and credible medical care.  The churches were once players in this but even where the names sound religious the churches have long ago ceded control of their hospitals, nursing homes, and other health care agencies to others (for profit who bought our names or to non=profit companies who act just like the profit making ones).  I am concerned.  You ought to be as well.

A back story. . .

While some laugh at the idea expressed by Pres. Trump of America purchasing Greenland from Denmark, there is a rather sordid back story to the relationship between Denmark and Greenland that is no laughing matter.  In the 1960s and 1970s, Denmark put into place a forced contraception policy aimed to put an end to what the government in Copenhagen viewed as excessive numbers of children born out of wedlock in Greenland.  In addition, they found it prudent to slow overall the birthrates on the island.  Some of this was done by the public health department without the knowledge of the girl's parents.  IUDs were forcibly placed in the girls.  They eventually sued the Danish government last year, demanding compensation and an official apology.   The IUD scandal from decades ago has never been resolved and represents just one tension in an already tense relationship between Greenland and Denmark.  In addition, a second scandal involved the removal of 22 Inuit children from Greenland to make them more overtly Danish and to help the culture of Greenland become more Danish when they returned.  The experiment was a failure and the children were never returned to their parents.  Some ended up in orphanages in Greenland and a few remained in Denmark where they were adopted. Many developed psychological problems and half died in early adulthood.

The sad reality is that the idea of reproductive freedom is solely to prevent reproduction and that birth control and even sterilization have a long and shocking history in the hands of governments who think they know best.  While some might think that people should decide for themselves such things, the decision always seems to involve depriving the child in the womb of the most basic of human rights, the right to life.  As tragic as it has become for whole societies to deem this life unworthy of any real and substantive protections, it is even more scandalous when those societies find it useful or expedient to deprive those considered less than desirable of their right to have a child.  Why is it that nearly everything that has to do with controlling a population somehow ends up about birth control and abortion?  I sometimes wonder if we have missed the hidden agenda behind current efforts on the part of any group to provide reproductive freedom is not in and of itself a means of controlling the people.  The curious thing in all of this, of course, is that those accused of controlling people are only trying to protect the children from those who have no value to them. 

What is it that we wish to convey?

As my wife and I were driving along, we listened to an LCMS congregation on the radio.  We figured it would be an uplifting choice against the constant struggle to find something decent while traveling.  It was not what we had expected.  The liturgy, what there was of it, was clearly written from start to finish and, although it could have been worse, it was a paraphrase of Bible passages strung together to form a substitute for the ordinary.  There were women's voices reading the lessons and the music left much to be desired.  Some of the hymns were generic hymns from the fundamentalist hymnal and others seemed to have little to do with either the lectionary or their place in the "liturgy".  The sermon was hard to follow since English was clearly a second language to the preacher.  The prayers were decently written but delivered as if the audience was not God but the people listening.

It does not matter which congregation this was or where they were located.  What matters is this.  Do we put our best foot forward in presenting ourselves to the world or do we present the average or even less?  Do we put out there the best face of the LCMS or the typical that passes for Lutheran but does not seem to want to be Lutheran?  Let me be clear.  I was not expecting a cathedral choir, Gregorian chant, or perfectly produced liturgy but I was expecting something that looked and sounded more like our official hymnal -- especially with respect to the hymns.  I was not expecting the world's best of anything but I did expect that those being showcased on air would be working harder to be the best at what they do than what we heard that day.  I was not expecting high liturgy or low but I did expect to recognize that this congregation was part of the fellowship to which I belong.  My wife told me to turn it off.  I insisted upon listening until the whole thing was over.  We were both expecting something that reflected the labor of hands and voices trying to do our best for His glory and as representatives of the LCMS.  What we got was embarrassing.

Lord knows things can and do go wrong on Sunday morning.  Where I have served we have had the heat or AC quit, birds dive bombing the nave, wasps looking for someone to sting, a choir anthem come undone while being sung, cell phone rings go off at the worst possible moment, emergency vehicles scream by, children scream, and a motorcycle break the sound barrier.  I get it.  Things happen.  But even these cannot undo all the planning and preparation that is designed to put our best foot forward and to strive to be and do our best for the Lord's glory.  The service was an example of how we fail by settling for that muddy middle in which we are neither good nor worse.  I suppose I should settle for that.  I am not sure God has to, though.  If you want to have a microphone, at least have something to say and practice it a bit before the red light goes on and the countdown is finished.  Even something designed solely for our entertainment should show evidence that they were trying.  If that is true for us, it is even more true of God.

 

Is the poison leaving our culture?

There are those who have for a very long time suggested that religion is a poison for the soul, for our life together as a nation and society, and for humanity as a whole.  Well, take a look around you.  Religion appears to be in decline in the West and do we see any improvement in our behavior or our values or our humanity?  It does not appear that marginalizing religion has helped to make much better.  We are divided and religion accounts for some of that division but not all of it.  Without a common set of values to guide us, we are relatively free to reinvent ourselves -- much in the same way we have reinvented marriage and gender.  But has it improved anything?  Has depression declined and are people nicer and happier without the ominous shadow of faith to rain on their parade?

The reality is that in poll after poll people responding from the vantage point of faith respond more positively about their happiness and the state of their well-being.  Instead of adding to their misery, faith (even those I would never embrace) seems to help them and they freely admit it.  The goal of a solid wall between church and state, religion and life, faith and the public square has been the goal of the secularists for a very long time.  It has been fueled by the false idea that religion is the cause of our problems.  Now we are waking up to and ever less religious society in the West and we seem to have more and more problems -- among them the decline of the West in population.  We have done a very fine job of separating sex from love and from marriage and children from everything so that we might have more money and time to pursue our own happiness and fulfillment but it has not gone according to the progressive plan.  We are old and alone and facing the prospect that the generations after us may not be able to support the social net of programs once designed to ensure a long and happy and healthy retirement.  Maybe the time for assisted suicide is now.  At least the aged among us will decide when it is no longer worth living.  Is that the golden future promised by a religion free society and life?  Obviously, I am speaking tongue in cheek.

The reality is this.  Christianity IS responsible for the elevation of the status of women, for the sacred protection of life, for the well-being of the child, for the esteem of the aged, for the honor of the home, for the binding shape of marriage, for the nobility of work, for the morality which is less words than deeds, for prayers even for enemies, for the increase in mercy and institutions that practice it, and a host of other things.  I do not believe it would be farfetched to suggest that Christianity has been the source of great happiness and if not happiness then contentment.  If Christianity is a poison, it is a poison we are in dire need of having today what with the politics of hate, the rigid lines of division, the self-indulgence that leads to despair, the cheapness of life, the fragility of love and marriage, and the diminishing families and homes of our people.  Those outside love to credit Christianity with everything bad but it is a false narrative and one that we would be smart to deny and discredit.  Christianity has been a force for good and its departure from Western culture and life has resulted not in sustainable bliss but unsustainable depression and fear.  No, we Christians are not perfect and far from it but the alternative offered to us by a religion free society is and should be our worst nightmare.

 

What to do with difficult words. . .

There are plenty of words in Scripture which are offensive to our ears.  Some are more so than others but as a class or set of words hard for us to hear and even harder to say and pray are the so-called imprecatory Psalms.  They have been troublesome in various contexts and they are omitted from lectionaries and from the Psalms of the modern Roman Breviary.   The whole Psalms and verses in others are troublesome to our ears because they call for a curse from God or calamity from God to descend upon others. It is important to note that these Psalms and the verses in others do not invent the idea of God's curse upon the enemies of the Lord and of His people.  Rather, these imprecatory prayers are grounded in the verypromise of God to Abram:  “…I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee” (Genesis 12:3a).  When an imprecatory prayer calls upon God to act against one’s enemies, it is not out of personal vengeance but for the sake of God’s own cause.  To put it another way, the imprecatory words  only ask that God do what He has already said He would do!  This is also laid down in the words of the Lord who insists that such vengeance does not belong to us but remains His own domain.  “…’Vengeance is Mine; I will repay,’ saith the Lord” (Romans 12:19b).  Psalm 94 illustrates this in David’s prayer:  “O Lord God, to whom vengeance belongeth; O God, to whom vengeance belongeth, show Thyself.  Lift up Thyself, Thou Judge of the earth; render a reward to the proud” (Psalm 94:1-2). 

Specifically, three psalms (58, 83, and 109) have been omitted from the lectionary and from the psalter cycle because of this.  In our own lectionaries, Psalm 83 occurs only in a Gradual for Sexagesima (83:13 & 18).  Among other Psalms, Psalm 139:19-24 are not used.  So also Psalm 69:25, 28 and Psalm 83:18.  It was Pope Paul VI who banished the imprecatory Psalms from the New Roman Breviary.  Lectionary reform was not going to venture much past this and so we seldom hear the approximately 120 verses (three entire psalms: 58, 83, and 109; and additional verses from 19 others).  Oddly enough, the reason cited for their removal is a certain “psychological difficulty” they would arouse.  But these Psalms are not orphans.  In the Old Testament and in the New Testament the same sentiments and so the same difficulty in hearing them.  Moses bitterly laments the weight of office and asks God to kill him at one point (Num 11:15). Jonah, Jeremiah (15:16), and other prophets have similar words of lament.  David and other Psalm writers cry to God not to delay His vengeance and complain that sinners seem to thrive while the just seem to suffer. Frequently we hear this same complaint in the Psalms: “How much longer, O Lord?”  Even in the familiar and beloved hymn, "The Church's One Foundation," the saints cry "how long?" before God makes good on His promise of justice. Even in the New Testament, the martyrs ask God to avenge their blood (Rev 6:10). Jesus is described as slaying the wicked with the sword (of his word) that comes from his mouth.  So, yes, God is not a pushover.  Anger, vengeance, despair, doubt, and indignation are all in Scripture as the faithful take up His own words and pray them against His enemies and theirs.  It is, after all, an honest prayer.

As Hebrews reminds us, we are to pray for our enemies.  That said, we must acknowledge that prayer does not change God's mind with regard to those who have rejected His promise or determined to be enemies of Him and His kingdom.  It is the prayer for their repentance and for the Spirit to work faith in their hearts.  The difference between Christianity and Scripture and Islam and the Qur'an is that God is our actor when it comes to such vengeance and we are not given either the authority or the order to act on His behalf.  In fact, we are called to faith in these prayers and not action -- trusting God to do what He has promised to do without taking up the cause ourselves.  Furthermore, this is not a political prayer against political enemies nor the prayer of a people who are frustrated with folks we do not like and who invoke the Lord to punish them on our behalf.  This is always the prayer of the faithful, praying in faith, knowing that in His own time and on the day of judgment, justice will prevail along with the mercy ours in Christ.  That is the miracle.  God is not going to choose between justice and mercy but gives us both -- the mercy promised to us in Christ because we are in Christ and the justice that will not overlook or dismiss unbelief, the rejection of Christ's salvation, and the suffering and abuse dispensed upon the people of God (the martyrs, for example).  Honestly, I think it causes us more problems to remove these words from our hearing and praying because we might get them wrong than it does the faithful teaching which would accompany such words and prayers.