Furious rows continue in
the Republic about the manifest failures of the Irish Health
Service. Mary Harney, Minister for Health, has just survived
a vote of ‘no confidence’ in the Dáil.
Misdiagnoses of women presenting for breast cancer screening,
needless deaths due to long waiting lists, governmental
mismanagement, a rich / poor divide over those who can afford
to pay for access to healthcare, inflexible working practices
by unions, resistance to restructuring by well-paid Consultants,
poor hygiene standards, and a financial ‘black hole’
sucking up vast resources with little appreciable improvement
in services are responsible for an apparent collapse of
public confidence in the system. It is, we are told, a scandal
to have such ‘third world’ services in one of
the richest countries in Europe.
Perhaps it is. And yet I
wonder about the assumptions and expectations that generate
such outrage. We in rich Europe are cocooned within highly
regulated, democratic societies underpinned by a network
of laws, banking structures, social welfare systems, pensions,
life insurance and so on. All help to provide some sense
of security against the unforeseen and undesirable. If they
fail to do so we feel betrayed, angry and look for someone
to blame. We make plans for the future. Our life expectancies
continue to increase. We expect to see our children grow
and flourish and live long, fulfilled lives. We have an
over-abundance of food (indeed we are literally getting
fatter). It is rare for us to look death in the face. We
live in a culture that enjoys health and wealth to a level
unparalleled in any previous society in human history. Perhaps
this is why we get so emotional over a poor health service;
is it an all too uncomfortable reminder of our own mortality?
As a Christian I also wonder
how living in such a culture of plenty shapes our theology
and our experience of God.* We are disproportionately healthy
and wealthy within global Christianity. The majority of
Christians in the world now live in the ‘Global South’
of Africa, Asia and South America. For most Christians in
these regions, our experiences and expectations of security
and prosperity are unimaginable.
The vast majority of our
fellow Christians have no bank accounts, no security, pensions,
health care or social welfare net. They experience life
‘walking on the edge’. Death is part and parcel
of everyday life. Someone has said that ‘‘planning
is not for the poor. Things happen; adjustments are made;
life of a sort goes on until it ends.’ In Sudan, after
40 years of civil war and famine one Christian chorus teaches
the news that ‘You are here today but tomorrow you’ll
be here no more / Our only hope is Jesus Christ, so receive
him now’. After the Tsunami of 2004, James 4:14 was
apparently a well used verse in churches in affected areas:
‘Now listen, you who say, “Why, you do not even
know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are
a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.”
This surely must raise questions
for us. As the following quotation shows the issues are
too big for us to fail to engage.
‘Few mainline churches
in Europe or North America would dream of promising health
or wealth, which they would regard as a vulgarization of
the faith. At the same time they do not pursue their critique
to what would seem to be the logical course, of offering
to their congregations an enticing message of “sickness
and poverty”. Rather, they fully agree with the prosperity
churches that health and wealth are desirable goals, but
that realistically such blessings can only be achieved through
secular means, through hard work, thrift, wise investment
and access to good medicine.’
Patrick Mitchel
* Many of these thoughts
are adapted from Philip Jenkins’ outstanding book The
New Faces of Christianity: Believing the Bible in the Global
South, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.
