EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: In his great Sermon on the Mount recorded in the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus revealed to his disciples precisely how they could ensure their good health and welfare. He also pointed out that pagans run after alternative means, which the author contends includes the health-care proposals of President Obama and Congress (Dems and Reps alike).

JESUS ON HEALTH INSURANCE

by Ned Netterville

An excerpt from Jesus’ great Sermon on the Mount:

Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?

 

And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? So do not worry, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?' For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

In the early 1980s I discovered that I was considerably better off trusting God rather than relying on my own resources. At the time my vaunted self-reliance could not keep me from getting drunk on a routine basis. I needed to drink to cope with living, but once I took the first drink I seldom was able to stop short of drunkenness. By the grace of God I decided to try Alcoholics Anonymous. In AA, I pursued the fellowship’s renowned Twelve-Step recovery program. About a month after attending my first AA meeting my compulsion to drink abated sufficiently to put the cork back in the bottle permanently. I have not had a drink since then.

         The third step of AA’s program is, “We made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God, as we understood Him.” On entering AA, I really didn’t understand God. However, having found the power to stop drinking after I began praying for sobriety, it clearly appeared that God was enabling me to stay sober when the myriad other tactics I tried had all failed--utterly. I then set out on a journey of discovery to learn more about this God into whose hands I would eventually place my life, such as it was. I began by reading the Gospels for the wisdom of Jesus, which focuses on relating to God.

         I also learned a few things about alcoholism. A book by a leading expert on addiction explained that alcoholism is a disease with four common characteristics. It is primary, because any other disease one may have can not be effectively treated until the alcoholism is arrested. It is chronic, once you have it you always have it, many years of abstinence notwithstanding. It is progressive, which is to say it always gets worse never better. Remarkably, the progression of alcoholism continues under the radar, so to speak, during periods of abstinence, so that when an abstinent alcoholic resumes drinking the disease reasserts itself in an advanced stage as though one had never stopped. And, it is fatal, one-hundred-percent fatal for those who fail to arrest its progression through abstinence. The conundrum of alcoholism is that an alcoholic by definition is someone so addicted to ethyl alcohol that he or she cannot stop drinking.

         A significant question occurred to me in my new-found state of sobriety. If God could cure my alcoholism, what else might he be willing and able to do for me?

         When I joined AA, I was financially insolvent, which truly was a blessing in disguise. No doubt I would have tried pricey psychiatry or some other fancy treatments if I could have afforded such luxuries, and I might have died in the process as so many alcoholics do before finding their way to AA. Since there are no dues or fees for AA membership, AA’s Twelve-Step treatment regimen fit my parsimonious budget like a glove. Three years after sobering, my earning capacity and financial resources had not recovered as rapidly as my mind and body. Health insurance was out of the question.

         I was driving home from work when I felt a severe pain in my chest, my right arm went numb, and I felt nauseous. I knew these were symptoms of a heart attack. I pulled off the road to avoid passing out in traffic and to contemplate my dilemma. Without insurance nor money to pay for a doctor or hospital, I was screwed. Sitting in a vacant parking lot in a state of near-panic I remembered from my studies of the Gospels that Jesus told his disciples that whatever they asked of the Father in Jesus’ name, God would deliver–or words to that effect. With do-or-die resignation, I asked God to heal me, concluding, “in Jesus’ name, amen.” Almost immediately the pain and numbness began to subside. Twenty minutes later I resumed my commute home. That night in bed contemplating my experience, I belatedly thanked God for his medical assistance and Jesus for his advice. I suppose that is when I became a disciple of Jesus, although I wouldn’t have said so at the time. I hasten to add that being a disciple of Jesus is a way of living, which does not equate to membership in any religion.

         Not long after my heart attack, I was alone in my office when I heard an unfamiliar noise. I strained to listen for a while before I realized that the noise was coming from my lungs, a soft wheezing. I knew immediately that my restricted breathing was due to smoking a carton or so a week of unfiltered-Camel and Pall Mall cigarettes, something I had been doing since I was a teenager. I had tried mightily to quit on many occasions including the past two “national smoke-out days.” The first year I made it until 9:00AM and the next year until noon, after which I resigned myself to smoking for the rest of my tobacco-shortened life. That night as I went to sleep it occurred to me to ask God in the name of Jesus to cure my smoking addiction. The next morning the compulsion was gone. I have not had a cigarette since. Several weeks passed before I realized that my prayer had been promptly answered and I bethought to thank my medical benefactors.

         During the time I was developing a Doctor-patient relationship with God, I also continued to read everything I could on the subject of taxes and their broad impact on humanity. Years earlier I arrived at the conclusion, which many other libertarians have reached, that taxation is theft, with an unsavory similarity to slavery. Unarguably, or so it seems to me, collecting taxes by force or coercion, which is how all taxes are collected, is indistinguishable from the crime of extortion. Only a grant of “sovereign immunity,” which the state bestows on its tax collectors, saves them, as well as those who share in their loot, from going to prison. Anyone who has a hand in taxation by enacting, collecting, benefitting, or, yes, even voluntarily paying taxes, manifestly must hold the preposterous belief that human laws can nullify God’s command, “Thou shall not steal!” Bestowing such divine-like authority on the state is a form of idolatry known as statolatry.

         For well over a decade I had openly resisted the federal income tax by filing a Form 1040 emblazoned with this notice: I CANNOT PROVIDE THE INFORMATION REQUESTED HEREIN, UNLESS THE DEPARTMENT OF THE TREASURY ENSURES THAT IN SO DOING ALL OF MY CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS SHALL REMAIN INVIOLATE. Treasury would not ensure, so I did not provide. The IRS labeled me an “illegal tax protester” (a.k.a., a tax resister), although I had done nothing illegal and hadn’t been charged with a crime. Protesting taxes is clearly a right secured by the First Amendment, or so I thought. Nevertheless, the prospect of going to prison loomed large. Many of my fellow tax resisters have suffered that fate.

         My attitude towards the IRS and its agents, particularly the two who came uninvited to my home and to my office for the purpose of intimidation, was one of intense loathing. However, in AA I was learning that loathing, hatred, anger, resentment and similar uncharitable thoughts and feelings are incompatible with long-term sobriety. A desire to get even can mutate in to a desire to get drunk. So I followed the AA-endorsed method of getting rid of such thoughts and feelings, a way Jesus also prescribed in these words: “Love your enemies; pray for those who persecute you.” I prayed for the IRS and I prayed for the agents who had summonsed my financial records and subtly threatened me. Through diligent prayer my troubles with the IRS dissipated; fear of courts and prisons evaporated. I no longer resent anyone or anything. It appears to me that what results from loving one’s enemies and praying for one’s persecutors is that one no longer has enemies or persecutors.

         There is a passage, a promise really, in the book, Alcoholics Anonymous (p. 102), that describes what God has done for me since turning my will and my life over to Him (or Her, if you please). “Keep on the firing line of life with these motives (viz., being ready, willing and able to help others, especially other alcoholics) and God will keep you unharmed.” In the twenty-seven years I’ve been on God’s health-insurance plan, I doubt that I’ve spent five-hundred dollars on medical care: no doctors, no nurses, no hospitals, no clinics, no insurance premiums, no illness, no serious injuries, a few aspirin, bandages, ointments and such, and I remain in the best of health.

         Today I live my life and stay sober and healthy the AA way, which is one day at a time. Of course as the above-quoted passage from the Sermon on the Mount implies, AA got its cue for daily living from Jesus. So I don’t worry about tomorrow, tomorrow never comes.

         Ten years ago, when I became eligible for tax-funded Medicare and Social-Security benefits, I wasn’t even tempted to apply. There may be some good doctors who look after Medicare patients, but none as good as my Physician, who provides his patients with good health and loving care twenty-four seven. My Doctor even makes house calls.

         It is my observation that among my pre-baby-boom peers, those who go on Medicare are going to need it. They contract illnesses or have injuries of the kind that break the bank–and often their spirit. I am quite certain that if I turned to government for my welfare, I could no longer depend on God. Why not? Because, as Jesus put it, “No man can serve two masters.”

         Old-age insurance (SS) and medical insurance--all insurance for that matter–are for people concerned about the future. Those in God’s care don’t have worries. If congress should pass and the president signs legislation creating universal health insurance, their universe will have to exclude me. And if, as I sometime hear said, participation is made mandatory, my participation will only occur over my dead body. Then and only then, if the government can raise me from the dead, will I reluctantly accept an Obamacare card.

         Having no insurance is irresponsible, says Nedib! What if you have an automobile accident that leaves you comatose? The police call an ambulance, the ambulance takes you to a hospital where doctors, nurses and very expensive equipment in the emergency room and later in the intensive-care unit all participate in saving your life at a substantial cost. If you are like most Americans, you cannot afford to pay the bill, which could well be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Your medical care then is a significant drain on the nation’s health-care resources because of your stubbornness. And your cost of care will be taken from those who do have insurance in the form of higher insurance premiums or higher taxes. If, as you believe, taxation is theft, you are guilty of stealing, are you not?

         Answer. Hypothetical situations are not real. What is real is that God has kept me from all harm for twenty-seven years, and saved me from all hypothetical situations such as you propose. Let me pose a hypothetical situation and questions of my own. What if the Book of Revelation is truly prophetic? What if the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse ride forth tomorrow? Will your government health insurance cover you if you are stricken by a pestilence? My scenario, Mr. Nedib, is at least as plausible as yours, and it is drawn from a source many people find more reliable and realistic than your fertile imagination.

 

A note to those who read this document, particularly AA members: This essay conforms to AA’s tradition of anonymity. Ned Netterville is a pseudonym. I remain anonymous when writing as a member of AA by using my pen name. Of course what I say about AA reflects only my opinion. I definitely do not speak for AA as a whole.