Continuing our discussion of the health care system with my former professor and colleague, Dr. David Jones, Emeritus Professor of Theology and Ethics, Covenant Theological Seminary …
PROBE: As one of your former students, I know that what Jesus called the “weightier matters of the law”—justice, mercy, and faithfulness”—are three essential tests to apply to any ethical question. How should God’s burdens for justice, mercy and faithfulness affect the way we think and act relative to the questions surrounding the provision of health care for our neighbors?
Response: What Jesus in Mt 23:23 highlights as the weightier practices of the Torah echoes the great summary of the will of God in Mic 6:8, “What does the Lord require of you but to do justice (mishpat) and to love kindness (chesed) and to walk humbly with your God. There are two overlapping words for justice in the OT, tsedeqah and mishpat. Tsedeqah is the broad term for covenant righteousness, and includes kindness and faithfulness as well as justice in the narrow sense (mishpat), which is the first thing—but not the last—that love does. What is it?
In this area I’ve come to rely on Gary Haugan’s Good News About Injustice (IVP, 1999). “Fundamentally,” he says, “justice (in the sense of mishpat) has to do with the exercise of power” (71). “Injustice occurs when power is misused to take from others what God has given them, namely their life, dignity, liberty, or the fruits of their love and labor” (72). Force and fraud are common abuses on the part of those who hold power, and is one of the first criteria to apply to the practice of health care in this country.
Kingdom righteousness is broader, however, than the legal category of justice; in relation to health care it preeminently includes kindness (chesed), which is gracious or favorable disposition manifested in action. In contrast to mishpat which may be demanded as a matter of right, chesed in all its forms (mercy, kindness, goodness) is free and often amazing. The word used to describe the actions of the Good Samaritan at the conclusion of the parable is the Greek equivalent of chesed. “Who was neighbor to the man beaten and robbed,” Jesus asked. “The one who showed him mercy.”
The third practice is faithfulness (pistis in Greek = amunah in Hebrew). This is the word that points us to making and keeping commitments, and of dealing honestly with our neighbors, respecting their persons as fellow image-bearers. In the health care debate, demonization of others in order to advance one’s agenda is commonplace. It has been particularly distressing to hear the insurance industry so often fingered as the culprit when you and I both know Christian insurance company founders that have offered a genuine service to humanity with integrity.
