So God Created a Virus

“It can’t be bargained with. It can’t be reasoned with. It doesn’t feel pity, remorse, or fear. And it will not stop, ever, until you are dead.” That quote from a 1980’s movie seems to sum up how a lot of people are feeling about this new virus. I believe that if you know the absolute truth about this virus, it will help you to understand what will work and not work, and what will have to happen for us to get past this disease. It is not an entirely pleasant truth, but at least surprises can be avoided.

I wrote an article several years ago while under the influence of a nasty cold called, “Noah and the Bugs”. I described the difference between bacteria and viruses, specifically that viruses require a living cell for their existence; they cannot survive outside the human body for extended periods of time. The virus invades a human cell, hijacks its DNA/RNA system to make copies of itself, and then after enough copies have been made, it ruptures the cell to spread to other cells— and people. The common cold is typically a rhinovirus or coronavirus, and there are hundreds of varieties of cold viruses, so it is impossible to become immune to all of them, explaining why we keep getting colds each year. If you have lived long enough and had several colds, you probably have had some type of coronavirus before. One advantage that we have with viruses is that once infected with a virus, our bodies develop antibodies to it, preventing a recurrent infection. You can get a bacterial infection over and over with the same bacteria, but that is rare with viruses. Once infected, we become immune, sometimes permanently. Some people, uncommonly, can carry a virus, and develop neither symptoms or immunity.

So, when Noah loaded up the ark to preserve all of the species, I don’t know where he kept the viruses, except in himself and his family. In theory, the bacteria could have been kept alive in cultures, but the viruses needed a human host. Noah, Ham, Shem, Japheth and their four wives would have had to carry not only several hundred cold viruses but all of the other horrible diseases—Ebola, Yellow Fever, and so forth. God would have had to spare their lives from these deadly illnesses, so I presume they were the first carriers.

Which brings us to the new coronavirus. If you are exposed to the new coronavirus, there are four possible outcomes. You will get the disease and recover, becoming immune, get the disease and die, or get the virus and become a carrier (rare). The fourth possibility is that you may have had enough coronavirus exposure in the past to have enough immunity to the new virus that you will not become infected.

The virus is not going to give up and go home because of our public health measures. Handwashing, social distancing, or quarantining will not make it go away. There are only two things that will make the virus go away. It is not a bacterial disease or plague that can be eliminated by sanitation or antibiotics. The virus can’t be bargained with. It can’t be reasoned with. It doesn’t feel pity, remorse, or fear. It will not stop, ever, until there is enough global immunity to the virus. There is a second possibility that there will be a vaccine, which will probably prove difficult to develop and probably not be available soon enough to blunt the epidemic.

Enough people HAVE to be infected so that there are enough people immune to the disease so that it doesn’t have anywhere to go. It is unclear how many people have to be immune to stop the viral spread. This depends on how contagious the virus is, and it doesn’t have to be 100% of the population. I have seen estimates as low as 60%, but more typically 80%. This explains how the flu goes away each year. Some people have had enough prior flu attacks that they are immune to the new flu strain that year, and that year’s flu vaccine taken before the epidemic may help provide immunity. But until enough people are immune, the flu keeps spreading.

So, you can go live in a cave and wash your hands, but when you come out of your cave, if enough people have not been infected and developed immunity, the virus will still be out there circulating for you to catch. The purpose of all of our current public health measures is not to stop the new coronavirus. It is to slow the spread of the virus. By doing this, our hospitals and health care system can handle the huge numbers of critically ill patients. We will save lives if we have the capacity to treat the sick, but if we overwhelm that capacity, many without care will succumb.

The bad news is that this slowing will delay not only the spread of the virus, but the development of global immunity. We prolong the epidemic. Instead of a raging inferno, we have a smoldering burn; exactly the same number of trees shall be ignited, but perhaps our firefighting resources will be able to douse more of them. The virus will not stop, ever, until this global immunity has been achieved. Whereas the flu reaches a rapid peak, immunity is quickly developed and flu season comes to an end in a few months, by blunting the coronavirus peak we may be looking at not a season but year or years, and instead of a single “curve” there may be waves, with each successive peak getting smaller. Slowing the spread of the virus may also allow time for a vaccine to be developed.

God is our eternal creator, designer, sustainer, and sovereign master. Before the sin of Adam, I presume that man and microbe coexisted peacefully in the Garden. But since that sin, suffering has been unleashed on the world. Although we do not understand why, all that God has decreed is for His glory. What we do understand is that we are here to glorify God in what we do and how we live. As Christians, this and other sufferings, trials, and catastrophes are an integral part of our existence. The Christian is concerned, but not living in fear or panic. We pray for those who are ill, and for those who are at most risk to avoid the illness. Our conduct must honor God; we take what we need but leave some for others. We will need to endure some privations, and what may appear to be Draconian restrictions. The hospital beds will fill, but hopefully each and every patient that needs one will be able to get one. God has not gifted us with foreknowledge of when this will all come to an end, but for those of us who have accepted His Son as Savior, He has given us the assurance that He will sustain us, comfort us, and bless us now during this season and the infinite seasons to come in eternity.

The Proud Christian

There is a Far Side cartoon that shows a dog in the back seat of a car as he is being driven past the dog in the yard next door.  The dog in the car leans his head out the window, and with his tail wagging, boastfully declares, "Ha ha ha Biff.  Guess what? After we go to the drugstore and post office, I'm going to the vet's to get tutored."

It seems that the fleshly part of us would like nothing more than for us to think better of ourselves than others.  That sin nature is lifted up by another's misfortune.  This is despite Paul's strict warning, "Let nothing be done through selfish ambition or conceit, but in lowliness of mind let each esteem others better than himself" (Philippians 2:3). 

This is simply not the way the world seems to work.  Our competitive drive becomes a comparative drive.  We judge how well we are doing by how others are doing.  A "zero-sum game" is a game where all of the players' gains minus all of the of the players' losses equals zero.  I can't do better unless you do worse.  Having played football in high school and college, I am fully aware of the competitive drive, and we couldn't win a football game unless the other team lost. 

The good thing about competition is that it fosters a drive to excel.  I believe that doing everything that you can do to be the best you can be is a Godly goal.  In the movie, Chariots of Fire, the British runner Eric Liddell explains his desire to be a champion runner to his sister saying, "I believe that God made me for a purpose.  But He also made me fast, and when I run, I feel His pleasure."  He was able to run in Olympic races because his desire was to be the best and fastest runner he could be.  Winning a race meant that the other runners would lose, but the desire was not to defeat the others so much as to run the best race that he could.

Where we go astray in this urge to excel is when we decide that being a better person means better than someone else.  In fact, pride and humility form something of a "zero-sum game;" the more pride that you have, the less humility.  You must realize that you wouldn't be able to achieve anything if it were not for what God has given you.  Every bit of skill, talent, and fortune is from Him.  Yes, you must put effort into it, but even that ability comes from the Lord. 

So it is with our salvation.  As Christians, we can be prone to esteem ourselves better than others because we are saved.  We see the worldly success of others or are treated badly by them and we comfort ourselves in the knowledge that at least we will be going to Heaven.  The Apostle Paul clearly saw this tendency and deplored it in Ephesians 2:8-9, saying, "For by grace you have been saved through faith.  And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast."  You are not allowed the least bit of pride at being saved, because you did not earn it, do not deserve it, and received it only as a gift from God.  You don't get to hang your head out the window and taunt the others because you are on the way to Heaven.

A surprising twist on this was seen in Mark 9:33-7, where Jesus caught the disciples arguing over who was the greatest.  Simply to be accepted into eternal life in Heaven should be a most satisfactory gift for anyone.  To desire more than this, to be ranked ahead of another Christian brother in the eyes of the Lord, is a selfish and prideful desire, a greedy ego seeking undeserved approbation.

When we think of our status as one of the saved, we must not think of salvation as a "zero-sum game."  In a football game, if one team wins, the other loses.  Yet because you are saved does not mean that another must be damned.  And it is much more than a game.  Those who do not accept Christ face an eternity of unimaginable suffering.  This is not a matter of sums but of division, with the condemned being permanently divided from God and their suffering divided by zero, meaning infinite.  Even if you are the least of those in Heaven, you will enjoy forever what will be denied to the best person in Hell.  When you look upon someone who denies Christ as their Savior, you must realize what awaits them. 

Our drive to excel must be in the service of God, and part of that service means helping others to know Him.  Being proud of your status as a Christian does not lead others to the Lord.  In fact, the higher you esteem yourself as a Christian the worse you are doing as far as He is concerned; the more you see of yourself as winning the more you are losing.  The Godly do not wish to see anyone suffer for eternity, and when we seek the salvation of others everyone wins. 

 

The Things That Cannot Be Said

The recent mass shootings have dominated the news lately: one in El Paso, one in Dayton. Far and away the most attention has been directed at the shooters and their ideologies; there was quite a race to see to which political candidates they were aligned. As one reads the news, listens to the broadcast media, or spends time on the social media websites, every single aspect of these deaths is analyzed, and responsibility is assigned to multiple different potential causative factors. I remember in medical school we were taught the ABC's of assessing a crisis situation that went awry. Not Airway, Breathing and Circulation, but Assess Blame and Criticize.

When ruminating over things such as gun control, left-wing and right-wing ideologies and the like, we are trying as humans to make sense of the often senseless. There are certainly decisions to be made to try and prevent such tragedies, and it is wise to try and understand which causative factors need to be addressed. Much progress is unlikely to be made if these factors cannot be agreed upon. If you believe that the most important issue to address in the shootings is gun control, and I believe it is the lack of societal morality, then it will be difficult for us to come to some effective solution, particularly if we deny each other's beliefs. As individuals, we will not be able to put in place either gun control or God back in schools but can only vote for politicians and judges that share our views. I would submit, however, that the most important part of all this discussion is entirely missing.

I have heard all week about Democrats and Republicans, Warren and Sanders and Trump, white supremacists and socialists, leftists and God. And although I have heard about "Christians" as a group, that term is often used as a pejorative. In all that I have heard and read this week, not once have I heard anyone mention Jesus Christ. Christians yes, Jesus Christ no. And from an eternal perspective, nothing is more important. Until Christ comes again, we will always have murders and tragedies befall our civilization. Tragic, senseless deaths began in the second generation of man when Cain slew Abel. We will always strive to prevent early death, whether it be from a bullet, sharks, a car accident, or a heart attack. We can certainly take steps to prevent mass murder, warn people about dangerous wildlife, make our cars safer, and reduce the incidence of heart disease. But we will never, ever obtain victory over death on our own as humans.

Listen to the words of Jesus Himself in Luke 12:16-21, the Parable of the Rich Fool. A man had acquired more than he needed and made many plans of his own. God, however, had different ideas, and "...God said to him, 'Fool! This night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?'" Read that again: "This night your soul is required of you." The shoppers in El Paso, the Dayton night club patrons, that day their souls were required of them. They did not know that day; the question is, were they prepared?

A holy God cannot allow sin into heaven. Even worse, the wages of sin is death. Since the fall of Adam and Eve, man is condemned to die. We all wish to die of old age and are shaken when we see people die tragically and early. But know this, all of mankind is born to live eternally, and forever is an infinitely long time. The thirty or forty or seventy years these people were deprived of while living on earth is a pittance, a fraction of a millisecond, compared to the eternity they now face. God has decreed that because of sin, we are all condemned to die physically and eternally. If I was to say that all the people that died in El Paso or Dayton last week deserved to die and spend eternity in Hell, you would be shocked. But it is true. And not only that, but you deserve to die and spend eternity in Hell, and so does your mother, father, wife, husband and children. I deserve to die and spend eternity in Hell. God's justice demands that sin be punished by death, and we all have sinned and have fallen short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23).

Do not misunderstand and think that I am saying that God is the causative factor in these deaths. But His sovereign will, in which all things are under His control, allowed them to happen as the result of sin. There is no question that the killers were morally evil and committed immoral acts. And in a fallen world, sometimes God's creatures will mortally wound us, unlike in the Garden of Eden, and unlike in the heaven to come.

There is no way to avoid physical death, either after a long life or a short one. That cost is fixed, immutable. But God did give us a way to avoid eternal death spent in Hell, and only one way. He gave us His son Jesus Christ. And when we receive Jesus as our Savior, we change our eternal destiny. Yes, I am saddened that many people died in El Paso and Dayton last week, and sad for the loss experienced by their families. But it is a far, far greater tragedy that many died suddenly, only to in the next moment find their souls in eternal torment.

These are very unpleasant things that cannot be said these days. We can pray for the families that have lost loved ones. We can pray for our leaders to protect us. We can pray for the safety of our friends and families, and even ourselves. But the single most important thing that we must pray for here is for the lost. It is too late to pray for the victims of a week ago. Some may have been believers in Christ and are in the arms of the Father now. Others are not, and we can be fairly certain where the Dayton killer is residing.

God requires that no sin enter heaven, He requires that sin be punished by death, and He requires our souls. Are you and your loved ones prepared for your last day on earth, no matter when it may be? It matters not when or where you are when He requires yours, but it will matter for all eternity where you will be after He has required it.

The Grieving Christian

 I can tell from many of the posts here, as well as with our friends and acquaintances, that several have lost loved ones that were dear to them.  Although I cannot relieve their pain, perhaps I can lend some hope. Believe it or not, I will begin with a brief physics lesson.

"Annus Mirabilis" is a Latin phrase meaning "extraordinary year" (or "year of miracles"), and although it has been applied to many different years, one of the most significant was 1905.  It was in that year that Albert Einstein published not one, but four ground-breaking papers, on the special theory of relativity, the photoelectric effect, Brownian motion, and mass-energy equivalence.  The last of these four yielded his famous equation, e = mc², but it is the first of these that I would like to explore.

In the special theory of relativity, Einstein took a good, long, hard look at existing physics and found it wanting.  Physics up until that time had been dominated by the theories of Sir Isaac Newton. He turned the world of existing Newtonian physics upside down by making a surprising assumption.  All the things that we think are constant in this material world, things such as size and shape, mass and time, are not truly constant depending on when and how the measuring is done.  The only thing that is constant is the speed of light.  This leads to some rather amazing conclusions.  For instance, as you accelerate an object, it actually shortens in length and gains mass.  For speeds such as we see usually see here on earth, this is imperceptible.  At speeds approaching that of the speed of light, the effects are profound; it is like dividing by zero.  An object at the speed of light would be infinite in mass and infinitely shortened.  And this explains why according to the theory of relativity, nothing can ever travel faster than the speed of light. The closest we can come is when scientists use particle accelerators, and by moving particles near the speed of light, these changes can begin to be detected. 

The word "relativity" was meant to describe events as they were "relative" to an observer.  If a person was in a spaceship accelerated to near the speed of light, they would not notice these effects.  It is the observer who measures the increase in mass and the shortening of length.  And time undergoes changes as well, when measured by an outside observer.  For the person in such a spaceship, they would experience the normal passage of time, and the outside observer would experience their usual passage of time, but these would actually be quite different.  Time would run much slower in the ship, the so-called "time-dilation" effect, and a journey that would seem only a few years in the ship travelling to and from Earth near the speed of light would last hundreds of years for the observer here on Earth.  Each would objectively measure the same event with different results.

People have used the word "relatively" to describe things a little differently than "relativity", and when applied to other matters "relatively" describes a subjective sense. It has been jokingly said that the duration of time is "relative" to which side of the bathroom door you are standing on.  Clearly some things seem to be over in an instant, and others drag on endlessly, but our clocks are not running faster or slower because of some phenomenon of "relativity", and it is only how we perceive the passage of that time in those circumstances.

When your loved one tells you that they are going to the store for fifteen minutes to pick up some milk, do you grieve?  Or if you came home and unexpectedly found a note from your spouse that they had run to the hardware store for a short time, would you be devastated?  I would expect not, for you know that they would return in such a brief time that their momentary absence would not make you feel deprived in the least.  It would hardly be noticed.

As a heart surgeon and physician, I occasionally must deal with the death of a patient, someone's parent or spouse.  I am of the age that occasionally friends and acquaintances pass away, and I have also lost loved ones.  I know the heart-wrenching grief and sense of loss that comes with this, and would never try and console someone by minimizing what they are experiencing or sugar-coating it.  But for the Christian, there is some hope in understanding the nature of God's time.

The saved Christian will spend eternity in heaven with God and other Christians.  Just as travelling at the speed of light causes changes that are like dividing by zero and infinite, God's eternity is like dividing time not by days or weeks or months or years, but like dividing by zero. Eternity is infinite time.  You may miss your loved one dearly, and depending on the time of loss, may miss them for years or decades.  But you will be reunited with them in heaven, and their absence will seem so very, very brief.  If you recall the final verse of "Amazing Grace":

                      

                        When we've been there ten thousand years

                                Bright shining as the sun

                        We've no less days, to sing His praise

                                than when we'd first begun.

After you have been reunited with your loved one in heaven for the first ten thousand years, the twenty years you were apart on Earth will seem like only a moment, that they had only gone for a quick trip around the corner to the store.  And after the next ten thousand, and the next, it will seem even shorter still.  The passage of those years of loss on earth will eventually seem like a split-second.  We can look to our future in heaven with the truest of joy, for eternity with those who have meant so much to us. 

Newton was right and Einstein was wrong. "Amazing Grace" was written by John Newton, and in this case I think that this Newton, not Isaac, described God's time.  Einstein was an agnostic, and although he did not deny the possibility of God, he did not believe in a personal God at all.  However, I think that some of his underlying assumptions are true. All the things that the world thinks are constant, mass and size and time, are really not constant at all.  They will all fade away when Christ returns.  It truly is only light that is constant, the Light of the Glory of God, which will shine forever. 

The Accused Christian, Part II

 It has become common parlance to label people with whom you disagree as having bad motives. This is a sloppy form of trying to win an argument or advancing a point. In logic, this is called the ad hominem fallacy, meaning that instead of attacking the opponent’s position, you attack the person. Today, Christians are accused of being “intolerant”, when nothing could be further from the truth. We are labeled with all kinds of ugly characteristics.

The first thing to get settled is whether or not there is an objective truth. This causes many people difficulty today, in our post-modern society where many have decided that each of us is allowed to determine what truth is for us; what is true for you may not be true for me. That leads to moral relativism, where we each get to determine our own moral laws. The logical law of non-contradiction prohibits this. That law basically says that a thing cannot be true and not true at the same time (or "A" and "not-A") in the same relationship. The animal is a dog or it is not a dog; it can't be a dog and a non-dog at the same time. This means that a truth is true for me and must be true for you as well. There are physical truths, mathematical truths, and even moral truths. The laws of particle physics are not different for you and me, and for both of us, four plus four must equal eight. The real problem arises when people claim that there is no objective moral standard. In that case, Mao, Stalin, and Hitler were justified in what they did because it met their moral standards. The next time someone claims that each of us is entitled to determine his own moral truths, take his wallet, and tell him that your morality thinks that it is just fine to steal.

A belief is one step removed from an objective truth. The truth is what it is, and a belief is what a person thinks is truth. We can certainly believe untrue things. Believing the wrong thing does not change the truth. My favorite example of this comes from Christian author Frank Turek, who asks, "If you decided that you didn't believe in gravity, would you just float away?"

The word tolerance comes from the Latin tolerantia, meaning to "endure". It means that if you tolerate something, you endure it or live with it. Generally, with regards to other people, you tolerate one of two things: their beliefs or their actions. Almost universally, we tolerate other people's beliefs, even if we consider them to be untrue. One of the foundational principles of our country was religious tolerance. As Christians, we tolerate the Hindus, the Muslims, the Buddhists, and so on, and we expect them to tolerate our beliefs as well. We do not always tolerate other people's actions; although we may tolerate the radical Muslims and their beliefs, we do not tolerate acts of terrorism.

Acceptance, however, is a totally different matter. I may tolerate your beliefs, but I am under no compunction to accept them as true. The sky is blue, you may believe it to be green, and I can certainly tolerate your viewpoint, but please don't demand that I also believe the sky to be green. And therein lies the problem where one group of people demands that another group of people not only tolerate their beliefs but accept them as true. I happen to get my moral truths from the Bible and God's instructions for us. Not everyone does.

And where these aggrieved groups fall off the lexicographic cliff is when they take those who do not accept their beliefs as true and label them as intolerant "haters" or “ists” or "phobes". Because I believe the sky to be blue does not make me a green-sky "hater”, a “greenophobe”, or a “colorist”, and you are not suffering because I do not accept your belief in a green sky. Please, do not even consider calling me intolerant.

You may believe that stealing is morally perfectly acceptable, but I will not tolerate your behavior, stealing from me, and I will not accept your belief in theft as morally correct or true. Although I am intolerant of your actions, that does not make me a hater, and I would reject your attempt to make me the moral villain. You may desire my DVD player and feel that you are suffering because you do not have one, but I am not causing you to suffer by denying you the right to take mine.

I am hopeful that at least some people will not accept the rampant name-calling today as a valid form of argument, whether they be called racist, bigoted, intolerant, or any kind of “-phobe”. An illusion is a deceptive appearance or impression, and those who would toss those words around are trying to create the illusion that not only do they have a valid argument, but the moral high ground as well. I would claim that they are actually suffering from a delusion, which is a belief that has no evidence in fact.

The Accused Christian

One of the charges occasionally leveled at Christian conservatives is that they are not compassionate.  This often wounds us as such, leading to confusion and even feelings of guilt because this is such a serious accusation.  Christians, who are supposed to be our brother's keepers, have a hard time responding to people who basically are saying that we do not care about others, and not only are we guilty of that sin, but we are also guilty of hypocrisy.  It is really two accusations in one.

The word compassion comes from the Latin "com", meaning "together", and "pati", which means "to suffer".  We are to come along side of those who suffer and do what we can to alleviate it.  For the Christian, our instructions are clear.  We are to be generous and helpful to those in need.  James 1:27 tells us to, "...visit orphans and widows in their trouble..."  In Matthew 25:35-36, Christ commends those who act out of compassion: "I was hungry and you gave Me food; I was thirsty and you gave Me drink; I was a stranger and you took Me in; I was naked and you clothed Me; I was sick and you visited Me; I was in prison and you came to Me."  And Luke 16:19-31 tells us of the story of Lazarus and the rich man, and the perils of ignoring those in need.

Christian charity blesses both the recipient and the giver.  All of us are to be dependent on God, who promises us that our basic needs will be met.  For other needs, we are to pray, and for those who are needy, God uses charity to answer those prayers and meet those needs.  The giver is submissive to God's will, and God directs and moves his heart to be obedient, to give to those in need, and in doing so he is also blessed.  Those of us who are blessed more are to in return bless others.  This is the very essence of Christian compassion.

However, I can tell you what Christian compassion is not.  It is not socialism.  If you had a neighbor in great need, perhaps due to illness, you might be led to help that person financially.  But if you received a knock on the door with some official forcing you to turn over your earnings to pay someone else's medical bills, that would be a different matter.  The forcible taking of something from one person and giving it to another is not compassionate or Biblical.  In this situation, the government becomes God, and the command of God to be generous becomes the demand of the state to fork over money, to be distributed as the government sees fit.  Rather than God directing our hearts to give to those in need, the government decides how much it will take from one, and how much and to whom it is to be given.  Neither person receives a blessing from God; one receives a legal demand and the other an entitlement.

Our system of government is not perfect, nor is our capitalist economic system.  As Winston Churchill stated, "it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time."  As for economics, you must remember that all the major religions originated outside of Western civilization (Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Islam, Hinduism, etc.) and all the major economic systems came from the West (capitalism, fascism, socialism, communism).  Capitalism incorporates more Christian ideals than any of the other forms of economics, particularly in the concepts of individual responsibility to God for one’s choices and behavior.  Is capitalism compassionate?  Yes.  Of all the economic systems, capitalism provides the greatest benefit for all, the highest standard of living, the greatest freedom, the least dependency, and the greatest opportunity for charity.  The countries with the greatest differences in incomes, with great wealth and great poverty, are the socialist ones.  That is why great numbers seek to come here.  East Berlin had to build a wall to keep people in; we are going to need a wall to keep people out.  The Accuser points a finger and says, "How can you be a Christian and not want to give this or that government benefit?"  Christian compassion comes from the heart, not the Treasury. 

Christian compassion is not erasing the law.  We do not live in a theocracy, but rather God has ordained civil government to pass laws to organize society and protect citizens.  The morality of individuals is the church's concern, and civil order is the state's.  Laws are enacted to guard the public, and the Bible enjoins us as good citizens to obey those laws unless they clearly conflict with the Word of God.  A law that is not enforced or obeyed is no law at all.  We have many illegal immigrants in our country, who have not obeyed the laws of this land, and these laws are not being enforced as they should.  If there are good reasons in this country for passing immigration laws, and there are, then they are to be obeyed and enforced.  The illegal immigrant came here by choice, not obeying those laws; to allow this to continue, or grant amnesty, invalidates those laws, and encourages further lawlessness.  The Accuser condemns the conservative believer, "How can you Christians call yourselves compassionate and not want to help those who have come here to seek a better life?"  Christian compassion seeks to ease suffering, but does not enable law-breaking.

Christian compassion is not violating the Word of God.  God has given us His own set of laws, and where they are clear, we are not to allow misguided compassion to overturn His commandments.  God forbids the taking of innocent life, so no amount of compassion for a single mother allows us to support aborting her baby.  God forbids sexual immorality, and compassion does not permit us to endorse such immorality, even if those who desire it would consider themselves to be profoundly unhappy if they could not live in sexual sin.  The Golden Rule does not permit sin.  Do unto others as we would have them do unto us does not mean to help others to do whatever they wish.  The Accuser contests our beliefs, saying, "How can you Christians have so little compassion that you do not condone others living as they wish?"  Christian compassion understands the unhappiness of others, but does not compromise His Word. 

Compassion not considering Christian morals is devastating in its consequences.  Compassion that forces one to pay for another is theft, and this encourages further dependency.  Compassion that permits illegality invalidates the law, and this encourages further law-breaking.  Compassion that violates God's law is itself immoral and encourages further immorality.  Christian compassion is not socialism, does not condone crime, and does not compromise with sin.  Christian compassion is furthering God's kingdom with charity, according to His Word.  It is the ultimate in caring.

 

The Church and Fire

Much has been written and said on the fire at Notre Dame de Paris, the grand cathedral.  It took nearly one hundred years to build, from 1160 to 1260.  I have had the privilege of visiting it a few times, and it was always a magnificent experience.  For a fee, you could climb to the top and have a panoramic view of Paris, and pass many gargoyles as you walked on the upper levels.  As many have already remarked, the stained glass windows were the most impressive anywhere.  It was the pinnacle of architecture in its day. 

In the Catholic church, a cathedral is not just any church, it is the seat of a bishop. The builders of Notre Dame built a huge, soaring Gothic building, as an honor to God.  And the purpose of a church, any church, is  to provide a physical location and environment for people to come together to worship God.  This is primarily done by studying and hearing the Word of God, participating in sacraments, and prayer.  Worshipping in these means is assisted by music, as well. 

Thirteen million people visit Notre Dame de Paris each year, as tourists.  I am unable to find out how many people actually attend Mass or services there, but I suspect it is a fraction of that number.  And although the beauty and grandeur of the cathedral are immense, it was not built to be a tourist attraction.  The Catholic church does not own Notre Dame, it is owned by the French government.  Although it does still serve as a house of worship, for the French, it is more a symbol of national identity, rather like our Washington Monument or Lincoln Memorial.  In fact, in France, as well as the rest of Europe, there is a rapidly declining need for churches of any kind.

Church attendance in Europe has plummeted.  The Church of England closes 20 churches a year, the Catholic church in Germany around 50 a year.  In the Netherlands, two thirds of the Catholic churches will close by 2025 and 700 Protestant churches will shutter before 2020.  So what happens to those buildings?  They are often sold and converted to other uses, such as skating rinks, supermarkets, bookstores, or gymnasiums.  According to the Wall Street Journal, (the reference for much of this data), one church was even converted to a circus training facility. 

This is the result in a decline in Christianity in Europe.  Although 70% of Western Europeans identify as Christian, only a small number are actively participating Christians attending church. In 2014, only 4% of people in the UK went to a Church of England Christmas service.  The number of people identifying as Christian is declining, while that of Orthodox Jews is remaining stable, and the number of Muslims is increasing. 

We are seeing some of the same trends here in the United States.  The Presbyterian church has lost 40% of its members and 15% of its churches. About a third of Americans attend religious services between once week and once a month, down from 49% in the 1950's (Gallup, Barna), and "religious services" includes Jews and Muslims.  This data is from self-reporting polls, and when you look at the actual number by observational studies, it may be half of that.  We are seeing churches closing and being converted here in the United States, as well.

It is truly a tragedy that fire consumed Notre Dame de Paris.  It may be rebuilt one day, a tremendous building that will once again draw millions.  But it is also a tragedy that thousands of churches around the world are ceasing to exist, not from fire which consumes, but from a lack of fire in believing Christians who no longer devote themselves to attending houses of worship.  Millions wished to visit Notre Dame as tourists, many other millions would rather stay home from their churches on Sundays.  Salvation in no way requires church attendance, yet the believing Christian is commanded to join together with their local body of Christ, their fellow believers, to worship our Lord.  Unfortunately, there will be no tourists in Heaven. 

The Losers Win

I had the great fortune and  privilege to play football for eight years, four in high school and four in college.  I am not making any claims to greatness; I only started for one of those years, my senior year in high school, although I lettered in other years, including in college.  Although I was not a starter on several of those eight teams, we had some great ones.  My senior year in high school we went all the way to the state semifinal game, and my senior year in college we were 11-1 and in the top ten in the country.  Even when not playing, it was an amazing experience to be a part of something great.

We learned much on the practice fields and in the classrooms.  We learned discipline, work ethics and habits, teamwork, obedience, and sacrifice.  These lessons would serve us well later in life, for you find that the work you put in during the week, the hours and hours of preparation, paid off on Friday nights or Saturday mornings.

In all those eight years, I was only on one losing team, my sophomore year in college.  There are so many variables that make for a winning or losing season.  That year was our coach's first year, and he came in following a very successful coach who had many winning seasons.  Our new coach tried to introduce a very different system on offense and defense, and it didn't work out well that year.  That same coach would lead us to that 11-1 season, a bowl game victory, and national ranking only two years later.

Although every team, unless undefeated, wins some games and loses some games, being on a losing team is a very different experience than being on a winning one.  If a team is going to lose most of its games, this usually starts early in the season.  After a couple of losses, everyone begins to get discouraged. Coaches and players try to figure out what is being done wrong, changes are made, players are replaced.  Confidence sags, doubt creeps in, and as games are approached, fear of another loss can predominate.  And since the team represents the school, the team is subject to criticism from those who don't even play. The worst part comes towards the end, when everyone just wishes the season was over.  Players and coaches get blamed.for what went wrong, and sometimes the players even quit the team.

Everyone wants to be associated with a winner, to be on the winning team.  No one wants to be a loser.  We even see in our politics that some candidates pick up enormous momentum once they start winning-- the voters start to identify with someone who is winning and want to vote for a winner, to be on the winning team. People start to drift away from losers, and the bleachers are empty, the crowds quiet, the players with their heads down as another final whistle announces the end of a game where you don't want to look at the scoreboard.

The Jews of Christ's time were looking for a win.  They had suffered under the Babylonians, Assyrians, Persians, Greeks, and finally Roman occupation. They expected the Messiah to come as a conqueror, to lead them to victory.  When Jesus came as just a lowly man, a carpenter, they rejected Him as the Christ.  When he was taken prisoner and crucified, He appeared as just another loser.  The apostles were discouraged at being on a losing team in a losing season.

And now, as twenty-first century Christians, how do we feel about our team and our season?  The other side, that hates Christ, seems to be winning more and more.  In other lands we see Christians martyred for their faith, and the cross has become a bulls-eye.  Europe is largely godless. In our own country, we see the secularization and profaning of our culture and government.  Isaiah 5:20 talks about "those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter"  We see ungodliness in our government leaders and courts and legislatures.  Behavior that would have been unthinkable in decades past is now popularized and promoted.  Laws and rulings come down from on high assaulting the very core moral practices of the Christian.  Those who believe in Jesus are scorned and mocked in our media and movies, whereas those who despise our faith are celebrated.  More and more people are unchurched and unbelieving. The influence of Christianity on our nation recedes despite our prayers for revival and a return to our Christian heritage.  Picking up the newspaper each day or turning on the television is like looking at the stadium scoreboard, and it looks worse with each passing quarter.  We are losing the battle for the hearts and minds of our countrymen.

When on a losing team, the individual player must remember many things and put them into practice and play.  First and foremost is to remember that our God is sovereign.  He is not unawares of what is going on, and it all occurs on His created playing field.  He ordains the outcome of the game, but the teammate must give his Utmost for His Highest; regardless of what is going on the scoreboard, the player plays to the utmost of his abilities. He must maintain his discipline. . He must encourage his fellow teammates.  And never, never give up playing until the final whistle.

As Christians, it looks like we are losing America.  And there is a role for praying for revival.  But no matter how bad the scoreboard looks, we must remember that God knows what is going on, and it is part of His sovereign will.  We must continue to give our utmost to Him, who created us to do just that.  We must maintain our disciplines in prayer and going to church.  We have to encourage our fellow believers.  We cannot give into discouragement, doubt, and criticism.  We cannot "quit" the team and we must never, never give up on our faith in Jesus Christ.  He who endures to the end will be saved (Matthew 24:15), and if we endure, we shall also reign with Him (II Timothy 2:12).

And here is the final score: Christ returns with a resounding victory.  No matter what the game looks like now, "Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us" (Romans 8:37).  It may look like we are on the losing team now, but Christ and His chosen will conquer.  In defeat, every member on the other side will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord (Philippians 2:10-11).  Our world may embrace paganism and hatred of Christianity, just as it did thousands of years ago for the early Christians, and we may currently be on what seems to be the losing team. Jesus Christ does not lose this game or the season, and neither do we.  And don't worry about making the All-American team, you are already on the All-Christian team.

Who's Afraid of God?

Enmity is a feeling of hatred or hostility towards something.  Natural man has enmity towards God.  Romans 8:7: "The carnal mind is enmity against God."  James 4:4: "Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God?"  It is difficult to believe, but people who have not accepted Christ as their savior are actually enemies of God.  Romans 5:10: "For if when we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life."  Colossians 1:21: "And you, who once were alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now He has reconciled..."  It is not surprising that enmity and enemy sound so much alike, as they both originate from the Latin inimicus.

The Bible also tells us that God has wrath.  This is an unpleasant notion, but the Word of God is clear on that subject.  Romans 1:18 states, "For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men..." Jesus Himself said in Luke 12:4-5, "My friends, do not be afraid of those who kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do.  But I will show you whom you should fear: Fear Him, who after He has killed, has power to cast you into hell; yes, I say to you, fear Him!"  These are the very words of Christ.  And if we believe the words of Jesus, and if there is a Supreme Being with wrath, we should be fearful of Him.  Yet man finds this intolerable, that there should be a Person who is greater than him, of whom he should be afraid.  How does man resolve the problem of being the enemy of a God, all-powerful and all-knowing, who is capable of great wrath?

The first way is to deny He even exists, and the atheist solves his problem right there.  You can't be an enemy of someone who does not exist, and there is no need to fear the wrath of an imaginary entity.  This, then, allows you to live in any manner you wish, without worry of any temporal or eternal consequences.  This is a group of people who are not believers in Christ or God or the Spirit, and threats from the Bible do not have any relevance for them.

The second way to deal with this is to remake Him into the image that we desire.  We claim that God exists, but that He does not have any wrath.  Many look upon the Old Testament as just that, "Old", and see a God capable of all manner of wrath and destruction, but have replaced Him with the image of a completely kind and loving Father who would never be angry with anyone.  Some have looked upon the Old Testament God as a frightful, judging Being, and He has now been superseded by His Son Jesus, the gentle Lamb of God who is all-loving. 

There are several problems with this viewpoint.  First of all, it goes against what Jesus Himself said in Luke 12,  Secondly, it ignores the full divinity of Christ, who is indeed the Lamb of God but also the Lion of the Tribe of Judah (Revelations 5:5).  When Jesus returns, He will bring judgment upon the world.  In fact, Jesus tells us in John 5:22, "For the Father judges no one, but has committed all judgment to the Son."  Thirdly, although Jesus was meek and loving, He never condoned sin and was capable of great anger when the need arose, as in the temple with the moneychangers.  Lastly, Jesus is the Word Incarnate, and the Word itself is a two-edged sword (Hebrews 4:12), with the good news of the Gospel and the frightful news of pending judgment.

Those who deny the existence of a God with wrath or a do not believe in a wrathful God are making a serious error.  The first group is free to make up any moral system they desire, and the second is free to disobey God's moral system; both are free of any consequences.  They are inappropriately not fearful of God's wrath. We certainly see this playing out daily in our lives.  The people who would dismember a child in the womb and sell its body parts are not afraid of God.  The lawmakers who pass laws that violate God's natural order for man and wife, and the judges that approve, are not afraid of God.  The leaders of our country who pass laws for our healthcare by lying to us, bearing false witness,  are not afraid of God. 

Even on an individual level, we know people who claim to believe in God, but are sinning and unafraid of God's wrath.  We are afraid to confront them, afraid to upset them, afraid that we will not seem loving, but our fear of these things should pale in comparison to the fear of God that they do not have.  If we love them , we would speak to them of their sin so that they would avoid His judgment and wrath. 

There is a third way to resolve the problem of being an enemy of a God with wrath, and that is to be reconciled with Him.  This is done through faith in His Son Jesus Christ.  Those who do will be spared His eternal wrath, and can rest peacefully in that promise.  There will still be painful things to deal with: chastening for disobedience, pruning for sanctification, and spiritual warfare, but we need not be afraid of these things or God Himself.  Our loving God sustains us through these.   

There are some Christians, who are reconciled to Him, who still carry an unhealthy fear of Him, worried that the slightest misstep will result in punishment; they often interpret any bad thing that happens to them as an expression of God's wrath.  The are inappropriately afraid of God's wrath.  The best way I know to overcome this is by repeatedly reading the Word and His promises to look after us, to care for us, and to comfort us.  If Psalm 23 tells us that because of our Lord we "will fear no evil", then how much less do we need to fear that same Lord who is perfectly good?

Those who do not believe in God have every reason to be afraid of His eternal wrath.  Those who believe in God but do not believe he is capable of wrath will stand before Him in judgment and there will not be an opportunity to offer excuses for disobedience.  Only those who in humility confess their faith in Christ Jesus as well as confess their sins have nothing to be afraid of. 

And I'm afraid that's about all I have to say on the matter.

Doveryai, no Proveryai

I have just finished a tremendous biography of Charles Ponzi, of the eponymous "Ponzi Scheme."  He began his project in 1920 in Boston, promising to give people a 50% return on their investments in 45 days.  He actually had a notion of how he might do that, using the difference in values of currency in other countries and their exchange rates in postage, but soon after accepting investment monies he realized it wasn't workable, and so he paid off the early investors with money coming in from new investors.  His first investor only put in a few hundred dollars, but soon he was taking in $10,000 a week, then $100,000 a week, and then a million dollars a week.  People trusted him with their money, in some cases their life's savings, and when it all fell apart they were wiped out. 

One of my earlier articles described the difference between truth and belief, terms that are frequently misused.  In summary, a thing that is true cannot be untrue at the same time; this violates the law of non-contradiction.  A true thing must be true for all people.  A belief, however, can be correct or incorrect.  You may believe something to be true that is not, or believe something that is not true that is.  Your belief, however, does not change the fact that something is true or not. 

"Trust" is a belief.  If we trust someone or some thing, it means that we hold a belief that person or thing is true or reliable.  If I trust you, I believe you to be reliable; it does not guarantee that you are in fact reliable.  Trust is a vital and essential property for any relationship to succeed.  We have to have trust in the grocer that our food is unspoiled, trust in the pharmacist that our medicines are correct, and trust in our banker that our money will not be stolen.  The Bible has many, many verses on love, but I would submit that trust is a predicate for love's fulfillment.  It is possible to love someone that you do not trust, even love your enemies, but love in its fullest sense requires trust.

Another pair of words that are commonly misused, or at least used in only their negative sense, are prejudice and discrimination.  "Prejudice" actually means to "pre-judge", and in many cases this is also an essential practice.  In fact, it may even be life-saving.  I confess that I am prejudiced about rattlesnakes.  If I see a rattlesnake, I may pre-judge it to be highly dangerous and likely to strike me, based on what I know about rattlesnakes.  It is not feasible for me to get to know each and every rattlesnake, to determine if every single one is nasty or if some like to have their bellies rubbed.  I therefore pass judgment rather quickly, and this saves time and prevents envenomation.  To discriminate means to "divide" or "separate".  This is also a necessary part of life.  I chose to marry a human, not some other species.  I discriminated on the basis of sex, and chose to only marry a woman.  In fact, I discriminated against all other women by choosing only one, eliminating the legions of other women that I could have chosen.  Well, maybe not that many.  A few.  A couple of them.  (In fact, it was my wife that discriminated and chose me from all the other men.)

Trust and mistrust, prejudice and discrimination, are therefore essential parts of daily living.  I trust my airplane mechanic to make sure that all the parts on my 1993 plane are still in working order.  I am prejudiced against every single grizzly bear.  And I discriminate against many fruits (wishing Eve had done the same).  Prejudice and discrimination are wrong when they are done unfairly.

It is when someone violates our trust that our foundations in our relationship with that person are shaken.  We judge someone to be reliable, we trust them to do something for us, and they let us down.  Now our trust is broken, our belief in their reliability is shaken, and we must determine if this is a single event or if it requires us to define them as untrustworthy.  Do we become prejudiced against them, and assume that we must now "pre-judge" their future reliability, and do we discriminate against them, separating them from the people that we do trust?

The Bible give us some direction.  First, as Christians we are to love them.  If we have a problem with them, we are to take it to them.  If they still do not see the error of their ways, we are to take other Christians with us to discuss the matter.  If they repent, we are to forgive them.  If they reject us, we are then entitled to mark them as untrustworthy, meaning judge them as untrustworthy, and discriminate against them.  We are still obliged to love them and forgive them, but it does not mean that we do not see the truth about them. 

In the 1980's, Ronald Reagan had many negotiations with the leader of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev.  Reagan frequently appropriated and used a Russian proverb when dealing with Gorbachev, "doveryai, no proverai", meaning "trust, but verify", and it was through Reagan that this phrase actually entered modern discourse.  However, I would submit that this is a false proverb.  If you have to verify that someone is truthful or reliable, you can not really trust them. An accurate belief of trust does not require verification. 

Many of us are too trusting, and will be shaken time and again when we find our beliefs to be untrue.  Many others are incapable of trusting, and will never be able to have fulfilling relationships or even successful lives because at some level a basic level of trust is a requirement to function in society.  Only the recluse or hermit has one person that they can trust, themselves--to some extent.

There are some lessons for the Christian here that are essential if we are to deal with our fellow man.  First, we are to ardently strive in advance to determine if someone is worthy of our trust.  The Ponzi investors were looking for something that would make them rich quick, and they failed to assess the man or his methods to correctly decide if he merited their trust.   The Bible warns us in Psalms 118:8, "It is better to put trust in the Lord than confidence in men." Secondly, none of us are perfect, and others will let us down from time to time.  We must not rush to judgment, nor become incorrectly prejudiced against them, or unnecessarily discriminate against them.  We are to continue to love them and forgive them.  Yet nowhere are we to be commanded to be fools.  We must use our God-given wisdom to evaluate and discern how to proceed.  As mentioned earlier, love in its fullest sense requires trust; to love those we do not trust we must trust in God.

Thirdly, we must always strive to ensure that no one ever has any doubt to trust us, and it is sobering to ask yourself, "Have I ever done something that would cause another person not to trust me?"  Fourth, the hermit or recluse, and even ourselves, must be careful about trusting in one's self.  We learn in Proverbs 3:5 to "Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding."  Finally, there are three persons that are perfectly and always trustworthy, the Father, Son, and Spirit.  There never needs to be any verification of their reliability.  In fact, not trusting in them will result in spending eternity with Satan, the most untrustworthy being of all.  You don't have to trust me on this, just His Word.  And I don't care how cute your pet rattlesnake is, I don't trust him.

Picking and Choosing

One of life's most important duties is made in the choosing of people.  Choosing the right person for the job, our friendship, and our other associates is so crucial, yet so often it is done with less deliberation than it requires.  Sometimes, the choosing is done carelessly or even randomly.  Choosing the leaders of our country is so important that the consequences of choosing poorly can be catastrophic for our nation; we have seen in recent weeks the results of choosing Supreme Court justices who do not much believe in the Constitution.

Other than choosing to follow Christ, there is no more important choice to be made in this earthly existence than the person we marry.  A key choice to be made is where to worship, and under whose direction.  Many people, especially young people, would be much better served if they chose their friends carefully, for often times our close associates have more influence on us than we would like to admit. 

In the Bible, there are several instances where people were carefully chosen for their duties.  In Judges chapter 7, we are told of instructions God gave to Gideon as he prepared his army to attack the Midianites.  God felt that it was important to demonstrate His divine providence by having Gideon obtain victory in circumstances that would be otherwise impossible.  He did not want Gideon winning the battle with a large number of men.  In verse 2, "The Lord said to Gideon, 'The people with you are too many for me to give the Midianites into their hand, lest Israel boast over me, saying "'My own hand has saved me.'"   First, God told Gideon to dismiss anyone who was afraid, and promptly 22,000 up and left, leaving 10,00 behind.  Then He told Gideon to send his men down by the water, and told him to separate the men by the way that they drank the water, and he retained only the 300 men that brought the water to their mouths by their hands.  And with only those 300 carefully chosen men, Gideon and his small army defeated the Midianites.

In Luke chapter 6, verse 12, we hear about Christ praying all night before a decision about choosing people:  "In those days He went out to the mountain to pray, and all night He continued in prayer to God.  And when day came, He called His disciples, and chose from them twelve, whom He named apostles."  We can see by studying our Savior how important it is to choose people carefully, and consult God when we do so.

As a physician, I can assure you that it is extremely important when you need treatment to choose your doctor carefully.  Likewise, it is critical that we choose the correct people to become doctors and train in the art and science of medicine.  There are many who resent physicians, claiming they are paid too much and have undeserved prestige.  However, the fundamental laws of economics, rewards and penalties, costs and benefits,  play a role in who becomes a physician.  When a profession becomes unattractive financially or burdened by regulation, fewer people desire to expend the costs to enter that profession.  We have seen an unbelievable decline in people who want to train in my own specialty, Cardiac Surgery, over the last few decades. 

When I applied for a residency in heart surgery, it was a highly sought after specialty, and you pretty much needed to be near the top of your class to get a training spot.  Shortly after I entered private practice, and Medicare reimbursement began to be cut drastically, we began to see a sharp fall in the people who would be willing to spend four years in college, four years in medical school, and eight years in residency to be an open heart surgeon.  In 1997, the number of applicants still exceeded the number of training positions, although the number of those positions had been reduced.  At that time, there were 176 people in America who wanted to train in the 143 slots available.  Currently, because so few people want to be a heart surgeon nowadays, the number of training slots has been reduced to 102, but only 80 people applied for those positions in 2012; only 80 people in a country of 300 million wanted to be a heart surgeon.  As the residency programs still need to fill their positions in a time of declining demand, the quality of the trainees declines.  Last year saw the highest failure rate on the Thoracic Surgery Board Examinations ever. 

Likewise, we see entire medical school classes graduating where no one wants to go into General Surgery.  It has become obvious to the residency programs that the quality of those entering such training has also diminished.  Up to one-third of doctors graduating from General Surgery training are felt to need remedial training.  When the number of people applying to train in General or Cardiac Surgery plummets, the residency directors can 't be picky about who they let in any more.

Even if you think that health care is a right and there should be a nationalized health care system providing care to Americans that they do not individually have to pay for, and that physicians should be paid much less because they are over-valued, you cannot force people at gunpoint to exchange valuable years of their lives and hundreds of thousands of dollars in educational debt to become doctors and not see commensurate rewards.  And this leads to a severe shortage in qualified applicants. 

I am not writing this to whine or to seek pity.  I have had a good career that is clearly over half-way over; I am trying to address the problems the patients of the future will face with their doctors.  You may feel that doctors are overpaid and over-valued by society.  But with increasing regulations, paperwork and other governmental burdens, compounded by declining reimbursements, we see that the number and quality of physicians in some specialties is falling off a cliff.   You may want to pick your doctor carefully, but you need to be aware of the "pool" of applicants from whence he came. 

Now we come to the real tectonic shift in the grounds for choosing who will be a doctor.  When I applied for medical school, only one in seven applicants was accepted, and at my particular medical school, it was one in twelve.  One of the tests we all had to take was the MCAT, Medical Colleges Admissions Test, sort of like an SAT for aspiring physicians.  Not only did we have to have decent grades, we had to score well on this test.  We were tested on the knowledge we had acquired as undergraduates that we would need to succeed in medical school and as practicing doctors.  We were tested on biology, anatomy, chemistry, physics, and biochemistry.  It was an exceedingly rigorous examination, designed to select only those with an aptitude for learning the intricacies of the human body and its diseases.   In medical school, we would later learn every muscle, tendon, nerve and bone in the body.  We would learn every single chemical reaction and hormone, and the derangements of these functions as they caused illness. 

The powers that be have now decided that a new test is needed to choose the doctors of tomorrow.  The new MCAT will test medical school applicants with questions designed to test their knowledge of "psychology, sociology, and the biological foundations of behavior."  There will be a review of "social inequality, class consciousness, racial and ethnic identity, 'institutional racism and discrimination', and 'power, privilege, and prestige'".

The MCAT's are going to qualify these people to become doctors not on their knowledge of all things medical, but by testing for their comprehension of "social inequality", "class consciousness", and so forth.  I don't know about you, but when I go to the doctor, I could not care less about their views on such matters.  I want them to have a deep and full understanding of how my illness needs to be diagnosed and treated.  I really am not interested in how much you know about "institutional racism and discrimination", I want to know how much you know about curing my thyroid problem or my cancer.  If I am seeing you as a patient and you are a surgeon, when you walk into the examining room I will wonder if you were one of the one in three who had to do remedial training before you were released to perform surgery without supervision, and who cares what your views are on "power, privilege, and prestige"?

God is sovereign over all, and yet we are allowed to make choices.  He has shown us in His Bible the importance of picking and choosing wisely.  Ironically, those who choose who will be a doctor today will likely one day in advancing age be patients who will need the utmost of skill and knowledge to diagnose and treat their illnesses, and will they then regret their choices?   Those who vote for leaders that create the unwelcome environment in which physicians practice will also be receiving care from doctors that were poorly qualified applicants who were some of the few available for positions where there was not much competition.   Unfortunately, almost all of us at one time will need healing services delivered by those chosen not for their aptitude for medicine but for their politically correct social beliefs.  As a physician and Christian, my counsel to you would to be to pray to never get sick. 

TEKEL

There is a very powerful old movie from 1961 that I recently watched again called, "Judgment at Nuremberg".  It requires some stamina to watch the entire film, for it is over three hours long, and its subject matter is often painful and difficult to watch.  It is about one of the trials of Nazi war criminals held after World War II in Nuremberg, Germany.  After the Allies had defeated the Axis, war crime trials were held in Germany to hold accountable the Nazis who had led their war effort and committed atrocities.  There were actually many sets of trials; the first was for the Nazi commanders, and there was another series of twelve trials for other defendants.  The most famous of those twelve trials was the Doctor's Trial, where physicians were tried for human experimentation and mass murder.  The movie dealt with another of those twelve trials, the Judges Trial.  Accused of ordering the deaths of innocent civilians and arranging for  millions to be sent to concentration camps, the Nazi judges claimed they were only following the laws as written. Those laws were primarily directed at the Jews.

Those laws crept insidiously into the German landscape, in only the span of a generation.  Many of you will remember Surviving the Suffering articles from a couple of years ago (Not Quite Human) documenting the growth in  German society of widespread anti-Semitism.  In the late 1800's, the Jewish people in Germany were granted full citizenship, but by the turn of the century, the public at large began to turn on the Jews.  There eventually was a nationwide boycott of Jewish businesses.  A law was passed called, "The Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service," which prevented Jews from holding any civil service jobs.  The Nuremberg Laws, named for the same city in which the trials would be held decades later, stripped the Jews of their citizenship, and Jews were forbidden to marry non-Jewish Germans.  A few years later, there was a night where there was widespread destruction of Jewish businesses, called Kristallnacht (Crystal Night), so named because of the broken glass that littered the streets.  By the end of the war, six million Jews had been sent to their deaths in the camps.

All of this occurred in Western Civilization less than a hundred years ago; there are people alive today that lived through this, and I have met them.  It is nearly impossible to believe that a country could change like that, and that there would be so much outrage directed against a particular religious group.  But public opinion changed in Germany in the first half of the twentieth century, and the leaders of the nation incrementally added laws in a step-wise fashion to achieve their ends.  Aided by the judges who claimed to only doing their duty, the unimaginable occurred, and it is still within living memory of many. 

This last week saw our own Supreme Court judges create their own laws, essentially legislating while claiming not to do so.  In the case of the Affordable Care Act, they took a law that very explicitly said one thing, and declared that it did not really mean it; this was not a constitutional question, but simply a matter of interpretation.  With gay marriage, they invented a right that is nowhere to be found in the Constitution.  As the writer Kevin Williamson put it, in the first case they took a law that said one thing and said it didn't, and in the second case they took a Constitution that didn't say something and said that it did.  One of our Fathers, John Adams, described the ideal government as, "a government of laws, not men."  Sadly, our government has become the opposite, where judges that are not accountable to the electorate create and change laws, in a step-wise fashion, to suit the purposes of the government, not the people.  Who will hold these judges accountable; who judges the judges?

Our heavenly Father is the ultimate judge, and His Son Christ will render judgment when He returns.  No one, not a single person, will escape judgment.  If you are a sincere Christian, you are aware of how fallen you are, and how little you deserve entry into heaven.  It is only because of God's mercy and your faith in Christ Jesus that you will be judged righteous and allowed to live in eternity with Him.  Each of us will have to appear before Him and give account of our deeds.  All earthly judges will likewise stand in the presence of our Sovereign Lord and Master, but not to try and use tortured legal reasoning to explain why they created rulings that defied Him.  God has given us our Law very clearly, and there is not a case to be brought before Him to overrule his decrees. 

There is also precedent for judgment in the here and now, before the return of Christ.  Our country has nearly completed the process of turning its back on God and His moral instruction, just as it has turned its back on the Constitution.  The former necessarily precedes the latter.  As John Adams also stated, "Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people.  It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."  When the people are no longer moral and religious, the Constitution becomes useless to them.  If we discard God, we may as well throw out the Constitution, and then the judges-- men-- rule, and not the law.  Society may turn against Bible-believing Christians, and we may experience ostracism and outrage as we practice our faith, and the attitudes of the country will have changed in only a few decades, in only the span of a generation.  We are already seeing the boycotting of Christian-run businesses, as public opinion changes in the first half of this century.

God has and does judge nations and people.  In Daniel, chapter 5, King Belshazaar of the Chaldeans held a feast, and while drinking wine a hand wrote on the wall of the palace these words: MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN.  Daniel interpreted these words for the king.  Upharsin meant that his kingdom would be given to the Medes and Persians.  Mene meant that the days of the kingdom had been numbered and it would be brought to an end. 

TEKEL was interpreted thus: "You have been weighed in the balances and found wanting."  America is on the scales, and God is checking the balances.  If we are found wanting, TEKEL, then it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God (Hebrews 10:31) and have Him pronounce MENE, MENE.  I do not know what the fourth word of the sentence would be for America; I suppose there is a remote possibility it could still be UPHARSIN, the Persians, into whose hands we could be given if they obtain nuclear devices.  Yet as we appear to live in the time of the judges, it is appropriate to look at the book of the same name, Judges 21:25, wherein it states, "Everyone did what was right in his own eyes."  I am afraid that the sentence God will pass on America is MENE, MENE, TEKEL, YOURSELVES.

Frozen Chosen

Let me be clear; I am a heart surgeon and not a theologian.  I cannot claim to be a definitive authority on complex biblical issues, but that doesn't stop me from trying to understand God's works and purposes in this world.  The intersection of medicine and Christianity can become quite complex, and many of the technologies that have developed only in the last few decades have made it difficult to apply His purposes and principles to certain situations.  For thousands and thousands of years, man has had no confusion about what the Bible has to say and what God commands.  Only in perhaps the last fifty years have we been clouded by technology.

For centuries, philosophers argued about the existence of the soul, but the Bible makes it clear that there is one given to each human that has been conceived.  In addition, for those who have accepted Christ as their Savior, the Holy Spirit comes to reside within them.  Wherein lies the soul and Spirit in the body, and when do they enter, and when do they depart?

The ancients at times believed the soul lay hidden in the heart, and sometimes even the liver was suspected of being a residence.  The Christian view is that the soul does not have its existence dependent on the corporeal body, and in fact survives when the body dies.  The soul is thought to enter the human body at conception, and depart upon death.  From a medical standpoint, we know that the soul does not reside in the arms or legs, for they can be lost.  From a cardiac surgeon's standpoint, the soul is not in the heart; I have taken the heart from a deceased person and transplanted it into another living person, but the recipient's mind and soul remained their own.  It would seem, however, that although the soul can exist apart from the body, it manifests its presence in the brain.  I believe a mind is a prerequisite for having a soul.

A dead person has neither soul nor can be indwelt by the Holy Spirit.  The only thing that remains is the deteriorating flesh of what was once a vital person.  The soul does not live in a woman's eggs or a man's sperm, but once life is created, enters within. Although the brain does not yet exist in reality in the embryo, with thoughts and consciousness, there is the full potential for a functioning, thinking, rational human being, and the soul awaits the blossoming of brain waves, then conscious thought, birth, and speech. 

I can think of two cases where a body is alive, but there is no functioning brain, thought, or consciousness.  The most obvious is the brain-dead patient, from whence we obtain those organs for transplantation mentioned earlier.  I have been called upon in my career to make brain death determinations.  There is often a quite detailed list of assessments that must be made.  The first is an apnea test, to see if the patient will breathe on their own, without a respirator; they usually must be disconnected for ten minutes to see if they will draw a breath.  Another is to do an EEG or electroencephalogram, to see if any brain waves are present.  There is the test for reflexes, usually the last of the signs of physical life to leave, such as stroking the corneas with a cotton swab to see if there is blinking, or even putting cold water into the ear canal to see if the eyes will twitch.  The back of the throat is stimulated, to see if there is any gagging.  If the body makes no attempt to breathe, has a flat EEG, and has no reflexes, they are declared brain dead.  They are simply a body of flesh with some functioning organs that is kept alive by machines.  Whatever made them a person is gone.  I feel fairly confident that their soul has departed and the Holy Spirit does not reside within. 

The second instance is an infant born with anencephaly.  This is a catastrophic birth defect where a child is born essentially without a major portion of their brain.  In particular, the cerebrum and the skull are absent, and this is where thinking and consciousness occur.  These unfortunate infants have a lower brain portion and spinal column, and may have some reflexes, but will die within a few hours or days without ever having a conscious thought.  Their appearance can be quite distressing, but here is an illustration that is not unduly gruesome and gives you the general idea:

(Wikipedia)

It would seem to me that with no consciousness and no potential for consciousness, a soul would never be able to be manifest, and God only knows if there was one from conception until death. 

Where we run into real problems, from the anencephalic at conception to the brain-dead at death, is all the cases in between.  Does a severely mentally disabled child have a soul?  It think so.  However, I have seen someone that for all intents and purposes was brain dead, with no spontaneous breathing, no brain-waves on EEG, and all reflexes gone except the blink reflex in one eye when the cornea was stroked.  Is there still a soul in that body?  I doubt it, and indeed in that person event the blink reflex eventually disappeared.  And what about those in comas, or vegetative states, do they still have souls?  In that case, I think they still do.  And those at the other end of life with severe dementia, I certainly believe that they still have a soul residing within. 

I do not have the ability or the authority from God to make these determinations in all cases.  Life belongs to Him.  The anencephalic child will die according to His will; the mentally disabled, comatose, and demented will live and struggle according to His plans, and for His purposes.  For those who accepted Christ before their coma, dementia, or brain-death, I think they are indwelt by the Holy Spirit and will receive eternal life.  For those who are born without the ability to rationally understand or accept Jesus, I believe God will have a dispensation of mercy, as it is thought by many that He does when a young normal child dies.

To make matters even more difficult, there is the question of all those embryos.  There are a lot more of them out there than you think there are.  Depending on whose statistics you believe, it is possible that there are up to three times as many embryos created that will not make it to a functional pregnancy as those that will, and of the confirmed pregnancies, fifteen to thirty per cent will have a miscarriage.  It is also felt that of all these embryos that do not make it to a live birth, sixty per cent were defective in some form, in a way that would have precluded them from drawing a breath outside the womb.  Though somehow deformed in their development, and with God's sovereign will declaring their death before life, from a Christian standpoint, each was endowed with a soul at conception.  Many also believe that God will grant mercy to these unborn children as well as the born, and entry into heaven will be allowed.  Then there are the million babies deliberately sacrificed in the womb with legalized abortion.  They have souls, and in their innocence, I believe God will spare them, too. If you think the world is full of strangers now, it is possible that heaven will be filled with three times as many people that never saw the light of day. 

In vitro fertilization is a sensitive subject, but it needs to be brought up.  In this process, eggs are harvested from the woman and combined with the man's sperm.  Several embryos are created.  Some will die in the culture dish, and of those that survive, the best-looking specimens under the microscope will be implanted, in hopes of a pregnancy.  Only thirty per cent of in vitro procedures will result in a pregnancy, so seventy per cent of the implanted embryos will die of a miscarriage.  The ones that are not implanted will be destroyed, which is essentially the same as an abortion.  My wife and I, who are childless, could not allow ourselves to participate in this process and create embryos that would be potentially destroyed.  Embryos apparently can be adopted out; they can also be stored.  This means frozen. 

We see in the news that a well known actress and her husband created a bunch of embryos (I would call them people), then froze them for later use.  They since have divorced, and are now fighting over their embryos or property (I would call them people).  These embryos, the first stage of life, who in the womb would continuously grow and develop until leaving the mother's birth canal to draw breath, learn to speak, take steps, go to school, learn and play, are now in a freezer.  And what of their souls?  I assume the souls entered into the embryos at conception, and since they are not dead, still reside there.  What does a soul do in a freezer?  Are God's purposes for the life He created fulfilled in sub-zero storage?  How arrogant of man (and woman) to do this with a life, when all life belongs to Him.

Those of us who are Calvinists believe that God choses His elect.  And we jokingly refer to those who have accepted Christ yet seem to lack fervor as the "frozen chosen".  Some of those embryos were ordained by God before the beginning of time to be born and grow to love His Son Christ and receive Him as their Savior, destined to be indwelled by the Holy Spirit.  They were chosen by Him as His own, and now they are frozen.  They lie in suspended animation, awaiting to be born, and just as the aborted fetus cries not to be put to death, the frozen embryo cries to be put to birth.  For this, they must be thawed, just as God needs to thaw the glacial hearts of those who put them into the icebox.