Thursday, September 10, 2009

an open letter of delinquency

i am late. i am in debt and feel as though i have failed to do my duty. in debt to whom? i know not, but i feel it down deep in my soul.

life has been crazy in the past two months. the wife and i moved into our very own first home. it was exciting and stressful and far too hot to be moving heavy stuff, but it was rewarding. we love the house. we also had our twin boys! that was exciting and terrifying all at once.

and in all of this i have neglected this space. but i have been thinking of things to write about...so onward...

health care. oh man has this been a boiling point and hot topic. the president delivered his reform proposal last night, and it was, in my estimation, well thought out and comprehensive. i along with others do have questions about immigrant populations and the coverage hole with these populations and overall cost of the program. but i don't want to get into the specifics of what plan would be most effective because it is a far more complicated issue than the media, the politicians, and the public are making it out to be. on this point i want to elaborate.

the health care brouhaha has been decidedly reductionist. one side is content to throw stones at the other and vice versa. and the stones that are being thrown greatly distort the truth of the claims the others are making and more than anything are simply simplistic versions twisted to make the other side look insensitive and evil. perhaps this isn't anything to be concerned about...washington being washington...except that we are on the world stage, or at least we like to think we are...right...i mean...this is AMERICA...and well we set the world stage much less stand on it (if you haven't caught my sarcasm yet, feel free to take note now). and whether or not other countries care about what we have to say about health care (i surmise we overestimate our importance), the fact remains that millions of americans go without health care or health care insurance coverage because of decisions they have to make about putting food on the table versus paying a premium every month. and this is precisely the crux of the issue for me.

we have failed to remember that we are talking about and to human beings. and we have failed to claim any sort of civility in this process. since when did we decide that having differing opinions about policy give us the right to degrade, disrespect, or dehumanize other individuals? why do we feel the need to simply discount one perspective or another on the basis of party affiliation or worse yet false ideological claims put into people's mouths on either side of the aisle? i could probably live the rest of my life without hearing how anyone is going to bring socialism to any country without even a cursory understanding or proper use of the term socialism in the context of any sentence. i could also live the rest of my life without needing to hear about how uncivil town hall meetings become because someone believes so "passionately" about an issue. passion is not an excuse to berate another individual.

perhaps as americans we should take note of our own behavior in treating one another as sub-human and not be shocked when other countries find us to be inhospitable, unfriendly, uncaring, or maybe even dumb (to use a third grade insult). i feel like if anything, this issue alone has proved to me that those critics from outside our borders are probably more right than wrong.

i believe in order to come to an agreement about this issue, we must reclaim what it means to be civil. we will also have to be willing to come to the table and agree to compromise. americans suck at grace in the face of defeat, even when we all lose on some things and all win on other things. health care and insurance coverage are something that every individual should have full access to in my opinion. there are a number of different creative and perhaps risky ways to achieve this, but it seems silly to me in a country where we have abundant resources and material wealth that responsible people should have to make a choice between health care for themselves and their loved ones and food or shelter.

finally, as a note to those who claim to be followers of christ. i have never been more disappointed at the way we have represented ourselves in this debate and, in general, in the past and present political cycle. for people who claim to love and honor the dignity and humanity of others, i have seen little in the way of charity or respectful/constructive criticism of political ideology. i find this especially to be true in the way in which people talk about the president. the names, claims, and general language around the use of his name, the images associated with him, and disrespectful things said about him lead me to several conclusions. the first is that people who are not christian have a right to claim and believe that we do not indeed care about other people as we so often, emptily, claim to love others. second, we are called to be a people who look beyond petty affiliations and honor the humanity in another individual, even if we disagree with them ideologically, politically, or religiously. third, we are called to be a people that cares for one another and others without question. it is sad that i do not see more creative response from communities of faith in the face of a failing health care system. and lastly, if we want to be taken seriously by others we must first take them seriously. i believe our first response should not always be to legislate morality, rather that we should first want to answer for the humanity, dignity, respect, and love that we claim to show others. too often we leave these out of the conversation when they are the most significant pieces of the puzzle.

to my friends who are not christian, i sincerely apologize for the way we too often are delinquent in the claims we make as followers of christ and for failing to honor the dignity, respect, and love others deserve for nothing more or less than their humanity. we have failed to be the people we have claimed to be, and we treated others with disdain, disgust, and crudeness out of our own ignorance and self-righteousness. unfortunately i cannot change those things or make people act differently. what i can do though is promise that one person does not speak for the whole and one set of actions does not represent the hearts of all.

4 comments:

Steve Heyduck said...

Very well said, brother. Thank you.

AprilSULeo said...

Aaron. You are refreshing. Thank you.

Unknown said...

Thanks Aaron for your post. May all of us truly model Christ in our dialogue with others.

Kelly @ IdealistMom.com said...

Erik read this first tonight and insisted I stay up a little bit after Abby's bedtime to read it. I'm glad I did.

It reminded me of a quote from Paul Krugman I came across recently. He's an economist who talks about the health care issue a lot.

Here it is:

"There is a morally coherent argument against guaranteed health care, which basically comes down to saying that life may be unfair, but it's not the job of the government to rid the world of injustice. If some people can't afford health insurance, this argument would assert, that's unfortunate, but the government has no business forcing other people to help them out through higher taxes. If some people inherit genes that make them vulnerable to illness, or acquire conditions at some point in their lives that make it impossible for them to get medical insurance from then on, well, there are many strokes of bad luck in life. The government can't fix them all, and there's no reason to single out these troubles in particular.

"Obviously I don't agree with this argument. But I'm not setting it up merely to knock it down. My point is, instead, that while there is a morally coherent argument against universal health care, it's an argument you almost never hear in political debate. There are surely a significant number of conservatives who believe that the government has no right to spend taxpayers' money helping the unlucky; the late Molly Ivins was fond of quoting a Texas legislator who asked, 'Where did this idea come from that everybody deserves free education? Free medical care? Free whatever? It comes from Moscow. From Russia. It comes straight out of the pit of hell.' But national politicians never say things like that in public.

"The reason they don't is, of course, that they know voters don't agree. You'd be hard pressed to find more than a relative handful of Americans who consider it right to deny people health care because of preexisting conditions, and polls suggest as well that a large majority believe that all American citizens should be guaranteed health care regardless of income. The moral case for universal health care isn't in dispute."