The soul of America is sick because our health insurance industry is sick. The creation of a better health care system that guarantees full access to affordable quality health care for every American family, all of God’s children in this country, would be the moral achievement that could repair, and even heal, our damaged national soul.
—Sojourners president Jim Wallis in the Washington Post
The Reformed Pastor 
August 20, 2009 at 8:18 am
Heal it? Probably not. But showing a little compassion for the least of these can’t hurt.
August 20, 2009 at 8:24 am
If America’s soul is sick — and it may well be — the sickness is the result of many viruses. Our broken health industry is probably one of them. But, as often is the case, Jim Wallis resorts to hyperbole to make a valid point — we really do need health reform. But what we are likely to get, based on what is currently evolving in Congress, will be reform we simply cannot afford. The currently uninsured will probably be better off, others may see little benefit, and still others may not be as well off as they currently are. When this reform effort is all done and the bill begins to come due, something that truly is a sickness of our national soul will be worse — this never-ending national delusion that we can have what we are unwilling to pay for. If parents deliberately ran up astronomical debts that their children were guaranteed to have to pay, we would describe the behavior of those parents as reprehensible to the uttermost. Those “parents” are the President and Congress of the United States whose fiscal irresponsibility over the past 50 years is indescribably obnoxious.
August 20, 2009 at 8:38 am
“The currently uninsured will probably be better off, others may see little benefit, and still others may not be as well off as they currently are.”
I am unconvinced that your third point will come to pass. However, I have to ask – is it ok for some people to have top of the line, state of the art health care when others have none? What do you think Jesus would have to say about that?
August 20, 2009 at 8:42 am
“Those “parents” are the President and Congress of the United States whose fiscal irresponsibility over the past 50 years is indescribably obnoxious.”
Agreed. It is too bad that their desire to spend trillions over the last 50 years in order to build enough weapons to kill the population of the entire planet several times over has made it so difficult to spend money on things that actually might help people.
August 20, 2009 at 9:21 am
Kate, if there is a public option and one’s employer decides to jettison his/her current private insurance and place his/her employees under the public option, the provisions of that plan may not be as “rich” as the private insurance. But the employer will pay lower premiums. I would prefer a single-payer system, but that point is for another time.
Alan, defense spending in my opinion has been misguided, excessive and wasteful. Lots of other spending qualifies for those monikers as well. And did I mention how badly many of the states and municipalities have managed their finances?
August 20, 2009 at 10:19 am
Agreed. I live in Michigan, near Detroit, I’m well aware of how badly states and municipalities have mismanaged their finances.
August 20, 2009 at 11:49 am
While I am in agreement with the statements made here about financial irresponsibility, etc., I am not really sure how it is that any responsible Christian leader can imply that any individual or corporate group (whether at a national level or otherwise) can be healthy or healed without surrender to Jesus Christ. When I read the whole article, I see Wallis pulling biblical concepts out for display, but I get the sense that biblical teachings are the answer rather than Christ Himself. One could argue that the Washington Post isn’t the place to make such arguments, but this is the On Faith blog and one would expect that one would center on the One in whom we actually have faith.
Many years ago, Presbyterian pastor D.G. Barnhouse spoke of what it would be like if Satan were to take over Philadelphia, and he suggested that it would become a nice, tidy city with no crime, no porn, no bars, and full churches where Christ was not preached. I fear that when we stop holding up Christ as the center of life, we are coming dangerously close to this vision of Barnhouse’s.
August 20, 2009 at 12:10 pm
Or one could imagine that the “whereas” is understood, given that Wallis is a Christian, and he’s writing about the “therefore.”
August 20, 2009 at 1:06 pm
If our nation was still Christian in any sense of the word, I might be able to agree. But it’s not, and I don’t. Lots of folks make the same mistake on both sides of the viewpoint fence, speaking to a secular audience and forgetting that most of the secular audience does not have any clue of the truth claims of Christianity. But Wallis goes one step further and seems to equate national health care with healing only Christ can deliver, and that disturbs me.
August 21, 2009 at 2:26 pm
The title of the column, “On Faith” seems pretty unambiguous.
As does this (and several other) sentences, “The stories of Jesus healing people in the Gospels, of restoring people to physical wholeness and full participation in their community, always signaled the Kingdom of God.”
And if that isn’t clear enough he quotes from the Bible several times, mentions God several others. Not sure which magic words you think are missing.
Did you read the article, or are you just commenting on the excerpt here?
August 21, 2009 at 5:56 pm
Yep, read the whole article. A couple of the others on the topic, too.
First, I would argue that “On Faith” is a very ambiguous column, seeing that it also includes viewpoints from Muslims, Wiccans, etc. There’s no telling who’s talking unless it’s carefully explained.
It’s not the arguments that are at issue, really. Leith Anderson, president of the NAE, says pretty much the same biblical things as Wallis in his statement. But he never makes the errors that Wallis makes, either. Wallis’ claim that health care can heal the damaged soul of the nation is problematic because it assumes that the spiritual sickness of this country is primarily based around this issue. It’s not. It may be related, but Wallis’ problem is one of severe overstatement that places a shadow over the real Christ who is able to heal all the things that plague us. Wallis also claims that healing is central to “all our religious traditions.” This is simply not true, as the victims of religious ritual abuse and voodoo curses can attest.
These problems in Wallis’ statements don’t have much to do with the actual debate. While I think a lot of what is currently on the table in terms of health care isn’t going to work, I have no problem with a solid unified health care system if we can make it work so there is equally good treatment for all without destroying the national economy. Wallis’ fundamental points are sound. I think the solution lies in a private-based solution rather than a government mandated one, but that’s just me.
August 22, 2009 at 10:04 am
“because it assumes”
No, I’d say you assume. I don’t see that anywhere in the article. But then if we look hard enough to criticize something, we generally find it …
“This is simply not true, as the victims of religious ritual abuse and voodoo curses can attest.”
… especially when look hard enough. lol
August 31, 2009 at 8:22 pm
So does this mean that Wallis only wants health insurance for Christians? John 1 tells us that only those who know Jesus are “children of God”. Who knew he was so exclusive?