Genesis 47: 13-30, 1 Corinthians 7:17-24, Romans 12:14-21
There is one argument that stands out to me among the pro-lockdown arguments that has truth to it. I don’t know to what degree or what was hidden because I am not an expert in these matters. This is the argument from the limits of our healthcare system; this argument had two iterations, lack of ICU beds and lack of staff. Of course, the lack of ICU beds has a lot less weight because it is something that a first-world country should be able to accommodate, especially with the amount of money that flowed from all levels of government into this problem. However, the lack of staff is a real problem, and considering that these first-line workers were likely to contract the virus themselves, the problem was only made worse. And it’s only made worse recently by vaccine mandates.
(I should add there is another problem—something I’m not planning on dealing with, but something that needs attention—the amount of regulation in our system due to legislation and unions. I do not have enough awareness of our system to give thoughtful commentary beyond the fact that this does affect our system)
Considering the wait lines have always been the first complaint about the Canadian Healthcare system, the lack of staff should be no surprise to the thinking person. Covid-19 should have been a catalyst for much needed reform rather than an opportunity to subjugate the populace to experts’ prudential concerns.
Our Media’s use of fear over breaking our system, in order to push the public into our brave new medical order, confirms old concerns about our system; Universal Healthcare is a mechanism of enslaving the Canadian public. Maybe not consciously, but considering the shape of reality that is its true end. I think here of men such as Ernest T. Manning who warned the Canadian Public about Tommy Douglas’ socialistic framework for “free” healthcare.
What is slavery? It is to limit a man or woman so that they are not able to fulfill the fullness of their calling as man or woman according to their station in society. We were not allowed to assess our own risk with regards to the Coronavirus because our health is owned by these representatives of the Canadian Public and they must preserve the integrity of universal healthcare. This is a sign of things to come.
I want to do two things here. I want to demonstrate the enslaving nature of what is going on. And further, a discussion on what the good Christian response might be.
What does enslavement look like? We often think in terms of war. And this in fact was a very common way to become a slave. One nation might finally win over another nation, and enslave its people or a portion of its people. In our own history this was a common source of slavery; internal conflict between African tribes was exploited by slavers, who sold their slaves to the new world. Similar to slavery by war is simply man-stealing in order to sell an individual into slavery. Joseph’s brothers claimed ownership over Joseph’s body and sold him into slavery.
It is the other form of enslavement that relate to our topic today. It is that of indebtedness. This was actually quite a common form of slavery in the past. What we know today as “indentured servants,” was really a form of temporary slavery, putting somebody to work for an individual until they could become free.
So behind debt, at least ordinarily, there is was always the possibility of slavery. We can be thankful for those parts of our system that keep debt from being the road to slavery it often was in the history of the world.
Debt is not necessarily evil, but it must be managed. We can think of the term loan shark or the fast cash places that have popped up all over the place with questionable business ethics. Lending out money to someone should help that person or be mutually advantageous. It should not be at the expense of the one who is borrowing.
It’s interesting that the Hebrew word for deceive and the Hebrew word for lending with usurious rates are connected to one another. The loan shark is called a loan shark because he is using his power in order to hurt, extract from, even enslave the one he is loaning to. In a similar way, Satan by deceiving the woman, also enslaved her, with her husband to sin. This is why the gospel is described as a clearing away of a debt (the debt in this case is to God (Satan indebted us to God)) and a freedom from slavery, especially slavery to sin.
This is not just a spiritual thing. Rather in this case the Spiritual affects the physical. God’s spiritual generosity ought to work itself out in man’s physical generosity. God wants the spiritual freedom he gives us to work itself out in physical freedom. Within his divine plan it is not always so, but this is the sense of the scriptures. He warns about those who take away spiritual freedom in a book like Galatians, but that spiritual freedom results in treating slaves as brothers. In that spiritual freedom, we are willing to free the slave. In 1 Corinthians he warns, “you were bought with a price; do not become bondservants of men.”
In our current situation it is the universality of the healthcare system that is enslaving. I have a problem with a state-funded healthcare system in general, but I realise that state-funded healthcare system does not take away our freedom in the same way. Their natural end may be the bloated corruption we see in the Medicare-insurance-pharmaceutical company racket in the USA.
I purposefully focus on the Universality of our system because that is the place where the system becomes self-re-enforcing rather than allowing for voices of reform. In the States there are various voices on the margins that push against the dominant system. They do this by creating different payment systems that circumnavigate the insurance companies and the medical bureaucracy. But that is not possible in Canada, in part because it is illegal.
In the name of fairness and equality, the Canadian people bought into the universal healthcare system, but in doing so they created a system in which their health was the immediate concern of those who also happened to have exclusive ownership of the sword as well. They lost choice; they lost viable possibilities for alternatives. Because it was a public system, the government could argue that the public had a responsibility to be healthy so that their neighbors would not have to pay for them.
And that is basically what the arguments I referenced at the beginning boil down to. We are indebted to our healthcare system. Whether we like it or not, we have to pay into it, and unlike the public school system, we have to use it. If you want health, particularly healing from something like a broken limb, or some other sickness where you need drug treatment, you will indebt yourself to this system. In the name of fairness and equality, we all need to do our share in supporting this system.
The fact that there is no free market system on the side adds to the danger of the situation. There is no price discovery for medical goods. Whereas in the states, those who are able to sideline the insurance racket down there are able to get reasonable prices, here in Canada there is no possibility of knowing the true costs of the various procedures our healthcare system might provide. That means I have no real idea what I “owe” to the healthcare system and thus it is easy for them to claim that they “own” my health choices.
Now of course this is not how our universal healthcare was sold. It was sold in the name of fairness and equality. Unlike the Egyptians of Joseph’s day, we did not actually contractually sell ourselves into slavery, but we were sold on a different contract, that we would get free healthcare if we all pitched in monetarily. Canadians were tricked, though of course, they should have known better. If somebody, like Ernest Manning, former Premier of Alberta, and one of the strongest voices against Universal Healthcare, could see what is happening, he would probably say “I told you so.”
Peter Leithart relates something similar going on in the States in his recent blogpost “from sword to syringe.” The civil magistrate did have a control over some aspect of the political body. It had the authority to control the bodies of those who transgressed over person and property. He notes that that control has moved to the syringe. Rather than bearing the sword of vengeance, the civil magistrate now bears the syringe of health. If true in the States, all the more so in Canada.
As a side note, there are various ways to use the mask as a symbol of protest, I think a fitting one would be the words “property of Manitoba Health” stitched into the mask, because it reveals what our governing authorities our truly saying by mandating masks, and of course, now vaccines, in private businesses, privately owned churches, and not least our ownership of our own bodies.
I should also add that I am not one to say that the civil magistrate has no responsibility for public health, but I believe it is more about collating and distributing information and facilitating the work of health workers; coercive power is off the table.
But God likes freedom; freedom that is used for good, freedom unto maturity. I quote again from 1 Corinthians 7, “you were bought with a price; do not become bondservants of men.” Even as Egypt was selling herself into slavery, making the name “land of slavery” a fitting name for her, God was preserving his people in the land of Goshen. By God’s exaltation of Joseph, his people are preserved, even preserved from the slavery of Egypt. Of course, later the Egyptians choose to enslave the Israelites, but we are not told that story in the scriptures.
God’s ideal for the Christian is described in Romans 12, “owe no-one anything except to love one another.” Similar themes come up in 1 Corinthians 1-4 where God warns the Corinthians about Lording it over one another, reminding them, not that ultimately they are to be slaves to one another, but that “everything is yours is Christ.” So even though the slave must recognize the reality of the situation he is in, he does this as someone to whom everything belongs in Christ. The slave may wear the garb of slavery, but in reality he is a king at God’s side. And the Master who recognizes that does well.
Again in Galatians 2, people come to bring the people into a spiritual slavery, a spiritual slavery that is marked by a very real physical mark: circumcision. While Paul is happy to recognize the dignity of those who wish to be circumcised, he hates the desire to use circumcision to subject people to the ceremonies that have been abolished in Christ Jesus.
Though God likes freedom, I do think that we need to accept that we have been sold a raw bill of goods about the Canadian Healthcare system. We are, at least in part, owned by the Healthcare system. And we need to come to God in repentance and hope that he might free us from this evil. At the same time we must continue to do good. In as much as our situation is like the slave than we must follow the words of 1 Peter 2, when he calls slaves to submit to unjust masters as well as just ones.
If we do imagine that somehow the system has fully subjugated us, we can imagine that a slave might sneak out of his property against the wishes of his master to go and worship God, then come back and be discovered only to be beaten. I would hold that he is then being beaten for something good. And thus is justified. The same would hold for Christians who went to church during this time.
However, while I use the image of slavery to describe our situation in Canada, I do not believe that we have been completely enslaved. We still have a good way to go. Contractually, we are not yet in the place that the Ancient Egyptians were in the story we read from Genesis. Rather the position we are in is an enslaving one. We are on the road to serfdom. It is incredible how far they have gone in the shutdowns, the masks, but at least it was sold under the idea of emergency.
This provides us, as Christians, with the opportunity for resistance. We ought not to allow ourselves become slaves; we are bought by Jesus. I particularly want to point to finding those possibilities for reform in our healthcare system. Don’t take this to mean that this should be the task of the church, rather I would encourage individual Christians to take leadership in this area. If you know lawmakers or lobbyists, or leaders in the sphere of healthcare encourage them toward reform.
But I’m not only thinking in terms of politicians and lobbying. These are important, we could use a cutting of bureaucracies, regulations, and unions, allowing for greater flexibility, especially for something like staffing in the next public health crisis.
Perhaps too, Christians should be willing to take up the mantle of civil disobedience in this matter, finding ways to provide free-market healthcare at the margins. I believe this is justified by Paul’s words in Romans 13, “owe no-one anything but to love one another.” This could be done for profit, but if we wish to gain public support it would probably be wise to begin with a private charity model.
I hope that this pandemic is a catalyst toward more freedom in our healthcare options; freedom from our universal system, which becomes less and less reliable. Realistically, however, there are groups who are already arguing for more intervention. For example in Ontario, people are pushing for the government to take more control over senior homes. Of course, these are already basically government entities. Let’s do our best to hold back these forces. I hope that we can use these realities to carve out a space for Christian freedom. In the meantime, continue to “live as people who are free.” It is only as when we are free in our hearts from sin, from anger, from greed, that we can give people political freedom.
Once again I don’t know exactly how to apply these truths to the road God has set before us. But I know that God does not wish a passive response to our healthcare system’s continual subjugation of all areas of life. Romans 12:21 does give us a template for how we can begin to do this “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”