Thursday, February 13, 2014

A Statement of the Problem

by Ty

The problem, as I have seen over and over again in different parts of Africa, is that Westerners typically assume that global health means doing what we do in America, just doing it at a different latitude. They think this way about health care, education, ministry, you name it, but let me talk about health care, which I know a lot more about.  This is a really bad assumption.  To counter it, I would ask these questions:

Are we even happy with the American health care system?  Most doctors and a growing majority of patients are not.  As Walter Cronkite said twenty years ago: It is neither healthy, nor caring, nor a system.  Well then why in the world would we want to unthinkingly export it?  It's not all bad, but I ask this: What part of the American healthcare system SHOULD be exported?  And what part should be quarantined?

Let's apply that to the American church while we're at it: What part of the American Church SHOULD be exported?  And what part should be quarantined?

My working hypothesis is this: We American Christians (and in particular doctors, who are a product of 30 years of our education system) are not really Christian in our basic assumptions.  We are humanistic reductionists with a Christian skin on.  Recently, a biomedical sciences professor, seeking to talk to a practicing Christian doctor about ethical practice, asked me about how Christian doctors typically handle a certain subject.  You know what I had to say?  I said, "Typically?  They do the same thing that everyone else does!"  I was ashamed to have to say it, but it's the truth.

Therefore, over the past 5 years, I have decided to work with students and residents at the Worldview level.  This is of the utmost importance, especially for people in training.  At least, I know that it is what I am called to do.  Better then teaching someone how to treat malaria and TB, or how to do a C section without electricity, or epidemiology, or whatever other technical skill/knowledge you can think of, I think it is more important to give Christian doctors a cohesive biblical worldview and understanding of health.  That's why I work in this little place in TZ.  Students get to work in our little clinic and see all the diseases of poverty, and to try to help people with some very basic resources (so far our clinic doesn't have electricity or running water).  AND during that time, I strive to get them to work out a biblical understanding of health.


To put it in an unkempt syllogism: 

Western Christian doctors are usually humanistic reductionists with a Christian skin on.

African Christians are too often animistic pagans with a Christian skin on.  If you put Africans and Westerners in a seminar together, they see these deficiencies in each other more easily than they see them in themselves.

Neither of these worldviews has a biblical understanding of health.  Meanwhile the Bible teaches people how to flourish (my working definition of health) on every page.  Think of the psalms about a flourishing tree planted next to a stream of living water. Therefore, an appropriate response to the situation is to seek to understand, and then transfuse others with a Biblical understanding of health.

To do that, you need to deal with:  What is Health?  Who is Man?  Who is God?  What are soul and spirit?  What is spiritual health?  What is the gospel?  What has it done to you?  What does it do to cultures/communities?  So we spend hours a day, sitting under an Acacia tree with our Bibles and talking about this stuff.  I think this foundational big picture stuff is the most important thing, and given one month with a student, I think it is the best thing to address.  Real expertise in malaria, TB, and HIV can come later, when a cohesive Christian philosophical framework has been developed in the student, and they therefore have a place and method to house the technical information.  I build the bookshelves.  Others will fill it with detailed books on technical subjects.  We do, by the way, then take our Christian framework and try to apply it to real problems, like HIV, reproductive health, malnutrition, etc.

This absence of a cohesive Christian philosophical framework for health and the practice of medicine is just as big a problem in the US as it is here--maybe more so.  I believe to develop and teach a biblical understanding of health is the antidote to our broken system.  It is the real "health care reform" we so desperately need.

My next seminar with a group of 15 students is in July.  In Jan, Feb, and March, we accept students and residents on elective rotations.  Lots of people would rather go to a big mission hospital and do something technical for the month.  But that is not what I think is needed most. 

I don't advertise this way, because it would scare people, but once they are here, a couple of days into the month, I often tell students, "You are here for a good brainwashing.  After the education you've been through, your brain needs to be washed."  They usually like that joke.  And assent to a being washed with the water of the Word.

2 comments:

  1. Am praying for the washing water of the Word to begin a deep, fruitful, flourishing work in the hearts of these students, whether African or American, as they sit in community with you under the Acacia tree with their bibles--sharing, discussing and addressing the deeper questions pertaining to biblical health and how that can effectively be applied in real life situations among people who are suffering in body, mind, soul, and spirit from all walks of life and ethnicity. May the HS move and dance in surprising ways among you in TZ, as you share and experience life together in Christ's love.

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  2. Amen! Thank you for sharing Dr. Ty
    Praying for you and your family,
    Sandra Beasley Gal 2:20

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