Prioritized Fear

So we have free health care now. Or universal health-care. Wait a minute, we have neither, or at least not until 2014 or something like that. But we are going to go ahead and start paying for it now, you know, to get a head start on everything. After all, it is supposed to actually lower the budgetary deficit in which our government finds itself. Don’t ask me how providing all of the good folks with free medical care is going to lower the amount of money the government literally spends or owes, we just need to trust them on this. Maybe the doctors and hospitals are going to provide those services at a much lower rate, or for free even. Government control of the Post Office, Amtrak, Medicare, and Education has worked out so well for us; why not allow them to provide our health care services while they’re at it?

It gets confusing. I think I’ll just go watch Entertainment Tonight or American Idol and not think about it. It hurts my head.

I actually stopped keeping up with the proceedings last October, because I could see the writing on the wall by that point. The bill was going to pass whether the majority of citizens wanted it or not. And despite the tea-parties and the town-hall meetings, the population was almost split fifty-fifty on whether it was a good thing or not. The Rasmussen and Gallup polls bore this out, and still do today. I’m against it as are most of the people in whose circles I run; but there are equal amounts of others and their assorted circles who think it will be perfect for our country and just what the doctor ordered, no pun intended.

For some reason I get this picture in my head of what health-care was like during the aftermath of Katrina in my small town a few years ago. (Warning: Katrina story!) My daughter contracted poison oak about the same time that I cut my hand in a chain-saw accident. Of course with no electricity, a visit to the doctor was out of the question. So we went to the Fire Station in McNeill and waited in line to see a doctor from Missouri placed there by the government. He was nice enough, and he took good care of my daughter and stitched me up right proper. But there was something unsettling about the whole experience: it seemed a little archaic to me. The waiting in line outside in the heat and the primitive medical services all gave me a sense at the time that something was dreadfully wrong with the picture. (Ayuh, bite on this-here leather while I stitch up them-there wounds. I’ll wash it out with whiskey before I close it up.)(I’m exaggerating)

Government-provided health care. Ominous, I tell you.

It’s silly when you think about it; therefore it is best not to get too worked up over all of the political chicanery that pervades the halls of the beltway these days. Taxes will go up, sure. But maybe it will be per usual, where they go up gradually and you don’t recognize what they are doing to you until a few years later. At that point you can look back in nostalgia at what you used to pay, all the while knowing that you’ve arranged your budget over time to live without that extra money anyway. It keeps us docile when we look at it in that manner. I think it’s what they want us to do.

Meanwhile we will all get free health care. What? I won’t get it? Because I make too much money and I am already covered under a medical plan? Where’s the incentive for me in all of this? Oh, that’s right, there is always Federal Prison if I don’t oblige to surrender my tax dollars to yet another entitlement plan from the Feddle Gub’munt.

As I wrote this I was thinking of verses along the lines of ‘that if any would not work, neither should he eat’ or how Jesus reminded us that the poor would always be with us. But I’m beginning to believe there are things going on here that are much deeper than rich vs. poor or those that work being pitted against those who choose not to. Instead I’m reminded of what Jesus said in Luke: “And I say unto you my friends, Be not afraid of them that kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do. But I will forewarn you whom ye shall fear: Fear him, which after he hath killed hath power to cast into hell; yea, I say unto you, Fear him.”

There are a lot of things going on out there in the world today. The government and society in general have apparently flipped over into something akin to an old black and white Twilight Zone episode. The times we live in are bad and can be down-right scary if you ask me. But those fears pale in comparison to what we should be the most fearful about as it draws ever closer to us. It could be that His day is closer than we can possibly comprehend.