The main comment I was responding to was this one: “Frustratingly late diagnosis, rapidly worsening symptoms, and disappointingly ineffective drugs had all combined over the past 12 months to produce a sense of helplessness and hopelessness.” Now David suggests this young man has help and hope because medical researchers are able to use a new stem-cell treatment to reboot his neurological system. Therefore, we should pray for their success. A Christian’s help and hope does not depend on his or her ability to manage a disease, find a cure, or prolong life. Our help and hope is found exclusively in the Lord.

Jesus is also our means for physical healing, but he will not heal us until he returns. In the meantime, we focus on our relationship to him by seeking his help to deny ourselves, love God, and love our neighbors as we look forward in hope to being healed at Jesus’ second coming. This is the lens through which Christians should be looking. Like Jesus we need to pursue God’s will even to death; give our lives to show compassion to those suffering and who are dead in sin; and look forward together as one Body in hope praying for the Lord Jesus to come with healing.

Until Jesus returns we manage symptoms until the day we die. God commands us to exercise dominion over the world, but he also instructs us to show compassion and to use our resources wisely. Funding invested in research to develop a new product for a small pool of people when millions are without basic medical care puts the cart before the horse, especially for Christians. Along with biblical compassion via basic medical care, Christians are able to communicate the Gospel to spiritually dead people, who are truly helpless and hopeless.

I agree that we have a tendency toward medical idolatry — toward making gods of both the practitioners and the health we look to them to maintain or restore. And some of them are a little too comfortable with their place in the pantheon we’ve created. But doesn’t this post propose the antidote? By rooting our attitude toward medicine in prayer, we focus our worship and our trust on the Great Physician. That will place our pursuit of health and our honor of other healers in proper perspective.

Second, it’s not necessary to pit research against basic care. It’s not a zero-sum game. our generous God can give us enough for both, starting with His gifting of people with different areas of expertise and interest. Both research and patient care are honorable professions that can be pursued in submission to Him. Again, the proposal to root our approach to all of it in prayer is our best bet that the wise and effective and investments will be made in both areas. Seeking first His righteousness is our only hope of carrying out research with God-honoring ethics.

And research that seeks to extend temporal life need not divert hope from everlasting life if any more than lunch necessarily diverts our desire for the bread of life. We simply need to remember to look beyond the gifts to the Giver. We can deny Him by making idols out of any of His gifts, but we can also deny Him by refusing to receive them or refusing to seek them.

I am conflicted about the article, let me explain why.

First, I think about king Asa who did not seek help from the Lord but from physicians (2 Chr. 16:12). I am not suggesting this is the case here, but there is a real danger between using medical science and idolizing modern medicine. The shift is very subtle. I talk about this at great length in Compassionate Jesus. In my experience, Christians focus more on prolonging their lives to live on in the here and now than doing the will of God which may call them to die. Most assume it is always God’s will to prolong life, but this is not always the case. Richard Baxter calls this mentality “treason against heaven.”

Second, when I reflect on the number of people in America and around the world without basic medical care I think our money could be put to better use for the kingdom. I am certainly not against ethical research but we are putting the cart before the horse as Christians if we seek cures when we have the ability to show compassion to those in need. Basic medical care to treat infections, bandage wounds, and provide bedside nursing care is compassionate care and it cost money but not as much as one treatment that may potentially work for one individual. Personally, I find it disturbing that churches will raise money for latest and greatest treatment but will allow Medicaid to pay for an elderly member’s extended stay at a nursing home–something does not compute. In the parable of the Good Samaritan, Jesus expects compassionate care first.

A note on research. I worked as a medical researcher in cardiology and seriously question some of the ethics today from a biblical standpoint. Although these studies are approved by the FDA they are still rooted in ethics derived from an evolutionary worldview. Thus, since humans are at the top of the chain, cruel studies for our survival at the expense of our animal kin are justifiable. I will not get into details of some of these studies, but it sickens me today to think about them. Also, there were financial incentives connected with some of the trials for humans. Not only did I get paid for infusing potentially lethal drugs into people, but to the human participants (who saw dollar signs not potential death) were given financial incentives as well (a few of the patient’s died in these studies). The most tragic studies were those caste as the last dig effort and hope to prolong life. These studies divert hope from everlasting life in Christ and challenge his program for health and wellness that will not arrive until he returns.

“For none of us lives to himself, and none of us dies to himself. For if we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord. So then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s. For to this end Christ died and lived again, that he might be Lord both of the dead and of the living” (Rom 14:7-9, ESV).

Chris