Tuesday 30 September 2008

Unhealthy debt


I'm sure the majority of us have heard something about the Wall Street crash, with the closure (and near bankcruptcy) of several major US banks and insurance companies (eg: AIG, or AIA for those from SG). If you haven't, here's a 30 second summary: basically, US banks and companies were using debt to create more debt. Kind of like borrowing money from 1 person to buy something from another person - just on a global, massive financial scale. Now the bubble has burst, and all the bad debt has caught up with these institutions - and overnight, people with investments/savings with these institutions have seen their life savings disappear. People stop buying, US stops importing, and other countries stop exporting - and the economy grinds to a halt (I know the economists will tear me up for this oversimplification!).

But why bother with this? Those of us who haven't been taking risks with investments aren't affected, right? Even more so for those of us in the field of health care - we'll always have jobs, so as long as we don't overspend and make risky investments, we don't need to bother, right?

Wrong.

The WHO definition of health is as follows : "health is a state of complete physical, mental and social [and spiritual!] wellbeing, and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity" The corollary of that definition is that "anything that affects physical, mental and social [and spiritual] wellbeing affects health".

So what?


As health workers in a wide variety of capacities, we have to recognise that the issues we deal with are not entities existing in a vacuum that appear to the beat of some biostatistical value, but are often presentations of wide socio-economic issues.

In the case of the recent Wall Street meltdown, we have to stop ourselves from compartmentalising it into an "economic issue" - instead, we have to recognise that this will, in the great interconnectedness of society, eventually translate into health issues. The 1978 declaration of Alma Ata states: "Economic and social development, based on a New International Economic Order, is of basic importance to the fullest attainment of health for all".

The "illnesses" seen in the market place and society will more often than not translate into the "illnesses" seen in the consultation room, the pharmacy, the counselling rooms and the dental clinics. With a recession hitting the streets and people losing their savings and financial security, it would be not unexpected to see changes in the burden of diseases within society. We would be looking at remergence of infectious diseases as people begin moving to more cramped accomodations with poorer sanitation. There may be rising rates of depression, and possibly alcohol abuse and substance abuse (with relevant medical consequences) as a means of emotional anesthesia. Financial stressors could lead to relationship breakdown and domestic violence, with consequences for the long term health outcomes for members of those families. Eating a healthy and balanced diet may be replaced by settling for whatever was on special on the supermarket, more often than not something less than ideal, nutrition wise. A global recession is more than an "economic issue" - it is fairly and truly a health issue as well.

As health workers - doctor, nurse, dentist, pastor, phamacist, counsellor, physiotherapist, dietician, OT, etc - we have been tasked by God to engage with and contribute to the health of populations. It is only by looking beyond our textbooks and our own working space, to engage with the emerging challenges to the health of the people, that we can truly fulfill the task God has laid before us.

Friday 26 September 2008

Why we focus on Christ Crucified

A recent essay I'm doing concerns the centrality of Calvary in Christian Evagelicalism - how we often associate the 'saving work' of Christ with his death. It was very interesting to attempt to chart the historical development of our current emphasis on the death (and resurrection) of Christ.

This focus on the can be traced back to the patristic theology of the western Church, in particular that of Augustine. Augustine emphasized that the righteousness of Christ was required in response to the guilt of human sin. In his case, the salvation effected by Christ was primarily one of legal significance, in which the recipient of grace was freed from jurisdiction. This theme was picked up again by Anselm’s Cur Deus homo argument, in which he argued that human sin caused an offense to God's honor, and that this required a satisfication of God only made possible through Christ's death.

However, the modern Evangelical emphasis on the soteriological value of Christ death, was probably cemeted by the reformer John Calvin, as he further developed Anselm’s argument into the Penal Substitution theory. Here, Jesus at his death is seen to be taking the punishment for our sin upon himself, in a substitutive manner. Since then, it would appear that this idea has been central to understanding Christian salvation within Evangelicalism (some even saying that the Penal Substitution theory was the "lens" by which all models of salvation are understood!).

Thursday 18 September 2008

Tuesday 16 September 2008

The Old "New Faith"



What gets me isn't that someone is making these claims. After all, we've seen such claims since the days of Marcion (c. 110AD). Instead, its the fact that people are standing up, claiming to be Christians, and rejecting everything that defines a Christian. Kind of like someone calling themself an atheist and then proclaiming that God exists. (Plus it's a sad statement on the current state of the Uniting Church.)

Monday 15 September 2008

The Paradox of Modernity

‘A puzzling paradox confronts observers of modern society. We are witnesses to a dramatic expansion of market-based economies whose capacity for wealth generation is awesome in comparison to both the distant and the recent past. At the same time, there is a growing perception of substantial threats to the health and well-being of today's children and youth in the very societies that benefit most from this abundance.’ (Keating and Hertzman, 1999)

Fascinating - we have always assumed "richer = better (health indicator wise)". To some degree that seems to be true, but we are now seeing rich societies getting richer, while their "well-being indicators" (in areas such as mental, physical and social health) either stabilise or drop. It appears that the consumerisation, capitalisation, globalisation, post-modernisation, whatever-nisation of our society is taking its toll in ways we never expected.

That leaves a challenge for all of us involved in God's global mission - those of us ministering in these contexts have to develop a new model of health and well-being, with which we engage the modern (or post-modern) epidemics. Just as we cannot ignore the diseases of the developing world, we cannot ignore the diseases of the modern world.

Back to life

OK, after 1 year of a dead blog, I've decided to resurrect resuscitate it.

So much stuff in my head that I need somewhere to spew it all out!