Anglican divine and British poet John Donne said it 500 years ago: “No man is an island, entire of itself. Each is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod of earth be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less. As if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thine own or of thine friend’s were. Each man’s death diminishes me, for I am involved in mankind. Therefore send not to know for whom the bell tolls. It tolls for thee.”
It is the most widely quoted sermon in the English language. Yet it is recent compared to Leviticus (19, 18): “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Jesus stunned the Pharisees when he made this injunction equal to that about loving God with heart, soul, mind and will. He said the whole Torah was based on these two commandments. One could not love God without loving neighbor. Quarreling Pharisees for centuries had been unable to say which was most important. Eventually he died for such radical rule-changing.
Loving God is easy. God does not cut us off in traffic or vote opposite us. It is the bothersome neighbor who gets in our face. Jesus chose to die on the cross after praying that God would remove the bitter chalice he foresaw because only by so dramatic a gesture would we learn what love of neighbor costs. His thought was that no one could doubt his love for all, even for those who crucified him. His thought was people would learn that his self-sacrificing death out of love is what takes away the sin of the world. First and second century Christians being led to their execution were mocked for their Christ-like charity.
But conversely, the God of love has arranged that refusal to love would be its own punishment. Another great English author has Hamlet musing about hoisting murderer Claudius on his own petard to avenge the death of his father. He meant to have Claudius blown up by his own bomb. When we refuse to love, it comes back to bite us.
How many sick people will regret it when, as promised, the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) is repealed and replaced, taking away the enrollment of some 20 million Americans who previously had no medical insurance? This was the government bringing care to so many uninsured poor by having the better off helping to pay. What they pay is peanuts for what it brings less fortunate neighbors, which makes it selfish to begrudge the nickel and dime expense of social concern. Yet by every standard we have become so individualistic that we have far less concern for others than did our parents. And we call ourselves a Christian nation.
The basis of the insurance industry is the gathering of many people paying insurance bills governed by watchdog agencies so that if someone has a claim, there is money to pay the bill. One always hopes never to file a claim. But if calamity strikes, one is not bankrupted. One can sue if one feels the award is insufficient. The system works for bipartisan participants. Other developed nations have long had government medical coverage, making us look third-world by our so recent enacting of national medical insurance, with all the weeping and wailing of those who do not realize that this country is one of the least taxed of developed nations, even though unlike all other nations we spend a breath-taking two thirds of discretionary budget on defense, the true cause of high taxes, nearly 2 billion dollars a day.
Like Sisyphus I have been pushing that rock up the hill for nearly 40 years, to little avail. People who want to lessen taxes look in the wrong place, ignoring news stories like the recent one out of the Pentagon saying that $125 billion could be saved by mere attrition with little or no damage done to national security. H.L. Mencken wrote nearly a century ago that no one ever went broke underestimating the American electorate.
Do we think it macho to imagine we are islands with little relation to each other? Do we not shoot ourselves in the foot shutting down a successful medical insurance plan with nothing better?
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