Why Do They Do That? 4 – Health Care Reform
As we talk about caring for the poor, we run upon an increasingly serious problem: The US is the wealthiest nation on earth, yet millions of people don’t have healthcare. Those that do are seeing their costs skyrocket. Can’t we just create health coverage for everyone and tell companies how much they can charge?
Sure – if you want to ruin our healthcare system.
Insurance, Not “Healthcare”
First we need to clarify the terms of the debate. Every American has access to healthcare, even if they don’t have health insurance. We don’t have large numbers of people dying because they can’t get any help.
Everyone can get treatment at a public hospital. It’s not ideal for anyone – patient or caregiver – but they do get treated. Do they get every single test a person with expensive private insurance would get? Sometimes yes; sometimes no. In my experience, though, patients we get from the county hospital often have fewer restrictions than with some insurance companies, and in the end everyone gets the treatment they need whether they can pay or not.
If anyone gets the shaft, it’s the guy with not so great insurance who has restrictions on where he can go and who he can see and what they’ll pay for, but that’s caused by attempts to keep costs under control.
Sources of High Costs
No healthcare reform is possible without addressing healthcare costs. I can’t give a succinct explanation why costs are rising so quickly; this situation is as complex as it gets. I can, however, identify a few culprits that will shed some light on the problem.
Technology
First, healthcare technology has been undergoing incredible advances in the last decade or so. Treatments that were unfathomable 20 or 30 years ago are commonplace today.
New technologies are expensive to develop and to introduce into the clinic. And everyone wants them because they want to be able to give their patients the best care and because if they don’t offer patients the new technologies someone else will.
Shifted costs
Another contributor is the shifting of costs from those who can’t pay to those who can. We can’t do this for free, so healthcare providers try to charge so that they can make the money they need off those who can pay. Does that sound unfair? The underlying causes have to be dealt with.
Healthcare regulations
In any business there is a cost to comply with regulations; healthcare is no different. Many have to comply with ridiculous regulations; healthcare is no different.
The Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations is a non-governmental organization to whom the government has essentially ceded regulatory power; they make sure patient records are handled properly, staff are properly credentialed, and safety procedures are followed. They also force hospitals to spend millions every year making sure staff personnel files aren’t arranged in a “discriminatory” manner and ensuring all employees know the hospital’s latest mission statement. I wish I was exaggerating.
Medicare also has its own rules about how things must be done. In my specialty, we are often forced to do things in an inefficient manner in order to get paid properly.
And there’s still OSHA, FDA, NRC…. That’s not to say all regulations are unnecessary, but they are a burden that has to be acknowledged. Man-hours are spent and materials purchased to comply with rules, and that costs money.
Insurance regulations
The cost of health insurance is also spiraling out of control. And here a significant part of the problem is – wait for it – government regulation.
Each state requires insurance companies operating in that state to cover specific medical conditions and treatments. In one state a company may be required to cover massage therapy, fertility treatments, and liposuction. They cannot offer you a policy that doesn't provide those services, and they will pass that cost on to the customer.
An example of why this matters: Many younger people are uninsured because they don’t have families and don’t want to (or can’t) spend the money on insurance. If insurers could legally offer these people a bare bones policy covering only preventative and catastrophic care, the policy would be much more affordable and these people wouldn’t be a burden on the system when they have a car wreck or get cancer.
Lawsuits
Tort reform will be necesssary if we want to get healthcare costs under control.
One of the factors in the high cost of health insurance is the frequency with which doctors order every test under the sun. There are certainly doctors who do that for profit, but many do it out of fear.
One of the issues in the Terry Schiavo case was the $1 million her husband won in a lawsuit because her gynecologist didn’t detect the chemical imbalance that contributed to her condition. OB/Gyns don’t really check that, but you can bet her doctor will run a lot more tests from now on, and he will bill the insurance companies, and they will bill their customers.
Oh, and his liability insurance went up, and so he will need more money to pay for that. And so it goes.
All of these things and more contribute to the rising cost of our healthcare system.
Market Solutions vs Federal Fiat
If healthcare and insurance costs are racing out of control for a variety of complicated and interrelated reasons, how can we get this situation under control?
Conservatives prefer market-based solutions because we believe limited government is both Constitutional and prudent and the market will by nature try to control costs and please the customer. (Why doesn’t it please the customer now? It does; the customer is your employer, not you.)
Some market-based ideas that have been thrown out include making health insurance individual- instead of employer-based by changing the tax code, allowing individuals to purchase insurance across state lines (like employers can), and improving on health security accounts (HSAs) to encourage the customer to lower costs.
Employers purchase health insurance pre-tax; individuals cannot. Shifting the tax benefit to the individual would not harm those with employer-based insurance, and it would allow everyone else the same tax benefit. Changing from employer-based insurance makes the consumer aware of the cost of insurance thereby encouraging him to spend less and ask for less. This has the potential to encourage healthier lifestyles too.
Think about car insurance. People often avoid filing claims on small problems to avoid making their insurance rates go up. Also, people avoid purchasing products they don’t need to save money – for example, when my wife and I commuted together, our insurance didn’t cover rentals; we had a spare old car, so we didn’t need it. We saved money by identifying insurance we didn’t need. Make the consumer responsible for his own health insurance, and the same situation will occur.
Allowing people to buy insurance across state lines deals with the regulation problem mentioned above. It’s been suggested that all of the insurance companies will move to the state with the laxest regulations – the “Delaware” of health insurance. So? We’re talking about minimum coverage; if a market for more exists, it will be provided. Really, the notion is that the other states will start changing their laws to avoid losing these businesses. Since it costs 4 times more to buy insurance in NY than Connecticut, maybe NY would decide to back off their regulations to compete.
Once insurance is based on individuals who are more aware of the costs, people will also pay more attention to how much hospitals charge. Every test under the sun won’t be acceptable to people who don’t need it. Charging person A to pay for person B won’t be acceptable either. Hospitals will have to change how they do business; once the first one does it, the rest will have to follow or lose business.
If this all sounds pie-in-the-sky, remember that it’s been done before. Market forces were employed to our benefit in keeping costs in the new Medicare prescription drug program down. They were also used, if not in their purest sense, to develop drugs for B-list diseases in the Orphan Drug Act.
Government
The alternative to a market-based solution is a government-based solution. Many people think this is the way to go, but given the astounding successes of Social Security and Medicare (both of which will soon be broke), the FDA, the TSA, and pretty much every federal program except the Army, I’m leery.
Why ask the people who broke the system – who created the excess regulations, who give too much responsibility to the FDA, who basically invented HMOs – to fix it? Their track record is just not that good.
When people try government patches to the present system, they usually come up with something like what happened in Massachusetts. What has been proposed lately depends on price caps and required insurance; the former will force everyone to be charged the same rates as a 60-year-old, and the latter, experts tell us, will very likely result in the destruction of the private insurance market entirely, creating a single-payer system. And like every other government program, it will cost more than expected.
Single Payer Systems
So what if it turns into a single-payer system? Can’t we make it work? Doesn’t it work well enough elsewhere?
The first question we should ask about a government healthcare system is who would run it. Are we going to entrust it to the FDA – the people who force drug companies to spend a billion dollars and years of testing to bring us fine products like Fen-Phen? Or perhaps it’ll be run by the folks who run the VA – the institution that treats our veterans with the best technology 1993 had to offer. Given the roaring success of the nearly-broke Medicare and Medicaid – where people can hardly find doctors at all – I’m not sure we want government-run healthcare.
The fundamental problem with our system is the out of control prices, and single-payer systems do nothing to stop that because, as we’ve found with Medicare et al, when something is free, people use a lot of it. Costs skyrocket.
Well, the response to the rise in costs is typically to restrict how much can be charged. When money dries up, research and development is generally hit hard. Our expensive healthcare system is the best in the world because companies have an incentive to develop new drugs, procedures, and technologies. Take that away and we become, well, Europe.
You see, for all we hear about the greatness of European socialized medicine, when someone gets really sick, they come here. But what will everyone do with if our system becomes like theirs? Right now the US has a better cancer survival rate than other countries (see Lancet Oncol 2008; 9: 730–56), do we want to go down their road?
Canada’s system, though a favorite among American liberals, has had problems with rationing and long waits. They send patients here, even though in Canada private insurance is illegal. Currently the wait to get a hip replacement is much shorter for a dog than for a human. That’s a system to emulate! Similar stories have come out of Great Britain, Turkey, and Poland. They don’t work, and no one likes them except American liberals.
At their worst, single-payer systems encourage struggling governments to start to regulate the behavior of citizens. Many might say they don’t see a problem with the government telling people to quit smoking or to eat right, but these things will get out of control. Go rent “Demolition Man” again; remember “salt is bad for you, thus it is illegal.” Let’s not tempt fate.
Did I say that was the worst? Oregon has gone one better – their health system, trying to control costs, refused a woman curative treatment but offered to pay for euthanasia. Is this the road we want to go down?
Is There a Place for Government?
As I said before, most conservatives have gotten comfortable with the notion of a government safety net. It is not optimal; the safety net should come from the community or the church, but there will probably always be something like Medicare for people who are extremely poor or uninsurable due to their health. But we want to have as few people in that program as possible – for everyone’s sake.
Next Time
We’ve looked at issues affecting the poor in America; next time we’re going global.
-----
Recommended reading on the candidate's positions:
McCain Is the Real Health-Care Reformer
Obama and Health-Care Equity
McCain Is the Radical on Health Reform
The Obama Plan: More Regulation, Unsustainable Spending
False or Misleading in Every Particular
Monday, October 13, 2008
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
Conservatives and the Least of These
Why Do They Do That? 3 – Poverty
We know the Bible commands us to take care of the poor, “the least of these,” and our neighbor. Moreover, Christians want to take care of them. Shouldn’t we, then, support efforts to create federal social programs to provide money and other necessities to the less fortunate?
No. For a variety of reasons.
Before getting into those reasons, though, let me state again that the issue is not whether to help the poor but how. Liberals and conservatives alike have plans they believe are best for the needy; somebody’s wrong. I hope to convince you that it is the liberal approach that is in error.
What’s Wrong with Cutting Them a Check?
Previously I argued that the Bible’s model for helping the poor is one that encourages and enables self-reliance and one that is mostly dependent on individual givers. We can see that the Bible teaches this for good reasons.
The first reason is the good of the recipient. First, human nature dislikes receiving charity. As Nietzsche put it, “Great indebtedness does not make men grateful, but vengeful; and if a little charity is not forgotten, it turns into a gnawing worm.” And then there are those who get used to it; it can create a cycle of dependency – either a person who doesn’t think he can get by on his own or, worse yet, one who doesn’t see any need to. Also, I think we can reasonably expect a difference between a gift from the anonymous government and from your friends and neighbors – the latter will carry more gratitude and sense of responsibility to the giver than the former.
The second reason is the good of the giver. Those who don’t believe the government should take care of the poor (i.e., conservatives) give about 4 times as much to charity as those who disagree (i.e., liberals). The problem here for believers is that we are not just called to care for the poor but also for the souls of the giver – if the giver gives unconsciously, even unwillingly, because he “gave at the office,” he loses out on the spiritual benefits of charity (not to mention the eternal benefits). Charity by proxy is not charity.
Limited Government Yet Again
The next problem with just cutting them a government check (federal at least) is that darned Constitution. It simply doesn’t permit federal funds to be spent on charity. The venerable James Madison said he couldn’t “lay his finger on that article in the Federal Constitution which granted a right of Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents.” If you don’t like this, the Constitution needs to be changed, not ignored.
Poor Lottery Winners
Next, simple lack of money is not the only reason many people are poor. It’s been said that if we divided up all the money in the country evenly, in a few years there would again be rich and poor. Our experience with lottery winners seems to support that – one estimate is that a third of lottery winners later file bankruptcy. Simply handing poor people money does not solve their problems, and handing them money without addressing the other problems wastes the money and probably exacerbates the other problems.
Welfare Reformed
The final argument against simply cutting poor people a check is that is hasn’t worked. Trillions of dollars have been spent on Great Society programs, and the poverty rate remained relatively constant. Liberals often explain this as our not having spent enough money, but they have yet to tell us how much would be enough or what changes would make welfare programs work.
Well, what worked were the reforms of the 90s that both encouraged and required welfare recipients to work. While the programs haven’t been perfect, they have not, as Sen. Obama recently admitted to Rick Warren, turned millions out on the streets. Instead, the welfare rolls finally started to shrink. The cure for poverty is not money but jobs.
The Government’s Role
The formula for wealth can be described as money + connections + opportunity + luck. The only component government really should provide is opportunity.
We’ve already discussed at length the notion that the government can stimulate the economy and encourage job creation through tax policy. Low taxes are more likely to create an environment in which people who want jobs can find them. High taxes – whether they’re levied to support welfare policies or not – deter economic growth and make it harder to find jobs.
“We’ve tried this, and it didn’t work,” say certain segments of the media and certain politicians.
Wrong: “the lowest income quintile saw a roughly 25% increase in their living standards from 1983 to 2005” as opposed to “centralized, tax-funded programs… [that slow] down the economy and encourages dependence. This was the lesson of President Johnson's ‘War on Poverty.’ Poverty won.”
Regulating Regulation
Another tool government has in its kit is regulation. Regulation is understandably a hot topic in recent days, but suffice it to say most reasonable people understand that a certain amount of regulation is necessary. In many areas, though, the existing amount is more than necessary.
Consider the case of a woman who has no real skills except African hair braiding. She can start up a little business doing hair and make a little money that she can use to feed her family and maybe make enough to expand her business or get an education and expand her skill set. The only problem comes when she’s not allowed to open up her little braiding business because state law requires a license to braid hair. Regulation, though necessary at times, can be a protection racket – creating barriers for entry in a field to keep competition as low and salaries as high as possible.
Some years ago a group tried to set up new businesses in India, Hong Kong, and New York City; time to get the necessary permits was compared. In India, it took a few hours; in Hong Kong, it took about a day; in New York, it took weeks. Care to rank the economic growth in those areas?
We’re always going to be in search of the proper level of regulation, but the answer is going to be less, not more.
Minimum Wages
What about the minimum wage? This is another place where conservatives are often maligned. It is not that we oppose helping people. It’s that we 1) don’t think government should command wages and 2) we don’t think raising the minimum wage does enough good to outweigh the harm – such as increasing costs across society and making unskilled laborers too expensive to be attractive. In short, the minimum wage doesn’t help poor people.
A Safety Net
We all know, and generally agree with, the maxim that it’s better to teach a man to fish than to give him a fish. So why would we set up a charity system to hand out fish?
You say, “Yeah, but it can keep them from starving to death right now!” It certainly can, and few conservatives oppose the notion of a safety net, but the problem is having a governmental (especially federal) safety net. This is where the community and the church should pick up the slack.
We can feed the hungry, house the homeless, and clothe the naked. There may be times when giving people cash is a good idea, though usually not. But the community should do this, not the government. (No one thinks we will, or even should, dismantle the existing federal net, but it certainly doesn’t need to be expanded.)
There are other things the community can do as well. We can help un- and under-skilled workers get new training – be it through new centers or just new uses of things like community colleges. We can create low or no cost day cares for low-income families. We can create job banks and referral programs from which employers who want to reach out to the poor can draw. Some churches already do these things; we need to do it more.
We shouldn’t be afraid to help the hungry, and we shouldn’t be afraid to try anything that can help the poor find good jobs, but we should be very leery of asking government to pay for it.
Conclusion
We want to help the needy, but in our desire to help the poor we need to make sure we actually help the poor. Intentions aren’t enough; we have to think through the various proposals and support those that can really lift people out of poverty.
Liberal programs based on government transfer payments – welfare – fail that test.
Next time we’ll look at the other big issue pressing on the minds of both the poor and the compassionate: health care reform.
Recommended reading:
The Liberal Temptation
What Do Evangelicals Want? 1
What Do Evangelicals Want? 3
We know the Bible commands us to take care of the poor, “the least of these,” and our neighbor. Moreover, Christians want to take care of them. Shouldn’t we, then, support efforts to create federal social programs to provide money and other necessities to the less fortunate?
No. For a variety of reasons.
Before getting into those reasons, though, let me state again that the issue is not whether to help the poor but how. Liberals and conservatives alike have plans they believe are best for the needy; somebody’s wrong. I hope to convince you that it is the liberal approach that is in error.
What’s Wrong with Cutting Them a Check?
Previously I argued that the Bible’s model for helping the poor is one that encourages and enables self-reliance and one that is mostly dependent on individual givers. We can see that the Bible teaches this for good reasons.
The first reason is the good of the recipient. First, human nature dislikes receiving charity. As Nietzsche put it, “Great indebtedness does not make men grateful, but vengeful; and if a little charity is not forgotten, it turns into a gnawing worm.” And then there are those who get used to it; it can create a cycle of dependency – either a person who doesn’t think he can get by on his own or, worse yet, one who doesn’t see any need to. Also, I think we can reasonably expect a difference between a gift from the anonymous government and from your friends and neighbors – the latter will carry more gratitude and sense of responsibility to the giver than the former.
The second reason is the good of the giver. Those who don’t believe the government should take care of the poor (i.e., conservatives) give about 4 times as much to charity as those who disagree (i.e., liberals). The problem here for believers is that we are not just called to care for the poor but also for the souls of the giver – if the giver gives unconsciously, even unwillingly, because he “gave at the office,” he loses out on the spiritual benefits of charity (not to mention the eternal benefits). Charity by proxy is not charity.
Limited Government Yet Again
The next problem with just cutting them a government check (federal at least) is that darned Constitution. It simply doesn’t permit federal funds to be spent on charity. The venerable James Madison said he couldn’t “lay his finger on that article in the Federal Constitution which granted a right of Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents.” If you don’t like this, the Constitution needs to be changed, not ignored.
Poor Lottery Winners
Next, simple lack of money is not the only reason many people are poor. It’s been said that if we divided up all the money in the country evenly, in a few years there would again be rich and poor. Our experience with lottery winners seems to support that – one estimate is that a third of lottery winners later file bankruptcy. Simply handing poor people money does not solve their problems, and handing them money without addressing the other problems wastes the money and probably exacerbates the other problems.
Welfare Reformed
The final argument against simply cutting poor people a check is that is hasn’t worked. Trillions of dollars have been spent on Great Society programs, and the poverty rate remained relatively constant. Liberals often explain this as our not having spent enough money, but they have yet to tell us how much would be enough or what changes would make welfare programs work.
Well, what worked were the reforms of the 90s that both encouraged and required welfare recipients to work. While the programs haven’t been perfect, they have not, as Sen. Obama recently admitted to Rick Warren, turned millions out on the streets. Instead, the welfare rolls finally started to shrink. The cure for poverty is not money but jobs.
The Government’s Role
The formula for wealth can be described as money + connections + opportunity + luck. The only component government really should provide is opportunity.
We’ve already discussed at length the notion that the government can stimulate the economy and encourage job creation through tax policy. Low taxes are more likely to create an environment in which people who want jobs can find them. High taxes – whether they’re levied to support welfare policies or not – deter economic growth and make it harder to find jobs.
“We’ve tried this, and it didn’t work,” say certain segments of the media and certain politicians.
Wrong: “the lowest income quintile saw a roughly 25% increase in their living standards from 1983 to 2005” as opposed to “centralized, tax-funded programs… [that slow] down the economy and encourages dependence. This was the lesson of President Johnson's ‘War on Poverty.’ Poverty won.”
Regulating Regulation
Another tool government has in its kit is regulation. Regulation is understandably a hot topic in recent days, but suffice it to say most reasonable people understand that a certain amount of regulation is necessary. In many areas, though, the existing amount is more than necessary.
Consider the case of a woman who has no real skills except African hair braiding. She can start up a little business doing hair and make a little money that she can use to feed her family and maybe make enough to expand her business or get an education and expand her skill set. The only problem comes when she’s not allowed to open up her little braiding business because state law requires a license to braid hair. Regulation, though necessary at times, can be a protection racket – creating barriers for entry in a field to keep competition as low and salaries as high as possible.
Some years ago a group tried to set up new businesses in India, Hong Kong, and New York City; time to get the necessary permits was compared. In India, it took a few hours; in Hong Kong, it took about a day; in New York, it took weeks. Care to rank the economic growth in those areas?
We’re always going to be in search of the proper level of regulation, but the answer is going to be less, not more.
Minimum Wages
What about the minimum wage? This is another place where conservatives are often maligned. It is not that we oppose helping people. It’s that we 1) don’t think government should command wages and 2) we don’t think raising the minimum wage does enough good to outweigh the harm – such as increasing costs across society and making unskilled laborers too expensive to be attractive. In short, the minimum wage doesn’t help poor people.
A Safety Net
We all know, and generally agree with, the maxim that it’s better to teach a man to fish than to give him a fish. So why would we set up a charity system to hand out fish?
You say, “Yeah, but it can keep them from starving to death right now!” It certainly can, and few conservatives oppose the notion of a safety net, but the problem is having a governmental (especially federal) safety net. This is where the community and the church should pick up the slack.
We can feed the hungry, house the homeless, and clothe the naked. There may be times when giving people cash is a good idea, though usually not. But the community should do this, not the government. (No one thinks we will, or even should, dismantle the existing federal net, but it certainly doesn’t need to be expanded.)
There are other things the community can do as well. We can help un- and under-skilled workers get new training – be it through new centers or just new uses of things like community colleges. We can create low or no cost day cares for low-income families. We can create job banks and referral programs from which employers who want to reach out to the poor can draw. Some churches already do these things; we need to do it more.
We shouldn’t be afraid to help the hungry, and we shouldn’t be afraid to try anything that can help the poor find good jobs, but we should be very leery of asking government to pay for it.
Conclusion
We want to help the needy, but in our desire to help the poor we need to make sure we actually help the poor. Intentions aren’t enough; we have to think through the various proposals and support those that can really lift people out of poverty.
Liberal programs based on government transfer payments – welfare – fail that test.
Next time we’ll look at the other big issue pressing on the minds of both the poor and the compassionate: health care reform.
Recommended reading:
The Liberal Temptation
What Do Evangelicals Want? 1
What Do Evangelicals Want? 3
Friday, October 3, 2008
Priestly Slaves
Reflections on Leviticus
Lev 22 describes the correct handling of those sacrifices in which the priest gets a share. It has rules for who, how, and when it can be eaten.
Verses 10-11 strike me as interesting. No one outside of the priestly families can take part. The holiest man in Israel cannot eat this food. But the lowest slave can.
Those who have been bought with a price have a share in the priest’s things.
We have been bought with a price, and we now have a share in our great Priest’s things.
We once were slaves to sin, but now we are slaves to righteousness. And though we are rightfully called slaves – even if we are slaves by choice – God has also raised us up to be called sons and daughters.
Now we who were called "not my people" are not only His people but His family, "heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ."
Lev 22 describes the correct handling of those sacrifices in which the priest gets a share. It has rules for who, how, and when it can be eaten.
Verses 10-11 strike me as interesting. No one outside of the priestly families can take part. The holiest man in Israel cannot eat this food. But the lowest slave can.
Those who have been bought with a price have a share in the priest’s things.
We have been bought with a price, and we now have a share in our great Priest’s things.
We once were slaves to sin, but now we are slaves to righteousness. And though we are rightfully called slaves – even if we are slaves by choice – God has also raised us up to be called sons and daughters.
Now we who were called "not my people" are not only His people but His family, "heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ."
"Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God!
How unsearchable his judgments,
and his paths beyond tracing out!"
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Half a Blue Parakeet
A review of The Blue Parakeet by Scot McKnight (Zondervan, 2008):
This book has proven somewhat difficult to review for the simple reason that I know (in the web 2.0 sense) the author. Scot McKnight blogs at JesusCreed – one of the few blogs I read pretty much every day.
Given past interactions with Scot, I expected to have some issues with what he’s written here, but I never expected to react as I have.
Where’s the Rest of the Book?
Using a blue parakeet as a metaphor for those scriptures that don’t conform to our preconceived notions, McKnight challenges us to read the Bible in new ways. He says most modern Christians recognize the need to determine what part of the biblical text is actually meant to apply today, but they either do it with no real system to guide them and so produce excessive innovation (“reading to retrieve”) or with an excessive commitment to tradition and so are unable to recognize weaknesses in their theology (“reading through tradition”).
The Blue Parakeet calls us to approach the Bible using a hybrid method of reading the Bible with tradition – willing to innovate but interacting with our forefathers so as not to deviate from their wisdom unnecessarily (Chapter 2).
McKnight then asserts that the proper way to read the Bible is as a story, and I started wondering when he was going to defend this position.
Next the book lays out some bad ways to approach the Bible – as a rulebook, as a collection of promises, as an inkblot (i.e., so that it reflects the reader rather than the author), treating one author as the key to all the others, or as a puzzle to be solved – once solved, it serves as the key to interpreting all Bible passages (Ch 3).
It is without any apparent sense of irony that McKnight then tells us that the way to read the Bible is as a story – a particular story. He doesn’t cotton to the old version of the story as “creation, fall, and redemption;” he sees the story as “creating Eikons” (his shorthand for “person created in the image of God”), “cracked Eikons” (i.e., the fall), “covenant community,” “Christ, the Perfect Eikon, redeems,” and “consummation.” He offers themes for these plot points: “oneness, otherness, otherness expands, one in Christ, and perfectly one.” (Postmoderns love “community” and the word “other.”)
The book then asserts that every part of the Bible is a “wiki-story” (mini-story that retells at least some of the elements) of that overarching story. The only way to make sense of “Blue Parakeets,” we’re told, is by viewing them in the context of this Story (Ch 4-5).
By this point in the book I’ve realized that Scot’s not planning on defending any of these statements. He makes assertions, and he expects you to just believe him. He mentions other authors who say we should read the Bible as story, but he doesn’t even punt to them for the proof – he just mentions that they teach this too. Ditto on the makeup of the story. He says his plot is the “only plot the church has ever had” (p 68 in advance reader edition), and he mentions Irenaeus, but he doesn’t defend his interpretation of the plot, and my (admittedly quick) scan of Proof of the Apostolic Teaching didn’t come up with the plot Scot uses.
At this point I’m a bit grumpy with Scot McKnight. I felt like the most important part of the book was missing. You can’t just make undefended assertions when you’re asking people to embrace a completely different way of doing something. Why should I believe the Bible is a collection of mini-stories of an overarching story? Why should I believe his plot is the correct one? How exactly is Philippians or 1 Peter a “wiki-story” of this plot? These are question this book should have answered if it wanted to be taken seriously.
Please note that I’m not disagreeing with the method taught in this book. I do, in fact, think there’s an overarching narrative in the scriptures and that it’s important to keep it in view while studying them. My problem is not what he teaches; I’m saying he needs to defend this method so that readers can judge whether or not it’s a valid way to approach the scriptures.
Pot Meet Kettle
So my first problem with this book was the pattern of assertions where arguments were warranted. My second problem was that McKnight was apparently unaware that he was creating a system for approaching the Bible very much like one he’d already attacked.
The book tells us that the Bible is one Story from beginning to end that holds the key to understanding the smaller parts. We’re told, “Once you get the hang of reading the Bible this way, you can then map the story of each author of the Bible” (p68).
Does this not sound like the “puzzle” method of approaching the Bible? It appears to me that we’re taking the pieces and assembling them into something of our own devising and using that as a key for unlocking the scriptures.
McKnight tells us, “puzzling together the pieces we find in the Bible into a system is impossible" (p51), but he’s done just that.
The errors of the puzzle method, McKnight says, are it “presumes that we know what God was doing behind the Bible before the Bible was written” (p50) and “this approach nearly always ignores the parts of the puzzle that don’t fit” (p51). Both of these statements can be applied to his method.
The Balance of the Book
After laying out the “Story” by which we must learn to read the Bible, McKnight moves on to the manner in which we should read the Bible in Part 2. Again, the argumentation is a bit light, but he makes otherwise good (and less controversial) points.
He tells us to view the Bible as communication from and a means to relationship with God. Further, if we do not read to listen to, absorb, and do what God tells us in the scriptures we’ve wasted our time. Finally, he reminds us that tradition and the Spirit should guide implementing what we read.
In Part 3 he discusses the implementation in more detail. We all know we don’t do everything the Bible says; we all have some kind of system for determining what we think should be applied today. “As we read the Bible and locate each item in its place in the Story, as we listen to God speak to us in our world through God’s ancient Word, we discern – through God’s Spirit and in the context of our community of faith – a pattern of how to live in our world” (p 129, emphases in original).
Unfortunately that is where his discussion of “patterns of discernment” stops. It’s a very subjective approach. Postmoderns will no doubt say it’s very modern of me to think we need some objective procedures, but we’ve seen just how far following the “Spirit” (who so frequently sounds just like me) and our “community of faith” (be they Mormons, liberation theologians, or oneness Pentecostals) can take us off the reservation all too often.
McKnight then demonstrates his method by addressing the question of women in church leadership in Part 4. Here the weaknesses of his book truly shine forth. We get one part appeal to the “Story” – which he appears to have pulled out of thin air – one part argument from oft-ignored biblical passages and new archeological finds, and one part appeal to popular sentiment. His case is not convincing mostly because of his repeated appeal to his undefended “Story.” (BTW, I oscillate between complementarian and egalitarian.)
Summary
I spent a lot of time being angry with Scot McKnight* mostly because this book could have been so much more. I wish he had fleshed out his “Story” and “discernment” sections and then turned the section on women in ministry into a separate book. Instead he tried to do too much and achieved little.
As it stands, I cannot recommend the book. If you really want to know what McKnight says here, the unnumbered last chapter called “Now What?” contains a succinct summary of his method. Normally such chapters are good reviews but dispense with the author’s argument; since this book contains no argument, you lose nothing by reading only that chapter.
Rating:
Must Read
Recommended Reading
Worth Reading
[Not Recommended]
Avoid This Book
* Is this the danger of reviewing books from people you know? My feelings were rather like a teacher disappointed in a student I was sure could do better. Go figure.
This book has proven somewhat difficult to review for the simple reason that I know (in the web 2.0 sense) the author. Scot McKnight blogs at JesusCreed – one of the few blogs I read pretty much every day.
Given past interactions with Scot, I expected to have some issues with what he’s written here, but I never expected to react as I have.
Where’s the Rest of the Book?
Using a blue parakeet as a metaphor for those scriptures that don’t conform to our preconceived notions, McKnight challenges us to read the Bible in new ways. He says most modern Christians recognize the need to determine what part of the biblical text is actually meant to apply today, but they either do it with no real system to guide them and so produce excessive innovation (“reading to retrieve”) or with an excessive commitment to tradition and so are unable to recognize weaknesses in their theology (“reading through tradition”).
The Blue Parakeet calls us to approach the Bible using a hybrid method of reading the Bible with tradition – willing to innovate but interacting with our forefathers so as not to deviate from their wisdom unnecessarily (Chapter 2).
McKnight then asserts that the proper way to read the Bible is as a story, and I started wondering when he was going to defend this position.
Next the book lays out some bad ways to approach the Bible – as a rulebook, as a collection of promises, as an inkblot (i.e., so that it reflects the reader rather than the author), treating one author as the key to all the others, or as a puzzle to be solved – once solved, it serves as the key to interpreting all Bible passages (Ch 3).
It is without any apparent sense of irony that McKnight then tells us that the way to read the Bible is as a story – a particular story. He doesn’t cotton to the old version of the story as “creation, fall, and redemption;” he sees the story as “creating Eikons” (his shorthand for “person created in the image of God”), “cracked Eikons” (i.e., the fall), “covenant community,” “Christ, the Perfect Eikon, redeems,” and “consummation.” He offers themes for these plot points: “oneness, otherness, otherness expands, one in Christ, and perfectly one.” (Postmoderns love “community” and the word “other.”)
The book then asserts that every part of the Bible is a “wiki-story” (mini-story that retells at least some of the elements) of that overarching story. The only way to make sense of “Blue Parakeets,” we’re told, is by viewing them in the context of this Story (Ch 4-5).
By this point in the book I’ve realized that Scot’s not planning on defending any of these statements. He makes assertions, and he expects you to just believe him. He mentions other authors who say we should read the Bible as story, but he doesn’t even punt to them for the proof – he just mentions that they teach this too. Ditto on the makeup of the story. He says his plot is the “only plot the church has ever had” (p 68 in advance reader edition), and he mentions Irenaeus, but he doesn’t defend his interpretation of the plot, and my (admittedly quick) scan of Proof of the Apostolic Teaching didn’t come up with the plot Scot uses.
At this point I’m a bit grumpy with Scot McKnight. I felt like the most important part of the book was missing. You can’t just make undefended assertions when you’re asking people to embrace a completely different way of doing something. Why should I believe the Bible is a collection of mini-stories of an overarching story? Why should I believe his plot is the correct one? How exactly is Philippians or 1 Peter a “wiki-story” of this plot? These are question this book should have answered if it wanted to be taken seriously.
Please note that I’m not disagreeing with the method taught in this book. I do, in fact, think there’s an overarching narrative in the scriptures and that it’s important to keep it in view while studying them. My problem is not what he teaches; I’m saying he needs to defend this method so that readers can judge whether or not it’s a valid way to approach the scriptures.
Pot Meet Kettle
So my first problem with this book was the pattern of assertions where arguments were warranted. My second problem was that McKnight was apparently unaware that he was creating a system for approaching the Bible very much like one he’d already attacked.
The book tells us that the Bible is one Story from beginning to end that holds the key to understanding the smaller parts. We’re told, “Once you get the hang of reading the Bible this way, you can then map the story of each author of the Bible” (p68).
Does this not sound like the “puzzle” method of approaching the Bible? It appears to me that we’re taking the pieces and assembling them into something of our own devising and using that as a key for unlocking the scriptures.
McKnight tells us, “puzzling together the pieces we find in the Bible into a system is impossible" (p51), but he’s done just that.
The errors of the puzzle method, McKnight says, are it “presumes that we know what God was doing behind the Bible before the Bible was written” (p50) and “this approach nearly always ignores the parts of the puzzle that don’t fit” (p51). Both of these statements can be applied to his method.
The Balance of the Book
After laying out the “Story” by which we must learn to read the Bible, McKnight moves on to the manner in which we should read the Bible in Part 2. Again, the argumentation is a bit light, but he makes otherwise good (and less controversial) points.
He tells us to view the Bible as communication from and a means to relationship with God. Further, if we do not read to listen to, absorb, and do what God tells us in the scriptures we’ve wasted our time. Finally, he reminds us that tradition and the Spirit should guide implementing what we read.
In Part 3 he discusses the implementation in more detail. We all know we don’t do everything the Bible says; we all have some kind of system for determining what we think should be applied today. “As we read the Bible and locate each item in its place in the Story, as we listen to God speak to us in our world through God’s ancient Word, we discern – through God’s Spirit and in the context of our community of faith – a pattern of how to live in our world” (p 129, emphases in original).
Unfortunately that is where his discussion of “patterns of discernment” stops. It’s a very subjective approach. Postmoderns will no doubt say it’s very modern of me to think we need some objective procedures, but we’ve seen just how far following the “Spirit” (who so frequently sounds just like me) and our “community of faith” (be they Mormons, liberation theologians, or oneness Pentecostals) can take us off the reservation all too often.
McKnight then demonstrates his method by addressing the question of women in church leadership in Part 4. Here the weaknesses of his book truly shine forth. We get one part appeal to the “Story” – which he appears to have pulled out of thin air – one part argument from oft-ignored biblical passages and new archeological finds, and one part appeal to popular sentiment. His case is not convincing mostly because of his repeated appeal to his undefended “Story.” (BTW, I oscillate between complementarian and egalitarian.)
Summary
I spent a lot of time being angry with Scot McKnight* mostly because this book could have been so much more. I wish he had fleshed out his “Story” and “discernment” sections and then turned the section on women in ministry into a separate book. Instead he tried to do too much and achieved little.
As it stands, I cannot recommend the book. If you really want to know what McKnight says here, the unnumbered last chapter called “Now What?” contains a succinct summary of his method. Normally such chapters are good reviews but dispense with the author’s argument; since this book contains no argument, you lose nothing by reading only that chapter.
Rating:
Must Read
Recommended Reading
Worth Reading
[Not Recommended]
Avoid This Book
* Is this the danger of reviewing books from people you know? My feelings were rather like a teacher disappointed in a student I was sure could do better. Go figure.
Friday, September 19, 2008
Self-Hating Christians
By now you’ve probably heard about Ray Boltz’s announcement that’s he’s gay. One of his comments really struck me:
“I didn’t hate myself anymore, so in that sense I felt closer to God.”
At the risk of hyperbole, I want to say this to all Christians: If you don’t hate yourself, at least a little, you aren’t doing it right.
I’m not going to enter into the debate about whether people are “born” gay or not – that really is above my pay grade.
It’s also beside the point.
You see, I’m born an adulterer. I’m also born a liar, thief, idolater, and a rebel to the core.
A lot of bad things come very naturally to me. And to you too. We all have a natural tendency to sin, though the sins differ. In all of us there is supposed to be a struggle between the natural man and the Spirit.
It was this that caused the apostle to say, “What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?” (Rom 7:24)
All the greatest saints have followed that pattern. If you’re not growing in the sense of your own sinfulness, you’re not growing in Christ.
Our culture tells Christians, “You don’t have to hate yourself anymore!” Then they give in – to lust, to alcohol, to hatred or temper or pride or greed or any number of other things that are both completely natural and utterly sinful.
We are supposed to fight our sinful nature. We’re going to lose. We’re then supposed to get back up, ask for forgiveness, and move on.
And we live caught between the two truths that we are worthless and we are of inestimable value to God.
“I didn’t hate myself anymore, so in that sense I felt closer to God.”
At the risk of hyperbole, I want to say this to all Christians: If you don’t hate yourself, at least a little, you aren’t doing it right.
I’m not going to enter into the debate about whether people are “born” gay or not – that really is above my pay grade.
It’s also beside the point.
You see, I’m born an adulterer. I’m also born a liar, thief, idolater, and a rebel to the core.
A lot of bad things come very naturally to me. And to you too. We all have a natural tendency to sin, though the sins differ. In all of us there is supposed to be a struggle between the natural man and the Spirit.
It was this that caused the apostle to say, “What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?” (Rom 7:24)
All the greatest saints have followed that pattern. If you’re not growing in the sense of your own sinfulness, you’re not growing in Christ.
Our culture tells Christians, “You don’t have to hate yourself anymore!” Then they give in – to lust, to alcohol, to hatred or temper or pride or greed or any number of other things that are both completely natural and utterly sinful.
We are supposed to fight our sinful nature. We’re going to lose. We’re then supposed to get back up, ask for forgiveness, and move on.
And we live caught between the two truths that we are worthless and we are of inestimable value to God.
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