Before I get to the point, here's a story I hope will bring you some measure of mirth.
As I was preparing for the composition of this post, I was on a mission to Jesus juke myself. Jesus juking can be one of the most infuriating things to happen to a person when it comes from another. When you lament, "I can't find my keys!," and a well-meaning friend encouragingly (or so they think) responds, "You only need the keys to the Kingdom!," how should you respond? Telling them how wrong they are won't work, because then it will be obvious that you indeed do not have the keys to the Kingdom. So you bite your tongue, facepalm if you're alone, then try to move on with your life. But I think the chances of a Jesus juke being supremely funny are raised when one does it to oneself. Unless you have the same sense of humor as Eeyore, a jab at yourself can automatically be understood as a joke, whereas the same comment to someone else might not be as quickly understood. I do admit to being biased in this area, as I have a self-deprecating sense of humor, and nothing is more self-deprecating than poking at the holes in your own spirituality.
After considering my thesis idea, a phrase popped into my head which I knew came from Scripture, but whose context I did not know as intimately. The way I was remembering it was casting a shadow of condemnation over what I was preparing to write. Nevertheless, I looked it up, preparing to compose an introduction like this: "The Bible says this....but....here's what I have to say," only more imaginatively, and hopefully humorously, of course.
But, once I found the context of the phrase on my brain, it didn't mean what I thought it meant in relation to what I wanted to write. At all. It could actually be taken to mean exactly the opposite of what I was assuming. Jesus juke foiled.
That's probably a good thing.
Moving on.
If you get to know me well at all, you will soon find that I don't like politics. Vehemently. The only reason even acquaintances might not know this about me is that I try to not regularly call attention to negativity. But if I let my passions reign unchecked, it would be public knowledge. Strangers who pass me in public would know. Something else I dislike almost as much as politics is participating in discussion of said subject. Aside from the obvious reason of disliking the subject itself, the reason I don't like talking about politics is that whenever people ask me questions, I feel that to answer them with my honest opinions, I'm always dodging the subject. This is only a problem because I still care too much about the perceived quality of conversations with me, and I've gathered that people who dodge the subject are generally found to be annoying. My conversation skills really do not have a lot going for them, so every little improvement I can make is a good thing.
If I don't want to dodge the subject, then, why don't I stop doing it? That would make sense, Emily. Just quit complaining about your socially divergent habits, and save the Internet from yet another page of dribble nobody wants to read. I don't stop doing it because I can't. I am a radical idealist at my core, and I don't know how to live any other way. Idealism is not practical in almost every circumstance, certainly in politics. This is why I'm not a politician, and why I'm grateful for all the people out there who are up for the challenge. As often as I feel like situations may not have been handled as well as they could have, I throw no stones as I know my own leadership would lead nowhere fast. Leave me to the underground. That's where I thrive.
The latest hot-button topic that I will inevitably circumvent if you attempt to seek out my opinion is the Affordable Care Act and the state of the healthcare system in my country. Ask me if my feelings on the new law are positive or negative, and I won't give a straight answer either way. What I will say is this:
I.Don't.Like.Insurance.
I don't. At all. On the surface, it seems like a good idea. I understand why the idea of insurance was cultivated and then instituted as a standard practice in paying for unforeseen incidences. Who plans to have a heart attack? Who plans for their house to burn down? Suicidal persons and arsonists. That describes neither me, you (I'm assuming), nor an overwhelming number of persons in the world, so it makes sense that most of us aren't going to have large sums of money on hand to pay for all the trouble we run into in our lives. I get it.
What I don't think the first visionaries in insurance expected, however, is this: buying insurance can quickly move from being a smart life decision to preying on a person's fear. Societal wisdom has said, "This is the way you need to handle all the mishaps and tragedies you will face in your lifetime, otherwise you're sunk," then as soon as obtaining insurance becomes a struggle, persons will often become overwhelmed with the stress of working enough to cover all of our modern-day insurance expenses, or they live in worry and panic every day that they live without being insured, afraid to truly live lest something happen to them. Either way, there is no release from the burden. The advance weight of things over which we have no control was never meant to be our responsibility.
Also, in some sections of my culture, I have seen a cavalier attitude develop as the result of insurance being the norm that is unsettling to my conservative core (And please understand, I mean this word in its true sense, not in the political tint it has come to represent. Efficiency, economy, conservation: the longer I live the more I realize these are things that motivate the way I live my life in almost every way, even in the expression of my personality. Nobody is better at being expressively conservative than me. That's only a slightly hyperbolic statement.) Since insurance companies have overwhelming become the ones who directly pay for things, it can be easy to dissociate from who the responsible parties really are: you and me. Forgetting this is only a problem when unnecessary expenses aren't given a second thought, which I think would be less likely to happen if people paid for everything directly from their own reserves. For example, I haven't met anyone who would disagree that medical tests are over-priced, but I don't know how many people have given thought to whether all of them are beneficial. Doctors, who are supposed to know more about how our bodies work then we do, prescribe a test, and we think "Well, the insurance is going to cover it, so might as well." But maybe, if we took time to think about it, and do more research, we'd get closer to finding an answer or solution down a different, better avenue. I don't, nor will I ever, suggest a blanket boycott on medical tests, but in my own experience, I have been through countless medical tests that have never provided me with any useful information, and even at the time I felt like they were being done "just because we can." I've even had doctors say equivalent phrases to me when suggesting these tests. "Just because we can" is never a good reason to do anything. Except sing. So all that money was spent to find out nothing. If your life is anything like mine, I suspect you've had a similar experience. Out of sight does equal out of mind in this case, and when it comes being smart about how you live your life, this is not a good thing,
Lastly, insurance shrinks even more the space where generosity and goodwill live. If all of a person's needs are met, then there's no reason for anyone to be compelled to help them. Having lived a life that's placed me in a lot of helpless positions, I've seen what good is done for the world when generosity and kindness are allowed to flourish.We lose something important when they aren't. I know what it's like to not even have a place to live or food to eat, and as terrible as that may sound, the beauty that has come from those situations is irreplaceable. More people need to see that. Feel it. Taste it. Breathe it. I'm not quite sadistic enough to suggest that more people need to suffer, but just almost.
What then is the solution for our country? Ideally, it's that the church would love so much like Jesus that the debate that's been going on would quickly reach its end. Until that happens, by God's grace, I'll be doing what I can to make that a reality in my own corner of the world, and coming to terms with the fact that I am required to buy something I don't even want. Radicals and idealists always chafe under governmental restrictions, so my plight is nothing new.
Since I've let vent my emotions over one contested subject, I'm trying hard to convince myself that now is not the time let fly on marriage. Dissent is like a flood, which is why I leave little room for it; once released, it's hard to stop....
As I was preparing for the composition of this post, I was on a mission to Jesus juke myself. Jesus juking can be one of the most infuriating things to happen to a person when it comes from another. When you lament, "I can't find my keys!," and a well-meaning friend encouragingly (or so they think) responds, "You only need the keys to the Kingdom!," how should you respond? Telling them how wrong they are won't work, because then it will be obvious that you indeed do not have the keys to the Kingdom. So you bite your tongue, facepalm if you're alone, then try to move on with your life. But I think the chances of a Jesus juke being supremely funny are raised when one does it to oneself. Unless you have the same sense of humor as Eeyore, a jab at yourself can automatically be understood as a joke, whereas the same comment to someone else might not be as quickly understood. I do admit to being biased in this area, as I have a self-deprecating sense of humor, and nothing is more self-deprecating than poking at the holes in your own spirituality.
After considering my thesis idea, a phrase popped into my head which I knew came from Scripture, but whose context I did not know as intimately. The way I was remembering it was casting a shadow of condemnation over what I was preparing to write. Nevertheless, I looked it up, preparing to compose an introduction like this: "The Bible says this....but....here's what I have to say," only more imaginatively, and hopefully humorously, of course.
But, once I found the context of the phrase on my brain, it didn't mean what I thought it meant in relation to what I wanted to write. At all. It could actually be taken to mean exactly the opposite of what I was assuming. Jesus juke foiled.
That's probably a good thing.
Moving on.
If you get to know me well at all, you will soon find that I don't like politics. Vehemently. The only reason even acquaintances might not know this about me is that I try to not regularly call attention to negativity. But if I let my passions reign unchecked, it would be public knowledge. Strangers who pass me in public would know. Something else I dislike almost as much as politics is participating in discussion of said subject. Aside from the obvious reason of disliking the subject itself, the reason I don't like talking about politics is that whenever people ask me questions, I feel that to answer them with my honest opinions, I'm always dodging the subject. This is only a problem because I still care too much about the perceived quality of conversations with me, and I've gathered that people who dodge the subject are generally found to be annoying. My conversation skills really do not have a lot going for them, so every little improvement I can make is a good thing.
If I don't want to dodge the subject, then, why don't I stop doing it? That would make sense, Emily. Just quit complaining about your socially divergent habits, and save the Internet from yet another page of dribble nobody wants to read. I don't stop doing it because I can't. I am a radical idealist at my core, and I don't know how to live any other way. Idealism is not practical in almost every circumstance, certainly in politics. This is why I'm not a politician, and why I'm grateful for all the people out there who are up for the challenge. As often as I feel like situations may not have been handled as well as they could have, I throw no stones as I know my own leadership would lead nowhere fast. Leave me to the underground. That's where I thrive.
The latest hot-button topic that I will inevitably circumvent if you attempt to seek out my opinion is the Affordable Care Act and the state of the healthcare system in my country. Ask me if my feelings on the new law are positive or negative, and I won't give a straight answer either way. What I will say is this:
I.Don't.Like.Insurance.
I don't. At all. On the surface, it seems like a good idea. I understand why the idea of insurance was cultivated and then instituted as a standard practice in paying for unforeseen incidences. Who plans to have a heart attack? Who plans for their house to burn down? Suicidal persons and arsonists. That describes neither me, you (I'm assuming), nor an overwhelming number of persons in the world, so it makes sense that most of us aren't going to have large sums of money on hand to pay for all the trouble we run into in our lives. I get it.
What I don't think the first visionaries in insurance expected, however, is this: buying insurance can quickly move from being a smart life decision to preying on a person's fear. Societal wisdom has said, "This is the way you need to handle all the mishaps and tragedies you will face in your lifetime, otherwise you're sunk," then as soon as obtaining insurance becomes a struggle, persons will often become overwhelmed with the stress of working enough to cover all of our modern-day insurance expenses, or they live in worry and panic every day that they live without being insured, afraid to truly live lest something happen to them. Either way, there is no release from the burden. The advance weight of things over which we have no control was never meant to be our responsibility.
Also, in some sections of my culture, I have seen a cavalier attitude develop as the result of insurance being the norm that is unsettling to my conservative core (And please understand, I mean this word in its true sense, not in the political tint it has come to represent. Efficiency, economy, conservation: the longer I live the more I realize these are things that motivate the way I live my life in almost every way, even in the expression of my personality. Nobody is better at being expressively conservative than me. That's only a slightly hyperbolic statement.) Since insurance companies have overwhelming become the ones who directly pay for things, it can be easy to dissociate from who the responsible parties really are: you and me. Forgetting this is only a problem when unnecessary expenses aren't given a second thought, which I think would be less likely to happen if people paid for everything directly from their own reserves. For example, I haven't met anyone who would disagree that medical tests are over-priced, but I don't know how many people have given thought to whether all of them are beneficial. Doctors, who are supposed to know more about how our bodies work then we do, prescribe a test, and we think "Well, the insurance is going to cover it, so might as well." But maybe, if we took time to think about it, and do more research, we'd get closer to finding an answer or solution down a different, better avenue. I don't, nor will I ever, suggest a blanket boycott on medical tests, but in my own experience, I have been through countless medical tests that have never provided me with any useful information, and even at the time I felt like they were being done "just because we can." I've even had doctors say equivalent phrases to me when suggesting these tests. "Just because we can" is never a good reason to do anything. Except sing. So all that money was spent to find out nothing. If your life is anything like mine, I suspect you've had a similar experience. Out of sight does equal out of mind in this case, and when it comes being smart about how you live your life, this is not a good thing,
Lastly, insurance shrinks even more the space where generosity and goodwill live. If all of a person's needs are met, then there's no reason for anyone to be compelled to help them. Having lived a life that's placed me in a lot of helpless positions, I've seen what good is done for the world when generosity and kindness are allowed to flourish.We lose something important when they aren't. I know what it's like to not even have a place to live or food to eat, and as terrible as that may sound, the beauty that has come from those situations is irreplaceable. More people need to see that. Feel it. Taste it. Breathe it. I'm not quite sadistic enough to suggest that more people need to suffer, but just almost.
What then is the solution for our country? Ideally, it's that the church would love so much like Jesus that the debate that's been going on would quickly reach its end. Until that happens, by God's grace, I'll be doing what I can to make that a reality in my own corner of the world, and coming to terms with the fact that I am required to buy something I don't even want. Radicals and idealists always chafe under governmental restrictions, so my plight is nothing new.
Since I've let vent my emotions over one contested subject, I'm trying hard to convince myself that now is not the time let fly on marriage. Dissent is like a flood, which is why I leave little room for it; once released, it's hard to stop....
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I like conversation. Your comments promote conversation. You know what to do. Vielen Dank.