The Prognosis by Brady

My family is dramatic. The Herbert family is never short on excitement by any stretch of the imagination. I like to think that my grandmother, mom, and sister are where the drama queen genes begin and end, but others would disagree. If I do have a trace of this trait in my blood, you can see it come out in me when I get sick or hurt. There are some of my family members that call me a hypochondriac, which I totally deny and slightly resent (ok, so I had a neck ache and thought I had meningitis once…big deal). But one thing is for sure; when something isn’t right in my body, I call a doctor. The only test I use before calling the doctor that will give me enough peace of mind to not set up an appointment is the “other side” test. If I feel a bump and I have the same lump on the other side, then I can go about my business and not worry too much. That is about as sophisticated as I get when it comes to diagnosing myself.

Now let me be clear: I like doctors. My doctor could be the world’s best at what he does. He is incredibly smart, generous, caring, and talented with numerous gifts both in and out of the medical field. He plays the violin at our church and went to my alma mater, which scores him points in my book. On top of that, one of my best friends is in medical school, my mother-in-law is a nurse, and my wife and I have another close family friend who is also a nurse. These people are working my personal rotation. Sore throat? Well I called my mother-in-law last time, so I’ll call my friend who has plenty of time to diagnose me between his busy medical school schedule and being a newly wed.

A while back, though, I heard an interesting quote that went along the lines of this: we still have priests today, but instead of wearing black coats they wear white ones. I don’t think this speaker was talking just about doctors, rather I think he was saying that we go to the sciences for any authoritative answers in our lives over faith these days. A fact of life is that people will always have authority in their lives. In fact, people will always seek to have authority in their lives. It just happens that today the proper authority will tell you to exercise and eat healthy rather than to not sleep around. We still live in an extremely strict society with moral codes, but the code is shifting. Why is it that our morals are based on health conscious issues rather than spiritual disciplines? For instance, it is morally wrong to smoke a cigarette while you’re pregnant, however some feel it is ok to sleep with your girlfriend as long as you practice “safe sex.”

Much of it also has to do with the fact that Americans are more concerned with temporal things. The new boat, the new house, the new car, the new nose, even the current temperature in the car…the list goes on and on. The only problem with this is in 5 years the boat is old because it just sat outside most of the time, the house is too small, the new car was 3 cars ago, and the nose needs to go back to the shop for some repairs. It also has to do with the belief that is prevalent today that says no one religion can have absolute truth.

Chances are if you watch any morning show like The Today Show, afternoon talk show like Oprah, or evening show like Larry King Live you will have seen about a quadrillion doctors on there talking about how to live a healthy life. If two things are “in” right now it is this: going green and living healthy. One thing you are most likely not going to see is a minister on TV talking about sin and how it affects our life. Why is this? Most of the reason this doesn’t happen is that our culture says ministers are closed-minded nincompoops. Now are there some dumb butts out there who are ministers? Absolutely. Are there also some dense doctors out there who I would never let give me a diagnoses? Without a doubt.

In Jesus’ day, people considered sickness to be related to sin in your life. Today this idea is absurd to our post-modern minds, and maybe it should be. I am not suggesting the next time you get a cold or even worse, someone gets cancer, it is because they have sinned. What I am saying is this, the next time you get sick, maybe you and I should pray before we go to the doctor and our prayer should be more than “guide the doctor’s hand and help the equipment find out what is wrong with me.” Perhaps your pastor could help you as much as your doctor can the next time tragedy hits. Most doctors are incredibly smart and gifted, but they are not infinitely smart and gifted as God is. And we need to sit with the words my doctor told me the last time I went to his office: “We’re not getting out of here alive.” Perhaps it is time to return to the belief that we only have a short period of time on earth and what we do matters. Maybe today you need to stop a sinful habit more than you need to eat a salad. And you just might need to realize that today could be the last day you have to show someone the love of Christ on earth.