Real Sex: The Naked Truth about Chastity: Lauren F. Winner
For most of human history, people of many different cultures have agreed that societies must order certain forms of exchange in order to survive. Communities have ordered language, establishing grammars nad vocabularies that shape how people comunicate with one another; they have ordered the exchange of money, property, and labor; and they have ordered the practice of sex. As essayist, poet, and novelist Wendell Berry has put it, "sex, like any other necessary, precarious, and volatile power that is commonly held, is everybody's business." In the last half-century, however, that assumption has been routed, replaced by the axioms of individualism and autonomy. Indeed, today the idea that sex "is everybody's business" sounds alternately shocking and silly...
...But in the Christian universe, the individual is not the vital unit of ethical meaning. For Christians, the most basic images, metaphors, and signs are corporate, and the basic unit of ethical meaning is the Body, the comunity. Israel experiences covenantal fidelity as a people, and the People of God is a collective- not merely an aggregate of individual persons, each doing his or her own thing, but a body. In the Bible, God elects the People of Israel as a body. He sustains them as a body. And, finally, He redeems them as a body. This talk about community is not metaphorizing. The community has a role i making ethics. Paul makes this clear when he instructs the Galatians to hold one another accountable for sin: "Brothers, if someone is caught in a sin, you who are spiritual should restore him gently. But watch yourself, or you also may be tempted. Carry each other's burdens, and in this way you will fulfil the law of Christ."
That passage in Galatians, if we construe it uncharitably, can lead us to envision a community that functions primarily as a police force: Christinas' responsibilities to one another begin and end with peering into other Christians' bedroom windows and sounding the alarm if something illicit is going on.
While one task of any community is to enforce its own codes when they are being violated, perhaps the prior task of the community is to make sense of the ethical codes that are being enforced. Here the community is not so much a cop as storyteller, telling and retelling the foundational stories of the community itself, sustaining the stories that make sense of the community's norms. This storytelling is part of hte working out of God's grace in the church. we, teh church, retell our own story- we do this every time we read scripture, every time we celebrate the Lord's Supper, and every time we minister to one another. And that reteling is part of what enables us to live into the story. It is the community that ensures that ethics is not about the dispensing of cut-and-dried answers to moral questions, but that ethics is the story with meaning and power.
Friday, February 22, 2008
Friday, February 8, 2008
personal statement
It seems like so long ago that I started writing this for my med school primary app. Almost exactly a year ago. So much changes in a year. In the last year I have very much come to know God as the Father who loves to give good gifts to His children. And they really are gifts...unearned and good. Receiving from God, I've come to see, is most complete when we can offer back to Him what He gives us and allow Him to continue to shape it.
In the spring of my freshman year at Penn I asked a few friends if they wanted to join me for an organized street clean-up of West Philly. This is the kind of invitation that many feel guilty turning down, but rationalize by saying: "the trash will just reappear the next day," or " you can't do everything to try to fix the world." Both statements are true. Half a day of picking up trash has no lasting effect, and I struggled that week with the feeling that serving others is an overwhelming task- that there are too many people and places in the world that need help.
The next summer I worked at Esperanza, a Spanish-speaking medical clinic in North Philadelphia that serves the poverty-level families of the neighborhood. My days were filled with accompanying doctors in examining rooms to translate, writing and administering quality of well-being surveys to patients, and compiling these responses for the purpose of future grant proposals.
The patients at Esperanza frequently struggle with diabetes, hypertension, malnutrition, skin diseases, depression, and a wide range of STDs. I sat with physicians and observed the process of developing treatment plans for patients, often diagnosed with multiple conditions. I then accompanied the doctor during his time with the patient, translating prescriptions and medical documents into Spanish, explaining, and often re-explaining, the purpose of each drug or nutritional suggestion. Many of the patients could not read or write well enough to complete the needed paperwork without my assistance.
One afternoon I spoke with a woman who had recently emigrated to Philadelphia from Puerto Rico. She had diabetes, but could not find a successful treatment plan. When her lab results came in, I listened as the doctors problem-solved for a better combination and dosage of drugs. What intrigued me about this process was that it required a personal knowledge of the woman's medical history as well as a powerful and intricate scientific knowledge of the biochemistry unique to the drugs prescribed. Even slight changes to dosages affect the patients in individual ways. This problem-solving process required patience and a clear and systematic thought process, as the medications she had previously been prescribed should have been effective. I learned that persistence and patience were key in the medical field, and I called the woman once more to double-check the medication that had previously been prescribed to her. Through our dialogue I learned that she could not read the instructions on the pill bottles and thus had not been correctly administering the medication. I asked the woman to come in so that we could give her a more formal explanation of diabetes, the treatment plan, and the remainder of her lab work, which showed that she was also infected with an STD. When she returned to the clinic the following day, I reviewed each medication and dosage she would be receiving and helped the doctor relay vital information about diabetes to her. I saw that as a physician I would need to know the biochemical consequences of these medications, how they would affect other physical ailments or drugs, what nutritional and environmental factors could be helpful or harmful to treatment plans, and most of all, how to communicate these facts to patients in a way that is clear and compassionate. It took a lot of patience and determination to ask the right questions in order to get accurate medical and personal histories; but it often took even more patience to respond, knowing that I had to put aside complicated scientific explanations and instead deliver accurate information in ways that showed each person dignity and compassion.
After explaining diabetes and the procedure for measuring blood sugar, the doctors and I told her about her STD, Chlamydia. She was clearly upset, vexed by the issue of how she had contracted it. It was difficult and heart-breaking to then explain that if she had been faithful, it was likely that her husband had not been. It was in conversations like these that I marveled at how different genres of medicine fit together. My time spent in research at the Scripps Institute and in science classes at Penn made the process of prescribing medication and explaining the intricacies of the human body to patients in a clinic extremely meaningful.
Further experiences at Esperanza and in my current job with the UCSD clinic have shown me that many patients share similar, heart-rending circumstances. No matter how hard the doctors, nurses, and I work, we find the same stories walking through our doors every day. My time in city clinics has taught me to persist in choosing action, relationship, and communication through the moments I am tempted to settle with simply feeling overwhelmed by the condition of community healthcare. In these clinics I find myself re-living that morning when I cleaned the streets of Philadelphia, and I think back to that summer day at Esperanza when I chose to give 'esperanza,' or 'hope,' to one of my first patients. It was then that I learned that hope, emerging from persistent scientific research melded with sincere human compassion, is not only something worth giving, but what I most desire to bring to patients in tangible and lasting ways.
In the spring of my freshman year at Penn I asked a few friends if they wanted to join me for an organized street clean-up of West Philly. This is the kind of invitation that many feel guilty turning down, but rationalize by saying: "the trash will just reappear the next day," or " you can't do everything to try to fix the world." Both statements are true. Half a day of picking up trash has no lasting effect, and I struggled that week with the feeling that serving others is an overwhelming task- that there are too many people and places in the world that need help.
The next summer I worked at Esperanza, a Spanish-speaking medical clinic in North Philadelphia that serves the poverty-level families of the neighborhood. My days were filled with accompanying doctors in examining rooms to translate, writing and administering quality of well-being surveys to patients, and compiling these responses for the purpose of future grant proposals.
The patients at Esperanza frequently struggle with diabetes, hypertension, malnutrition, skin diseases, depression, and a wide range of STDs. I sat with physicians and observed the process of developing treatment plans for patients, often diagnosed with multiple conditions. I then accompanied the doctor during his time with the patient, translating prescriptions and medical documents into Spanish, explaining, and often re-explaining, the purpose of each drug or nutritional suggestion. Many of the patients could not read or write well enough to complete the needed paperwork without my assistance.
One afternoon I spoke with a woman who had recently emigrated to Philadelphia from Puerto Rico. She had diabetes, but could not find a successful treatment plan. When her lab results came in, I listened as the doctors problem-solved for a better combination and dosage of drugs. What intrigued me about this process was that it required a personal knowledge of the woman's medical history as well as a powerful and intricate scientific knowledge of the biochemistry unique to the drugs prescribed. Even slight changes to dosages affect the patients in individual ways. This problem-solving process required patience and a clear and systematic thought process, as the medications she had previously been prescribed should have been effective. I learned that persistence and patience were key in the medical field, and I called the woman once more to double-check the medication that had previously been prescribed to her. Through our dialogue I learned that she could not read the instructions on the pill bottles and thus had not been correctly administering the medication. I asked the woman to come in so that we could give her a more formal explanation of diabetes, the treatment plan, and the remainder of her lab work, which showed that she was also infected with an STD. When she returned to the clinic the following day, I reviewed each medication and dosage she would be receiving and helped the doctor relay vital information about diabetes to her. I saw that as a physician I would need to know the biochemical consequences of these medications, how they would affect other physical ailments or drugs, what nutritional and environmental factors could be helpful or harmful to treatment plans, and most of all, how to communicate these facts to patients in a way that is clear and compassionate. It took a lot of patience and determination to ask the right questions in order to get accurate medical and personal histories; but it often took even more patience to respond, knowing that I had to put aside complicated scientific explanations and instead deliver accurate information in ways that showed each person dignity and compassion.
After explaining diabetes and the procedure for measuring blood sugar, the doctors and I told her about her STD, Chlamydia. She was clearly upset, vexed by the issue of how she had contracted it. It was difficult and heart-breaking to then explain that if she had been faithful, it was likely that her husband had not been. It was in conversations like these that I marveled at how different genres of medicine fit together. My time spent in research at the Scripps Institute and in science classes at Penn made the process of prescribing medication and explaining the intricacies of the human body to patients in a clinic extremely meaningful.
Further experiences at Esperanza and in my current job with the UCSD clinic have shown me that many patients share similar, heart-rending circumstances. No matter how hard the doctors, nurses, and I work, we find the same stories walking through our doors every day. My time in city clinics has taught me to persist in choosing action, relationship, and communication through the moments I am tempted to settle with simply feeling overwhelmed by the condition of community healthcare. In these clinics I find myself re-living that morning when I cleaned the streets of Philadelphia, and I think back to that summer day at Esperanza when I chose to give 'esperanza,' or 'hope,' to one of my first patients. It was then that I learned that hope, emerging from persistent scientific research melded with sincere human compassion, is not only something worth giving, but what I most desire to bring to patients in tangible and lasting ways.
Friday, February 1, 2008
Life as a Wheel
I said I would expand on my theory stated in "The Great Depression" post that life was like a wheel with six spokes. Here's what I wrote before:
"Let's think life as a wheel with six spokes. The six spokes would be: economics, health, learning, environment [and what it provides for you...often a living], social/sociopolitical, and spiritual. Each of those spokes deserves it's own paragraph [that'll come in the next post]. I believe God cares about each of these spokes. This model would work...except the spiritual spoke is a part of all of the others."
The hub in the middle represents abject, unrelenting, bone-grinding poverty. These people have absolutely nothing. The outer rim of the wheel representes wholeness, adequacy, "enough." Notice I didn't say "wealth" or "riches" or even "abundance". Simply the condition of having one's actual needs met.
Spoke one is economics. If you don't have much money, your options are limited. In Haiti, the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere, the average peasant family ears 140$ USD/year by trying to grow coffee or cotton. They would like a better life for their six, seven, or eight children...to send just one of them to school would cost 50$/year. So they take a deep breath, choose one child, and send him off to learn, tightening down the screws on life's other necessities even further. In daily life a lack of money translates into a lack of options, which is perhaps a more accurate definition of poverty. The world's poor look at a situation and cannot say, "Well, I could pursue choice A, B, or C. Which one makes the most sense? Which wuld turn out best for me and my family?" No, under the circumstances, there is only choice A. That is the reality of poverty.
The next spoke of the wheel is health. A big part of health maintenance of course is getting adequate nutrition. Some people think the earth can't keep up with the food needs of its population. That is not true. In fact, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization delcared at a World Food Summit in Rome that the planet could produce enough food for every one of us to have a daily diet of 2720 calories. So why is a third of our world battling obesity and spending large sums to burn off excess calories, while the other two-thirds yearn to get more of them? Poor health is a major component of poverty and not disconnected from the first spoke, economics.
The next spoke is called learning. Poverty is greatly aggravated by the absence of information and acquired skills. Without these, the big world swirls around you like a dust storm, bombarding you from all sides with surprises that you have no way to comprehend or process, let alone overcome. An example: One of the biggest killers in the world today is diarrhea. I didn't just say it was uncomfortable; i said it could take your life. How so? Because the message passed around villages is: obviously, too much water inside of you if it is all coming out. We need to stop drinking for a while and dry out. Then it'll be okay." And children go on dying of dehydration by the hundreds of thousands. The beautiful thing is, an educated child in the developing world becomes a multiplier of learning, creating a ripple effect.
The fourth spoke is called environment. This is no sideline issue. Ivoery Coast has cut down and exported so much timber that it competes in volume with Brazil, a country twenty times as large. Since 1975, Ivory Coast has suffered the highest deforestation rate in the world. The herds of elephants, lions, hippos, leopards, antelopes, and many other animals have ben decimated as a result, which has changed things for humans as well. Haiti too is in ecological disaster. The sun beats down on the bare, parched earth and radiates upward again. Rain clouds form over the land, are driven up by the head, and then pushed off toward the sea, there to drop their precous moisture where thirsty people cannot access it.
The fifth spoke is social/sociopolitical. Poverty is, among other things, a functio nof being powerles in the hall of governments and the social structures that administer our lives. If you are fairly sure your vote won't count and that whatever taxes you pay will only end up financing a war or maybe increasing the governor's personal fortune, it is very easy to get discouraged and become fatalistic. When jobs and infrastructure improvements go inevitably to the tribe or region of the party in power, while other sections of the population are ignored, resentment grows. Corruption bleeds the meager resources that average citizens can muster, making it harder and harder for them to get on their feet. Nothing saps teh peasant's initiative faster than a sense that the system is stacked against him.
The final spoke of the wheel is called spiritual. Religious bondage can suffocate the poor in excruciating ways. This is true for those who forgo the nutrients of a meal because they feel they must obey the witch doctor's directive to sacrifice it to ward off evil, or when neighbors decline to help one another because they feel it will interfere with their karma. The starving child in the street, they say, is working out some issue from a previou slifetime, and so that process must run its course.
Jesus asked one time, "what good will it be for a man if he gains the whole world yet forfeits his soul?" All the dollars adn euros and pesos and shillings and rupees in the world will not equal the peace that comes from knowing a God who loves you. He's not out to get you or destroy you. He is, in fact, on your side. In fact, far from being peripheral, the spiritual aspect is essential to the other five spokes of the wheel.
Does God get involved with econonics- absolutely- Proverbs 14:23- all hard world brings a profit, but mere talk leads only to poverty. Scripture is full of instruction about money and labor.
Does God care about health- absolutly.
Does God care about education- yes, his entire revelation to us comes in the form of a book, which he fully expects us to read and to help others read. Teaching is a gift of the spirit
Does God care about the environment- check out Psalm 8- it is his earth, after all, he made it in the first place. He put this planet together to serve the needs of his highest creation, human beings. When we interrupt or currupt the systems that should sustain us, he is not happy. He wants to see the created order restored to its highest and best uses.
Does God care about our sociopolitical world? Definitely. Poverty and injustice break the heart of God. He warns us in Proverbs 22:22-23: do not exploit the poor because they are poor and do not crush the needy in court, for the LORD will take up their case and will plunder those who plunder them.
If we are seroius about helping overcome poverty, about moving people from the dark hole in the center to the state of wholeness ath the perimeter, we must care about all areas of their lives. It is not enough to simply favor one spoke. It's what makes community so extremely and unswervingly important. No one can care about all of those spokes alone, and i don't think we're called to do that. We refelct the image of God individually when we care about the whole, but we reflect the image of God communally when we actively care for the whole.
"Let's think life as a wheel with six spokes. The six spokes would be: economics, health, learning, environment [and what it provides for you...often a living], social/sociopolitical, and spiritual. Each of those spokes deserves it's own paragraph [that'll come in the next post]. I believe God cares about each of these spokes. This model would work...except the spiritual spoke is a part of all of the others."
The hub in the middle represents abject, unrelenting, bone-grinding poverty. These people have absolutely nothing. The outer rim of the wheel representes wholeness, adequacy, "enough." Notice I didn't say "wealth" or "riches" or even "abundance". Simply the condition of having one's actual needs met.
Spoke one is economics. If you don't have much money, your options are limited. In Haiti, the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere, the average peasant family ears 140$ USD/year by trying to grow coffee or cotton. They would like a better life for their six, seven, or eight children...to send just one of them to school would cost 50$/year. So they take a deep breath, choose one child, and send him off to learn, tightening down the screws on life's other necessities even further. In daily life a lack of money translates into a lack of options, which is perhaps a more accurate definition of poverty. The world's poor look at a situation and cannot say, "Well, I could pursue choice A, B, or C. Which one makes the most sense? Which wuld turn out best for me and my family?" No, under the circumstances, there is only choice A. That is the reality of poverty.
The next spoke of the wheel is health. A big part of health maintenance of course is getting adequate nutrition. Some people think the earth can't keep up with the food needs of its population. That is not true. In fact, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization delcared at a World Food Summit in Rome that the planet could produce enough food for every one of us to have a daily diet of 2720 calories. So why is a third of our world battling obesity and spending large sums to burn off excess calories, while the other two-thirds yearn to get more of them? Poor health is a major component of poverty and not disconnected from the first spoke, economics.
The next spoke is called learning. Poverty is greatly aggravated by the absence of information and acquired skills. Without these, the big world swirls around you like a dust storm, bombarding you from all sides with surprises that you have no way to comprehend or process, let alone overcome. An example: One of the biggest killers in the world today is diarrhea. I didn't just say it was uncomfortable; i said it could take your life. How so? Because the message passed around villages is: obviously, too much water inside of you if it is all coming out. We need to stop drinking for a while and dry out. Then it'll be okay." And children go on dying of dehydration by the hundreds of thousands. The beautiful thing is, an educated child in the developing world becomes a multiplier of learning, creating a ripple effect.
The fourth spoke is called environment. This is no sideline issue. Ivoery Coast has cut down and exported so much timber that it competes in volume with Brazil, a country twenty times as large. Since 1975, Ivory Coast has suffered the highest deforestation rate in the world. The herds of elephants, lions, hippos, leopards, antelopes, and many other animals have ben decimated as a result, which has changed things for humans as well. Haiti too is in ecological disaster. The sun beats down on the bare, parched earth and radiates upward again. Rain clouds form over the land, are driven up by the head, and then pushed off toward the sea, there to drop their precous moisture where thirsty people cannot access it.
The fifth spoke is social/sociopolitical. Poverty is, among other things, a functio nof being powerles in the hall of governments and the social structures that administer our lives. If you are fairly sure your vote won't count and that whatever taxes you pay will only end up financing a war or maybe increasing the governor's personal fortune, it is very easy to get discouraged and become fatalistic. When jobs and infrastructure improvements go inevitably to the tribe or region of the party in power, while other sections of the population are ignored, resentment grows. Corruption bleeds the meager resources that average citizens can muster, making it harder and harder for them to get on their feet. Nothing saps teh peasant's initiative faster than a sense that the system is stacked against him.
The final spoke of the wheel is called spiritual. Religious bondage can suffocate the poor in excruciating ways. This is true for those who forgo the nutrients of a meal because they feel they must obey the witch doctor's directive to sacrifice it to ward off evil, or when neighbors decline to help one another because they feel it will interfere with their karma. The starving child in the street, they say, is working out some issue from a previou slifetime, and so that process must run its course.
Jesus asked one time, "what good will it be for a man if he gains the whole world yet forfeits his soul?" All the dollars adn euros and pesos and shillings and rupees in the world will not equal the peace that comes from knowing a God who loves you. He's not out to get you or destroy you. He is, in fact, on your side. In fact, far from being peripheral, the spiritual aspect is essential to the other five spokes of the wheel.
Does God get involved with econonics- absolutely- Proverbs 14:23- all hard world brings a profit, but mere talk leads only to poverty. Scripture is full of instruction about money and labor.
Does God care about health- absolutly.
Does God care about education- yes, his entire revelation to us comes in the form of a book, which he fully expects us to read and to help others read. Teaching is a gift of the spirit
Does God care about the environment- check out Psalm 8- it is his earth, after all, he made it in the first place. He put this planet together to serve the needs of his highest creation, human beings. When we interrupt or currupt the systems that should sustain us, he is not happy. He wants to see the created order restored to its highest and best uses.
Does God care about our sociopolitical world? Definitely. Poverty and injustice break the heart of God. He warns us in Proverbs 22:22-23: do not exploit the poor because they are poor and do not crush the needy in court, for the LORD will take up their case and will plunder those who plunder them.
If we are seroius about helping overcome poverty, about moving people from the dark hole in the center to the state of wholeness ath the perimeter, we must care about all areas of their lives. It is not enough to simply favor one spoke. It's what makes community so extremely and unswervingly important. No one can care about all of those spokes alone, and i don't think we're called to do that. We refelct the image of God individually when we care about the whole, but we reflect the image of God communally when we actively care for the whole.
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