Jesus is Not a Flu Shot Part 4

Here is the latest “wrinkle” I would call it, and maybe the final piece of the puzzle before this goes to the “masses”.

This should be obvious.  If I needed a heart transplant, I wouldn’t see a dermatologist.  If I had blockage in my heart and needed major heart surgery, I wouldn’t listen to a doctor who scheduled my surgery with the leading brain surgeon.   Cardiologists are meant to operate on the heart.   Brain surgeons operate on the….brain.   If you are not following this, you might need to see your doctor.

I have been a pharmacist for 11 years, and I didn’t really see how much the church today really does not follow the common sense of the world.  This is part of the reason the world does not take us seriously.   If someone says one thing, but does another, the world recognizes that as being a hypocrite.  If the church does it, we tend to not even see it.

We claim Jesus is the answer.  Know Jesus, know peace.  No Jesus, No peace.  We proudly display the bumper stickers.  We confidently mouth off the clichés.  Yet we have no problem saying Jesus is the Prince of Peace on one hand, and on the other, sending that woman with the issue of anxiety right to the “professionals”.

Jesus is all you need!  Here is your refill on your Prozac Mr. Jones.

My question is why is there such a polarization between what we preach and what we practice?

A common argument from the psychiatrists and nurse practitioners is “if God didn’t mean us to have medication, why did he give man the wisdom to discover it?”    They also will state that if you had diabetes, you wouldn’t refuse medication, so why refuse medication for mental illness?

First, just because man can discover something, it doesn’t mean God is for it. Man is constantly rejecting the ways of God and going his own way, and God simply says, “Have it your way.”  God doesn’t force his methods and himself on mankind, but we still suffer the consequences.    Opium, tobacco, cocaine are found in plants,  and so is cyanide.   This doesn’t mean we can assume God meant for us to use them.  We also are body, soul, and spirit.   Our bodies need physical healing and physical food to function.   If we break an arm we don’t go to a prayer meeting, we go to the ER.  Yet if we are diagnosed with “mental illness” the church in general sends you to a shrink.

The mad man of Gadara was soon found clothed and in his right mind.  How did Jesus help him without a vast arsenal of mind altering drugs? I would say the argument we might think in our own minds is “Yes, but Jesus was performing major miracles back then.” Or perhaps Jesus in human form had more power than today.  Yet, why did Jesus say the disciples would go on to do greater miracles than He did? Do we honestly think that a medical doctor or a psychiatrist is more powerful than Jesus?

Or is the fact we don’t know how to help the serious cases leave us embarrassed or threatened or make us run the other direction?  How would we treat the Mad Man of Gadara if he came into our church?  Or the gay man of Gadara?   Or the pedophile man of Gadara?  Or the Serial Killer of Gadara? I would say by our actions that we tend to think the Gospel can save anyone.  Until it comes to someone outside our comfort zone.  Those must be the reprobates.

Is not the gospel the answer to a world that has none?   Is not Jesus the solution for someone who has come to the end of themselves?  Far too often we offer clichés over Christ, medication over the Messiah, Professionals over the Great Physician.  Is there any reason why the world should take us seriously?  Today they look over at the Mad Man of Gadara and see him drooling in church on Sunday from his Haldol, and at the shrink on Monday and back in the Psych Ward on Wednesday.  And we look at him and wag our heads while we sing Victory in Jesus.

The Bible says in Romans chapter 6, For he that is dead is freed from sin.  The gospel of John says And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.   James says A double minded man is unstable in all his ways.

Question:  If the church claims Jesus is the answer, yet denies that belief by how we handle those seeking answers.  The church of the past 100 years seems to assume the tough cases are “born that way”  or refuses to take on the responsibility of properly discipling someone until they get it.  The answers are in the Bible, so are we not looking for answers?  Not open?  Too entrenched on traditions of men that worked 50 years ago?  Or too busy knowing how much the true answers will cost us?

I am not guiltless in this.  I have heard all the answers being a pharmacist but in my heart all I see is how compromised we are, and we pour out acceptable ways to compromise what we believe instead of relying on the unchanging, and uncompromising Word of God.  I hear I am not the one who prescribes these pills.  My answer is if I was a prison guard of the Nazis and ordered to pull the trigger, I would still not be guiltless.  I hear there is a lot of good in Pharmacy.  There is a lot of good in going through a dumpster to find food, but that doesn’t mean we should.   They say God wants me there to be a voice.  Yet, if I am say, a Christian Porn Star, I could be a voice there as well.

I am hearing so many different voices from the Christian world about what I should do with my pharmacy career.  Maybe though I don’t need medication to help with these voices.  Maybe taking a stand would be enough to silence them.