John 14:4, 23-24
Jesus said to His disciples:
“Where I am going you know the way….
Whoever loves me will keep my word,
and my Father will love him,
and we will come to him and make our dwelling with him.
Whoever does not love me does not keep my words;
yet the word you hear is not mine
but that of the Father who sent me.”
“Whoever loves me will keep my word” . . . .
So what are His words?
John 13:33-35
Jesus said, “My children,
I will be with you only a little while longer.
I give you a new commandment: love one another.
As I have loved you, so you also should love one another.
This is how all will know that you are my disciples,
if you have love for one another.”
Last Sunday, I used the marital commitment of “in sickness and in health” and the converse of the abandonment of a seriously sick spouse to illustrate what “love one another” means. I referred to a shocking study of 515 patients who had been diagnosed with brain tumors or multiple sclerosis, which found that:
- About 12% of the patients became separated or divorced.
- Women are much more likely to be abandoned: Only 3% of sick men vs. some 21% of sick women separated or divorced.
- Among the couples who divorced, on average, divorce occurred about 6 months after the medical diagnosis.
A reader questioned whether the injunction to “love one another” means one must stay with a chronically ill spouse. She wrote, evidently speaking from personal experience:
“When do we stop playing God? Maybe, just maybe, saving the chronically ill spouse, through the miracles of modern medicine, is not what God intended to happen…. No where in the Bible does it say that you should go into debt, spend every last resource you have, and make your family live in poverty just to pay huge medical and drug bills and this was with insurance.”
I thank the reader for pointing out the vicissitudes of what being faithful to a seriously or chronically ill spouse means in our time of medical advances and ever-rising healthcare costs.
Indeed, medical science has made leaps and bounds in prolonging life by successfully curing or containing many diseases that would have meant certain death just a generation ago. Whether to do so is “playing God” is debatable. How far back should we go in the history of medical science to determine which point was the beginning of mankind’s “playing God”? And who’s to say God’s intent precisely is that we humans do our utmost in medical science since He is the One who endows us with reason, intelligence, and creativity in the first place?
But the reminder about the costs of medical care — and the corresponding crushing debts incurred not just by individual families, but in the end, by all of America in the form of an already bankrupt Social Security Disability and on-the-verge-of-being-bankrupt Medicare and Medicaid — alerts us to another dimension of what “love one another” should also mean.
“Love one another” isn’t just about the sacrificial care (agapé) given to a sick spouse, it’s also about the love of the sick individual for the healthy spouse — to, as much as possible, not to be a financial and emotional burden. To “love one another” also requires that each of us act responsibly vis-à-vis our own selves, our families, and our country, by:
- Practicing PREVENTIVE medicine via a healthy lifestyle and habits. (For health tips and information, go to our “Health, Finance & Security” page!)
- Being financially responsible and prudent so as not to incur one’s family with ruinous debt from medical costs. That means we each must:
(a) Work hard.
(b) Be frugal and save, save, save.
(c) Procure a good health insurance plan.
(d) Get long-term care insurance, especially if you’ve been diagnosed with a chronic, degenerative disease.
(e) If you are elderly with an incurable disease(s), sign an Advance Care Directive or living will, instructing that your hospital, doctors, as well as ambulance paramedics refrain from “heroic” measures to revive you.
And never forget to turn to Jesus when you are suffering. Being fully human and fully divine, He understands more than anyone what you are going through. If you ask Him to help you, He always answers.
When you think you are alone in your misery, seeing only one set of footprints in the sand, remember that the one set of footprints are His — carrying you.
God bless you, and may the joy and peace and love of our Lord Jesus the Christ be with you,
~Eowyn
