Episode Transcript
[00:00:08] Speaker A: You're listening to faith in healthcare, the cmda matters podcast. Here's your host, Dr. Mike chubb.
[00:00:19] Speaker B: Welcome, friends, to faith in healthcare. Dr. Brick Lance, who's our vice president of advocacy and bioethics, recently gave a talk at the Colson Center National Conference in Knoxville, Tennessee, on one of the greatest challenges that faces us in medicine today. The loss of trust capital in US Healthcare and US healthcare professionals.
If you're a healthcare professional, I'm guessing that you've witnessed this eroding trust. Especially since the COVID pandemic, trust in medical institutions has declined, and many, many of us are asking how in the world we got here, and more importantly, where do we go from here?
Drawing from scripture and years of clinical experience, Dr. Brick makes the case that restoring confidence in healthcare will take more than just better policies or better communication.
It starts with recovering a biblical understanding of truth and. And the dignity of every person who's been made in the image of God.
Wherever you serve in healthcare, I think you're gonna find this message both challenging as well as encouraging.
So here's Dr. Brick Lance.
[00:01:44] Speaker C: Today, though, we're gonna talk about rebuilding trust in healthcare. So thank you for being here.
I'm sure I could ask a show of hands, how many have rebuilt something?
I'm going to tell you, the most difficult thing that I have rebuilt, which I did routinely, is a failed total knee. I'm a knee surgeon, all right? And total knees can fail for a variety of reasons. They can get infected. You can get a fracture around them, you get the bone dissolve around, the plastic can wear out sometimes. They're extremely complex, and you have to have every little jig, every little thing in the room. It takes a lot of planning. It takes some, you know, consultation. There's a lot to. Rebuilding a bad total knee.
I think rebuilding trust in healthcare is going to be more difficult, takes more planning and more wisdom, and I'll just. I'll just leave it at that. Now, Mike and I were talking about this after the Colson meeting last year about what we should talk about. We clearly settled on this.
So I. I am one that actually plans way ahead. I started pondering this idea again a year ago, but then actually starting writing things down months ago.
You're going to hear some redundancy, which we've already heard. But redundancy is good for my mind because it makes me think about things. But you're going to hear some things, and it's great because then I. I'm thinking like these guys are thinking at least a little Bit. But I thought I need to ask people a whole lot smarter than I am about this issue of rebuilding trust in healthcare. So I've got some quotes here. All right, John Stonestreet, now, you would not think he's a very concise person. He was very concise in this answer, though.
You don't rebuild trust without truth.
And how much have we heard that getting foundational ideas are right? We'll talk about that. What is the foundational idea, which is interesting. I'll come back to that.
Integration of faith in medicine. So CMDA's new tagline, if I can use tagline, is your faith and healthcare connected? It's very important. I'll talk about why it's so important for the church and the healthcare to be connected as we address all these issues that we've heard about in our culture. And then trust is never rebuilt outside of repentance. And I'll end with part of that, with some slides on that.
So Mike and I had the opportunity to talk to Jay Bhattacharya, who is now, well, he's a Stanford professor, medical doctor who's now the head of nih. And then Trump also put him as the head of cdc. So he's running two organizations simultaneously. I tell you, this guy's talented and he can do it. And he loves Christ, by the way, if you don't know that. He absolutely loves Christ.
So I asked, I asked Jay about rebuilding trust in health care.
I would love to restore a situation where people trust public health and public health trust people.
If you disagree, you're some sort of Neanderthal. You're some kind of heretic. Now, you've all heard the science has settled on some of these issues.
I think every day about what led to that distrust and how we can build a society in a more resilient way.
Next, I think where we went wrong, deeply, deeply wrong. It's actually a spiritual thing that went wrong.
We are so scared of a society that we decided that the act of treating one another as a mere biohazard was a great, good, good. And I'm going to come back to that. How we treat people, how we treat the imago day. But I, I'm very thankful that we have a Christian man at the head of those two organizations here. He continued, the truth comes out of disputation, discussion, honest engagement with data. And it takes time. We just heard a talk about data, but yeah, it takes discussion. If we don't make those decisions, with the calling that I have, if I don't make those Decisions that I believe comes from my commitment to Christ to do things for the betterment of others than for myself, then I have failed.
And then lastly, applicable to all of us, no matter what our specialty, the genius of medicine, is that we navigate that uncertainty, walk beside patients within their most difficult trials and help them not because we're some omniscient creatures that can heal at a touch, but because we are a people who care deeply about the scientific evidence, but also care deeply about people. And we essentially give our lives to using our knowledge for the benefit of others.
And I don't. You guys could talk to me afterwards, but I, I am saddened at some of the situations in healthcare. Even my own private practice in Eugene, Oregon. I love my practice for 34 years. I love caring for my patients and I love knowing more than their torn meniscus. I love knowing more about them. Unfortunately, the way medicine going has become very transactional. You know, it is that torn meniscus and that's, they need surgery, great, I'll take care of them. And it's just, well, care for the whole person anyway. That's my soapbox on that.
So. Al Mohler we actually as Christians don't believe there's any stable morality apart from the morality that is based on the character of God as revealed in God's word.
The main division seems to be between those who think that ethics is simply a matter of politics or self expression and those who believe there is a genius moral truth. Moral. Next, there's a download effect from the academy and from the elites to where I think a lot of this is seeped into popular Christian culture. We have to rebuild at the foundational level.
And on that topic, you'll probably hear me. This is. There's some great oxymorons in life, all right? One of them is gentle orthopedists doesn't exist.
The other one that Dr. Chupp hears me say all the time is just pray. How many have said that in church? Will you just pray? There's no just that goes before prayer.
But the last one is a secular bioethicist. And during my attaining my master's in bioethics, I used to complain my professors because we'd study all these, you know, you heard Carl Truman talk about him and stuff. All these ancient, ancient older philosophers that did not know Christ.
If you don't know Christ, you can't know the truth. And that's just my opinion. I'm a little biased on that.
But secular bioethics, Carl Truman, this is from his book in Shattering the moral limits, the obligations and the teleology.
Don't you guys love that word? That originally rested on the understanding of man as made in the divine image. We have desecrated humanity. The answer to desecration is consecration.
The truth of Christianity must reshape our institutions so that our moral limits, our obligations and our ends dictate how we relate to our bodies, our loved ones, our neighbors, our communities and the world around us near and far.
The place where creed. And again, this is his book, so I had to put in parentheses what he's actually saying. Beliefs, cult, worship and code, moral habits are properly claimed as a place where human beings are not desecrated but consecrated. Great line there. I love that. And then we just heard today.
And you can replace beliefs, worship and moral habits, or creed, cult and code with belief, behavior and belonging, which I love. I love that.
So these are the questions we're going to address.
How did we lose trust? Does it matter if we lost trust? Is it possible to rebuild trust? And how do we rebuild trust? And why is trust important? Those are the five questions. How did we lose trust?
So this is where we go to the audience. There are 101 answers to this question.
Just raise your hand and I'm going to repeat it on the microphone. But what are some things that we've lost trust in? Healthcare. I want some participation here. Someone give me, give me anything. There's tons of them.
Yeah, I think whenever professional societies like.
So our national medical societies not holding truth, including the aa, the ama, and I'm going to talk a little bit about the American Society of Plastic Surgeons who are now holding a little bit to truth.
But yeah, medical society is not holding fast to truth and actually buying into some of the lies. That's a great one.
What else?
Yeah, financial. The rise in cost we're spending.
You guys know better. The gnp, the proportion to medical care is enormous in our country. So rising cost and we're doing things that we probably don't need to do with technology. And it's so costly. So financial. Absolutely.
Corporate control.
So our clinic, we still privately owned in Oregon, but I can tell you so many clinics are getting bite out in these giant corporations. And again, these Chinese corporations, what do they want? They want money, they want efficiency. They really. Sorry, we heard the number cruncher in our last plenary.
They really don't care about the patient. I'm sorry to say that, but the large corporations tend not to. I'll just leave it at that. Great answers.
Okay, I've got a Whole bunch more. Thank you for those answers.
Again, expressive individualism. We heard that COVID pandemic, the vaccine debate, LGBTQ and especially transgender issue. Culture of distrust. We're in that culture. Guilt by association, loss of accountability.
Age of information.
You know, if you look back through the ages we have the industrial age or the Renaissance or whatever. You go back, the sociologists now are calling this the age of information.
We get so much information so quickly and that's not necessarily wisdom. With the Internet now, AI, loss of transcendence, pursuit of power and money. The emr. How many love the emr? I don't think any hands will go up. Authorization, bureaucracy, corporate buyouts, and then also lack of repentance and forgiveness, which I'll talk about now. This is from Dr. Doctors Curling and Toffelson in their book the Way of Medicine. Obviously red book, highly recommend. If I meet with medical students when I.
I usually, you know, order them off of whatever site, even Amazon or whatever, but I buy all the medical students this book. I think it is so important.
But the provider of services model in the context of individualistic and consumerist environment.
Environment defaults to what the law permits, what is technologically possible and what the patient wants. In other words, a transaction not caring for the being. The model erodes the possibility of consciousness conscientious practice and puts physicians and patients at odds that distrust. Patients will lose the basis for trusting and health is neither the only nor the highest good.
Certain practices are simply incompatible with physicians commitment to the patient's health.
He goes on to say the way of medicine recognizes that a profession must have something that is practitioners profess in common. That's something for medicine is the patient's health.
So we as healthcare professionals need to profess what is best for their health. And I'll come back and touch on that a little bit.
So I'm going to give you two illustrations here. Do you understand the power of culture? And actually you've heard John Stonestreet use this. I've used it. It was interesting. I've used it for years. I'm gonna tell you why I've used it for years. So Oregon coast is not too far. Oregon coast you can get wild as far as storms and such. The waves we call sneaker waves.
So the high schools in our area, they select the seniors that are going to get the senior award, if you will. There's a group of them out on the Oregon coast.
One of these seniors is a dear friend because he's a patient. I'd operate on his shoulder. His dad was my cycling buddies. I'm a bicyclist. And two of them, he included, got hit by the sneaker wave.
The wave didn't kill him. He died. He and his buddy died. What killed him was the undertow.
You don't see the undertow. We see the waves, all right? We see the abortion, we see the transgender. We see assisted suicide. We see all kinds of waves.
But what kills us, I think that's why I like listening to Carl Truman so much, is the undertow. And I would tell you, 99% of your colleagues don't understand the undertow. In our culture, it is self, you know, this expressive individualism. One is the undertow, this sense of autonomy, this loss of transcendence. It's the undertow below all these waves. Huge issue.
So do you place your hope in worldly ideas? Now, again, Hebrews 6:19, Hope is the anchor of our soul. So the writer of Hebrews says, and that hope is based in something that is trustworthy. So again, that Christ is trustworthy. So I'm gonna. I'm gonna give you my other analogy.
I'm a river rafter also. It's one of these things. I was on the Oahe river, eastern Oregon. All right, Beautiful river.
Grade four plus rapids. We're coming up on a nuisance rapid in. We all have our individual rafts. When I go with my buddies, four of us were out for. And we each had our own raft. And we see up ahead of the rapids, and it's a very technical, tricky grade four plus rapid. There's a rock in the middle of this rapid called nuisance rock.
And we're coming up, and I'm in the lead, and I see two guys on top of the rock, and there's no raft around. So we pause. I said, these guys need rescuing.
Now I have three choices.
You'll hear other theologians talk about the three choices. Rosari Butterfield talks about being in quicksand.
Dr. Joe Rigney talks about drowning in a pool. There's different ways you can do. But this is pretty clear. I can go through the rapids and think of myself, wave to the guys, good luck. Right? I can do that. Choice choice number two, I can take my raft right up to nuisance rock in the middle of this turbulent water and jump in, putting myself at risk. Right.
Option three, which was what we did, which took hours.
Two of us went down below, two stayed up. We set up what are called Z lines with ropes, lowered a raft to them, got able to get them in the raft, get them to Safety. Their raft was wrapped further down below and we rescued him. It took about four hours.
That is us in healthcare, in culture.
We can, we can jump in with him. What Ali Beth Stuckings calls the toxic empathy. Dr. Joe Rigney talks about the sin of empathy. We can just jump in, be empathized with them not holding fast to truth.
Okay, we can simply ignore them. We can ignore the people that are enslaved to sin and just go buy them. But we in health care, we need to put our hope and our anchor in what's real. I'm no one speaking to the choir, but it's really true. We have to anchor ourselves to this, the word of God and bring truth because that's the only thing that's going to work. There is no other plan that will work.
So it's an anthropological issue and I'm not going to read this whole thing. This is long, but Imago day. So all these guys that answered that, I asked also the question not how do we rebuild trust? What is the foundational truth that we need to hold on in health care? All of them answered the Imago day.
It is the Imago day. And even the Psalmist Psalms 8 Ask what is man that thou dost take? Thought of him again person going back to the Greeks, you know, meant a stage carrot, not the real person. Even Augustine, who we've talked about in this conference. I have become a puzzle to myself and this is my infirmity. And then these other people, John Locke, Tocqueville. In fact Tocqueville, as you know, toured the United states in the 1800s and the number one thing he found was this. It wasn't called then, but this expressive individualism even back then, which I find fascinating. And other great. Even our poets and our writers. Walt Whitman, I celebrate myself. Ralph Waldo Emerson. A man contains all that is needful to his government. Within himself he has made a law unto himself.
Rousseau, self determining freedom.
And then even Herder, a German philosopher. And then this is interesting because you hear Carl Truman talk about expressive individualism. That is borrowed from Robert Bela, who was from my home state. I grew up in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He grew up in Altus, Oklahoma, tiny little town, professor at Cal Berkeley, very progressive sociologist. But he coined this term expressive individualism.
O Carter Sneed. This is a great book. What it means to be human. The anthropology. Now he's going to up Carl Truman with his vocabulary here. By the way.
The anthropology of American public bioethics is strongly anti teleological. It does not recognize natural ends that guide the understanding of the flourishing of the human individual. That's a great quote. And then again I'm going to talk about Carl Truman. In his book the Desecration of Man. He talks about anthropological confusion. Again not understanding who man is or what man is. It is not that everyone is disturbed by the chaos of of sexual revolution, transgenderism, the pornification of culture, the rise of eugenics and transhumanism and the increasing acceptability of euthanasia. Many of us are simply puzzled as to how we should even begin thinking about the various ethical issues involved. And that question, what is man? Is perhaps most vexatious than ever. I think that's a great, great quote.
Carl Benzio, he's one of our CMD members.
Psych Loves, loves the Lord psychiatrists. Those do go hand in hand by the way. Not all psychiatrists, but the psychiatrist love Lord great people.
This is one of my favorite quotes.
Satisfying utilitarian and aesthetic demands. So I put in parentheses satisfying the utilitarian the needs and the aesthetic demands desires of a suffering person while failing the teleological demand of their humanity. And is not compassion.
It is a sophisticated form of abandonment. And how many of our colleagues are abandoning their patients because this is what they live by? That transactional doesn't matter that we lost trust.
But these are some interesting articles. This is from a JAMA article, just recent JAMA article. Trust in physicians and hospitals decreased during the pandemic. So from 2020 to 2024, from 71 and a half percent to 40%.
That's a pretty dramatic loss of trust.
This is an interesting survey.
The honesty and ethics of professional ratings. And again they ranked about 100. There's only five that made it above 50% in their category that they were honest and ethical doctors we made number five own barely though 53%. Now you nurses, thumbs up, you're number one. 76%. There were some non medical in the two through four. But it's just interesting. We are in a culture of distrust.
Confidence in medical leaders. This is from a Harris Interactive poll. This was published in the New England Medical Journal.
And from this. And they did the survey over decades which the Harris Interactive poll does in the U.S. confidence in medical leaders fell from 73% in 1966 to 34% in 2012. Who knows how much further.
Then they compared the United States to 29 other countries.
So and again we just heard from our statistician. America is still a great place to live, but doctors in your country can be trusted. We were 24th out of 29 countries. Again throughout the world.
And then, and it was interesting, was just a little dichotomy how we don't always think clearly. But then they asked the question, were you satisfied with the last treatment in your last doctor visit? And we ranked third for that.
I'm not sure I understand that. Kind of an interesting study though.
So this is also in the bibliography and I'm just going to read through this. This was a literature review, a very recent one. They reviewed 57 peer reviewed studies on trust over a period of 20 years. I think this is important now, trust and health systems.
And this is obvious for us, but trust again, but this is research. This is a peer reviewed published paper with statistical evidence. Trust increases with empathy, fairness, quality, service, collegiality, knowledge sharing, honesty, respect, relational bond, authentic communication, competence, clear boundaries, forgiveness, the doctor patient relationship. Trust increases with open and honest discussions, better health outcomes, treatment adherence, long term relationships, patient satisfaction.
They make a comment about conspiracy theories. Have those increased? Because institutional trust worldwide has declined over the past 20 years. And then medical mistrust leads to fear of harm, doubts of accuracy, questioning integrity and motivation. And the mistrust was most directed. This is kind of interesting. Health authorities, those in authority, pharmaceutical companies and medical researchers. And I'm one of those researchers, by the way. And they tied into vaccine hesitancy and risky behaviors.
So we're in a health crisis. There's a decreased public confidence with quarantine and limiting freedoms. You can talk about COVID And then they conclude with, they don't conclude with Ephesians 4:15. We'll get to that. I just put at the bottom, because it relates to this, trust equals patients best interest plus honest communication. That is obviously very, very true.
So because we have lost trust, we have also lost. You've already heard this this weekend. Meaning we've lost purpose, we've lost truth, we've lost connectivity. You heard that from our sociologists. Now dependency, we've lost discourse, all on our cell phones. We've lost joy. And I think that's an important one. We need to tell our colleagues what joy it is to really Charlie. Care for the person.
It is joyful. I could, I could go on stories, but I'll stop there. Is it possible to rebuild trust? How many say yes?
All right, majority. So I, I, I will agree yes, But I'm going to give you a qualified yes.
And again, the reason I say this, we, you are the Colson fellows here, you have a project and we're to rebuild whatever we're rebuilding, make better. You've heard the four Colson sayings that's not going to happen completely until Christ comes back.
Okay, we're just as ambassadors to help rebuild to restore what he's called us to do. But I'm in the firm belief we'll always have mistrust. Our goal is to make it more trustworthy, knowing that we're never going to be 100% till Christ comes back. But that's not going to stop us. That's why I put qualified yes. So how do we rebuild trust?
And these are the four items I came up with as I went through articles and read these books by these these folks.
Truth and compassion, dialogue sacrificed and honesty. And when I say truth and compassion, no, I emboldened the and people talk about truth and people talk compassion. They go hand in hand. You cannot have one without the other.
So again, Ephesians 4:15.
By the way, it's interesting if you guys know the the chapter four of Ephesians talks about being one body, one spirit, one baptism, et cetera, et cetera. It's about the unity of the body of Christ. And then Paul writes to the Ephesians, but be wary of these waves. Remember, I talked about waves and the winds of deceitfulness and deception.
This is the verse that follows after that.
Because of this deception that exists in the world, you must speak truth in love. Do you find this challenging? How many find this challenging to do this? Well, all right, Very good. All right.
Love without truth, sin is no big deal.
Truth without love, grace is no big deal.
That's why it might be balanced. Who has done both perfectly? Everybody knows the answer. It's like the first grade Sunday school class. We know the answer is Jesus. Okay, there you go.
[00:25:22] Speaker A: Before we continue with this week's episode, here's a special announcement for you.
If you're looking for informative, biblically grounded perspectives on today's biggest healthcare issues, be sure to check out the Point of Medicine, a forum from Christian medical and dental associations.
Through this forum, we hope to educate, encourage and equip health care professionals and the church to practice and advocate for good medicine, which is God honoring and committed to the flourishing of every patient as an image bearer of God.
Visit CMDA.orgpoint to explore the latest articles.
When difficult ethical questions arise, you don't have to navigate them alone.
CMDA's policy and issues Library offers medically reliable guidance and thoughtful Christian perspectives on topics such as abortion, conscience protections in healthcare, physician assisted suicide, human trafficking, embryo research, and many others.
Whether you're facing these questions in your practice or simply Want to learn more? You'll find trusted resources to help you think clearly and respond faithfully.
Visit CMDA.org and select Policy and issues to learn more.
Let's jump right back into this week's episode.
[00:26:55] Speaker C: So wisdom.
It does take wisdom, and it's interesting. Studying the Hebrew word of wisdom in the Old Testament. I'm not a Hebrew scholar, but I love studying these stuff.
The Hebrew would read this as prudence, insight and discernment. So the knowledge is the what, the wisdom is the how and the when. Can we. We can espouse knowledge without love that happens in that transactional healthcare patient interaction. But wisdom espouses knowledge with love. So speaking truth and love takes wisdom. If people ask me, you know, well, how do we gain wisdom? I just asked him to go read the proverbs, particularly Proverbs 2 of all the proverbs, but it's the Father talking to the Son and he's teaching him how to get wisdom. Go read tonight. Proverbs chapter 2. It's an instruction from the Father to the Son how to get wisdom. The other way that I. I look at this as a surgeon.
I think the Patience Lane Operantale wants me to be wise. I think that some of the other staff in the room don't necessarily wise. They're just kind of there to do what they're told. I get that, but I need to have the picture of where the patient's at now, where I want the patient to be at the end. Not only that, where I want that patient to be in a year from now. So that takes a whole lot of wisdom. It takes some delegation of responsibilities. It takes open communication and dialogue with the whole staff. Everybody makes sure everybody's on the same page. But I'm the one in charge and I need to make sure we're all on the same page.
That's the same with rebuilding trust in health care.
You will be hated. Jesus says this multiple times. So if we speak the truth in love, you will be hated.
Again. Just. Just read these real quick. From John 15. Therefore the world hates you. Why is the therefore, therefore again? Because he told him the world's going to hate me. Therefore the world's going to hate you.
Mark 13. And you'll be hated by all on account of my name.
From John 17, remember, he's praying to his Father. John 17. Jesus praying to his Father after the upper room discourse. And he goes, the world has taken to his Father. The world has hated them because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. And then the last verse of the discourse that we have in in the book of John up in the upper room telling his disciples in the world, you will have tribulation, but take courage, I've overcome the world.
Now at the same time, Paul writes in Second Corinthians that we're to be this fragrant aroma.
And for you ladies, walking through the rose garden and just it smells beautiful for us guys. For me being from Oringham to a Tennessee barbecue. Oh man, smells good.
This fragment aroma. And then Paul also talks about being a fragrant offering based on Leviticus, both in his letters to the Ephesians and the Philippines. How can you do both? How in the world can you be hated at the same time? Just be this beautiful aroma and fragrance.
So Tim Keller, I like to quote Tim Keller a lot. He says, if you want to take a self assessment of your faith, this is a great way to do it because you should be hated and loved at the same time, which the world can't understand. That it is the greatest self assessment. And if you are only loved, I'm going to don't listen to me and listen to Tim Keller. If you're only loved, you need to recess your faith. If you're only hated, you need to recess your faith. If you're neither hater or love, you need to recess your faith because this is actually a measurement of your faith and how you're living it out in the real world.
So what is your reaction when you're hated? Insult. We have all kinds of reactions. Let's tell you. Let's go to Scripture, how we're to react to this. We're not to act surprised. First Peter, do not be surprised. These fiery ordeals. Okay, we're not to be surprised. We're not to be argumentative. 2nd Timothy 2:24. We're not to be quarrelsome with gentleness. Tell them the truth. That's all in the section of second Timothy, chapter two. And then Paul says the reason not to be quarrelsome, argumentative so that they can escape the snare of the devil. And that's how we need to look at these people. They're enslaved to the snare of the devil. So we go with not quarrelsome, not argumentative, but with truth.
We are to be patient when wrong. First Peter, chapter two, the Sermon on the Mount. We are to be blessed and we're to rejoice when we're persecuted and insulted, just like the prophets. Also in Luke 6. We are to be well content, take pleasure. I love this verse so Let me just read this one.
So this will say, well, content the King. James says, take pleasure.
So 12:10. Therefore I am well content with weaknesses, with insults, with distresses, with persecutions, with difficulties, for Christ's sake. For when I'm weak, then I'm strong. I'm asking myself this, do I live by that?
Do we. Do we try to avoid all those things?
Just have to ask yourself that. We respond with joy. When we're hated. We're supposed to run joy. The world cannot think this way.
We're supposed to respond with peace. In John 16.
Dial on next one dialogue.
How can be wise, shrewd as serpents, gentle or innocent? As does Matthew 10.
So Dr. Griff, where Dr. Griff went, there he is. He has this thing called Faith Prescription. How many are there? 30. Now there's 30 faith prescriptions, and he asked me to do the one on Matthew 10:16. Griff, why'd you give me the hardest one?
[00:32:16] Speaker A: So.
[00:32:17] Speaker C: So go to faith prescriptions number 26, if you might like it or not, I don't know.
Cautions, Chapter four. Conduct yourselves with wisdom toward outsiders, making the most of the opportunity. Let your speech always be seasoned, as it were, with salt that may know how you should respond to each person.
What is your reaction to someone that has a different opinion than yours? A different ethical opinion, 1. You can be more forceful. There are times for that.
Be more logical, rational, scientific. There are times for that.
Be kinder. There's definitely times for that.
Compromise. There are times. There are times not to compromise, but there are times to compromise. This is what that takes, that wisdom. There are always times, though, to look for opportunities for the gospel, as Kukl would say, to place pebbles in their shoes again. Solzhen Nietzsche, when he was speaking at Harvard Medical school in the 1970s, he was not invited back, by the way.
It was asked by someone in the audience, why can we not just get rid of the bad people and make the world a better place? Paraphrasing the question. And we hear that all the time.
But anyway, this is his answer. The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either, but right through the every human heart, through all human hearts. You know, that's a great quote. We are. We are in sin, guys. All of us are sin.
So when we give our testimony. Give your personal testimony. How God has redeemed you. God has redeemed me from this ensnarement of my divided heart.
Ephesians, chapter four. And I'll just. A couple, couple of verses here that I'll read. Let no unwholesome word proceed from your mouth, but only such as a word for edification according to the need of the moment. Again, great verse, second Timothy two. We talked about that. And again, that they may come to their senses and escape the snare of the devil. 1st Peter 3:15 Sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts, always being ready to make the defense to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you. With what? With gentleness and reverence.
There will never be complete agreement on bioethicals within our culture. At least not until Christ comes back. I believe that now listening is an art. It can be modeled, it can be learned. It goes along with having that true curiosity. We can listen without having curiosity, but we need to listen with the curiosity and we need to listen with the understanding. Really understand the person, really be curious. Even if they think completely different and think immorally, we still need to have that curiosity. You know, Jesus asked 307 questions in the gospels.
This is my Favorite question in Luke 24:19 so these two dudes, Cleopas is one. We don't know the name of the walk on the road to Emmaus after the resurrection, Jesus comes up upon him as he's the resurrected Christ, he can do whatever he wants. Comes up hey, what are you guys talking about? I'm paraphrasing this of course. What are you guys talking about?
And we don't know if Cleopas, the other guy responded. And I'm paraphrasing. Hey dude, they're not recognizing Jesus. Dude, did you just climb out from underneath the rock? Do you not just know what happened in Jerusalem?
And what is Jesus response in this verse? Is this. I laugh when I read this, by the way. I laugh.
He goes what things?
Here's the creator of the entire reality inquire universe.
His death and resurrection is the focal point of all of history and it's him.
But things like he doesn't know. And then he goes explain then I would love to be on the road. Then he goes explain the entire Old Testament, the whole scripture, how it applies to today. And he finally does reveal himself to him. But what things? You can ask provocative questions, so learn to listen.
Can I articulate the other's position and the way that they would approve? Do I celebrate others misfortune again, going back to the TikTok and everything? I don't use social media either.
Do I desire to cut off relationships with those whom I disagree?
Do I attack the person or their ideas? Do I gossip or take measures to damage others reputation? We need to be careful of that in our offices too. Do I use social media appropriately? What evidence would I need to change my position? And then what if I am wrong?
Sacrifice. Now sacrifice is kind of an interesting topic. And what does that exactly mean? It really means focusing on the other person. The way I like to think of Jesus when he's here on earth is every well again. He talked to his father all the time, but he did incomplete will of his father. Never wavered from that. But when he came to another person, his focus was not on him at all. Ever, ever. It was always on the other person 100% of the time. To me that is sacrifice. So I remember a colleague was doing a pastoral internship in Chicago. This was decades ago.
He had mentored. And they're walking around downtown Chicago at 2am and this guy was from the country, he'd never been to a big city before.
And he leaned to his mentor and said, is that a prostitute?
And the mentor turned to the colleague and said, listen son, you need to look at that person as imago dei. That is a person who's created in the image of God, who so happens to need to make a living and they've chosen occupation that you and I would not approve of. That is an imago DEI right there.
We need to think that way. We need to think away. Do you view every person as a mago day?
Which people do you find difficult to view this way? Okay, audience participation. You don't have to answer for yourself. I want you to answer for your colleague, your family member, your friend, who they find it difficult to interact with and view with difficulty. There's tons of answers. Yeah, those you disagree with. Okay. Those you disagree with.
I see a hand over here. Come on. Convenience of answers. Yeah, the no showers.
I like that one. That was not on my list. I gotta add that to my list.
Do nothing families.
Yeah, those are great. There's. Yeah, yeah, the non compliant in the complainers. Both of those two different categories. There's, and there's, there's lots more.
Entitled the entire. Oh boy.
In my orthopedic practice, when the young teenagers come in, the parents, this is the next, you know, Tom Brady or whatever. You have to make them 100%. You know, I get that all the time.
My lawyer says it's nothing personal. You don't like being sued. He did a good job and he said I might still win.
So. So it's with the attorney saying, you know what attorneys Say, I'll just leave it at that. So attorneys can say strange things. Yeah, Yeah. Secondary gain. Absolutely. Happens all the time, bossy.
I know there's more. I'm just going to show you my list, my personal list. The alcoholic, tell me you haven't had trouble with them. The drug addict, the sexually addicted, those that have committed violence. And I tell you that's hard for me when I'm on call and there's been an MVA caused by a drunk driver, and the drunk driver is one of my patients.
That's hard.
I had a drunk driver hit me head on. I fortunately did not get injured. A little scrape in my thumb. My brother did not have his seatbelt on, and he had an open subtalar dislocation towards artery and his nerve with facial lacerations. He was put in the hospital room right next to the person that hit us with a broken spine.
How do I care and love for that person? The lgbtq, the obesity, the smokers, the marijuana users. I have all kinds of people come into my. In my clinic that reeked of marijuana, those with foul language. I didn't have to fire one patient once because I gave her five warnings. I'm usually a patient man. I said, if you cuss at my staff, I'm going to discharge from my practice. And she'd come every time. I said, you know what I said? 5. Fifth time, I said, that's it. You're done.
But anyway.
Race, intellect, mentally disabled policymakers, socioeconomic somnom. You go down the list. We need to be aware of our. We all have prejudices. We need to be aware of those. We need to, again, view everybody as the Mago Day.
Now I get a chance to speak to medical students and nursing students, and I have these existential questions. I have a whole list of them, and they're very fun. They open great dialogue. This is one of my favorites, and I think I only picked a couple. But are human beings intrinsically valuable, or does their worth depend on their ability to contribute to society? It's an interesting dialogue. I did this in Belgrade last November. I was in Belgrade and I had 60 medical students in the room in probably 30 different nations. Every religion you could imagine, including a lot of atheists. I think there were two believers in the crowd because I knew those two medical students.
It was split 50, 50, literally that some believe, no, they're only valuable if they contribute side. No, others believe intrinsic. So it was just an interesting discussion. Of course, I shared the gospel at the end of this presentation, but nobody cares how much you know until they know how much you care. From Teddy Roosevelt.
Honesty, the truth may hurt, but is never harmful. And one of our old Roman leaders, truth never harmed anyone. What harms us is to persist in self deceit and ignorance. It's a great quote from George Orwell. In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.
Okay, why is trust important?
Again, let me read from first Timothy, chapter four. But the spirit explicitly says that in later time some will fall away from the faith, paying attention to deceitful spirits and doctrines of demons by means of the hypocrisy of liars. Suitor in their own consciousness with the branding iron. We need to realize people are seared. Their consciences are seared, they're deceitful, they. They've been deceited and they've been deceived by those that speak lies. We need to understand that when we're engaged in these. So rebuilding takes planning, focus, wisdom, hard work, teamwork, leadership, advocacy and wop. What is wop again with all these magazines over here and I'm not touting my name, but I wrote an article in here about wop. It's mean. If you go to advocate, what Colson center do is you go advocate. You need to advocate with wisdom, you need to advocate with unity, and you need to advocate with prayer. Just take one of these. There's plenty of these around. Take one and read it. But don't go advocate.
There's things you're not going to know. But study up.
Look, find the issue, read about it, even from both sides. All right? Don't do it by yourself. That's why we're the church. Do it together or at least confide in other people how you're going to advocate.
And don't go without prayer. I will just tell you one story that's in there real quickly. The first time I advocated a state legislative level a long time ago and they only allowed four that were for this evil bill and four against. I was against. I was the last one to go.
And they spewed venom. We were very gentle, brought wisdom. At the same time in the state capital of Oregon, we had 50 people praying for us. Four.
And so the. And again, I'm looking at the Senate committee and none of them are believers. I know that, but the chair when I got up is Dr. Lance. I'm not going to allow you to give your testimony. I'm baffled what he goes when that person walks in. I'm also the medical director of our pregnancy center as an orthopedist again. Funny, but I love it.
Dr. Lance, when that patient walks in your praying center, who's responsible for that patient's care? Go. Sir, I'm the medical director.
I'm responsible. And he hit his gavel this this committee hearings over and he tossed it out again by going with what if we go with wisdom and unity and prayer. It's amazing what God can do. Absolutely amazing what God can do.
Rebuilding trust in health care again. This is Nehemiah and his crew. You know they didn't 50 some odd days built this wall which is amazing.
From Nehemiah, chapter two. Then I said to them, you see the bad situations we are in. That Jerusalem is desolate, lies in ruins and its gates burned with fire. Come, let us rebuild the wall of Jerusalem that we may no longer be a reproach, a disgrace.
Our house of medicine is broken. We are disgraced, guys. We are a disgrace. It's up to us to rebuild.
Really is.
Lessons from Nehemiah.
They faced external opposition, harassed, oppressed, deception, violence, internal opposition within the Jewish nation, apathy, fear, disheartened, discouraged, demoralized.
There's they had to have a sense. Nehemiah brought a sense of urgency, resiliency and perseverance.
You have to assess the damage, know the resources you have available.
It requires bold leadership. Courageous to delegate responsibility, motivate others, encourage. Nehemiah did all of this. It takes unity they couldn't do it with unless they did it all together.
Takes mentoring, modeling, teaching, equipping. This is all from the book of Nehemiah. You're not read it recently? I read it. It takes repentance and forgiveness. Particularly asking God to forgive them for their mistakes and their pride. It takes prayer.
But at the end, read the last book. The joy and the celebration when the walls rebuilt is a wonderful celebration.
Trust is earned. Now Nehemiah, you remember, he was the cup bearer. Talk about sacrifice. Okay, let me taste this. King, make sure you don't die. I will die for you if need be. So he was a cup bearer.
It does take sacrifice. So this I did Bible study, fellowship and we studied Nehemiah. The few quotes. The world's permeating darkness and perpetual brokenness leave us with an unending pursuit of damage control.
Trusting God leads to bold requests and courageous actions grounded on his sufficiency and power.
We have access to this, guys.
We must not allow our own comfort to blind us to the needs around us. That's problem with American medicine.
Righteous purpose fuels faithful people with supernatural power and patience against Enemies, taunts, confession, repentance. Again, From Nehemiah, chapter 9.
The sons of Israel assembled with fasting and sackcloth, with dirt upon them. And the descendants of Israel separated themselves from all the foreigners and stood and confessed their sins and the iniquities of their fathers. While they stood in their place, they read from the book of the law, the Lord their God. For a fourth of the day, another fourth, they confessed and worshiped the Lord their God. That's an example for us guys.
So again, how have. What can we repent of? And this is the list. I can repent. I didn't stand up. I didn't speak up. I was silent on truth. I protected myself, my practice. I protect my retirement. I compromised on truth. I did not put my job or my life on the line. I valued autonomy as the primary virtue. I was remiss in advocating for the vulnerable. I said no to the Lord when I should have said yes. And I will tell you, this still was burning in my heart. I remember when, as a young doctor, I was making extra money working in urgent care, and I had a young man come in business guys, and he's from out of state, found out from a different state, was on their business, and he had slept with a prostitute that night. He goes, doc, I just want some antibiotics. The Holy Spirit told me to share the gospel with that man, and I did not. I wrote him his prescription of cephalosporin and sent him on his way out. I still feel guilty of that today, that I did not obey the Holy Spirit when he clearly told me to.
Clearly told me to.
I give inaccurate, incomplete information. I forget to pray. I view people as interruptions to efficiency rather than opportunity. Have you ever experienced that? I give answers before I understand the person with the question. I was rude, angry, frustrated, impatient, anxious. There's so much we need to ask repentance for and ask for forgiveness for.
Just as the Lord forgave you, so also should you forgive each other. From Colossians 3, forgiveness leads to freedom. When I share with medical students, I go to John chapter eight and Michael, we're just talking about this verse. We've already heard this multiple times. And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you. What?
Okay. And I don't. You need a show of hands. But do you know what the verses are after that? And then we know Jesus speak to Jews who believe Jews that believed him. So that probably included the disciples and some others.
The next sentence is by them saying, I'm paraphrasing Jesus. We are Free. We're not. We're not enslaved to anything. We are free. What are you talking about? Kind of the typical American response to today.
Jesus. Next response. No, you're not free. You're enslaved to sin. And you guys don't realize I'm here to rescue you. That's John, chapter eight, and that's what I use to share the Gospel. Forgiveness leads to intimacy with God. We need to bless others, pray for others, love others, our freedom. Galatians 5:13. Our freedom is not for ourselves. It's to serve and sacrifice for others. And we should look at our freedom that way.
Forgiveness is not forgetting. Forgiveness is not reconciliation. Forgiveness is not trust. Forgiveness can lead to restoration. Reconciliation, trust. In fact, I said it's essential. Repentance and forgiveness is essential to restoration.
Those who have repented and have been forgiven often make the best health care professionals. Those that in my pregnancy center, those that have gone through abortions and now don't come to know Christ and repented of it. Make the best counselors. Because they've lived it. Make the best counselors.
The church and healthcare connected.
There's so many things that we can do as healthcare professionals with the church. This is a list. I'm not going to read it. You can. You can agree. The list would go long, but the Gospel changes everything. We need to partner with the church to bring truth to the United States, to wherever we're at, but to health care as well.
Rebuilding trust. What is man? We must get the anthropological answer correct if we are to be trusted.
We need to get that answer right.
We need to get it right.
[00:50:11] Speaker B: Friends, I hope that you found Brick's message as encouraging and thought provoking as I did when I heard it right there in person at the Colson Center National Conference.
One idea that has stayed with me is that rebuilding trust within healthcare begins long before a patient walks into the exam room. It begins with how we actually view people, our patients, and. And whether our words and actions reflect the love and compassion of Jesus Christ, the great physician.
Trust isn't restored overnight, but God can use each faithful encounter to help rebuild it.
I'm reminded of Paul's words to the Corinthian Church in his first letter to them. Now it is required that those who've been given a trust must prove faithful.
Please join me in praying for Christian healthcare professionals all across our country, that God would give them wisdom and compassion as they care for those he's entrusted to them.
May they be known not only for their clinical excellence, but for faithfully pointing others to the Great Physician you know. If today's conversation has encouraged your friends, please share it with a fellow healthcare professional and subscribe on YouTube so you don't miss future episodes.
Next week I'll be joined by three of CMDA's area directors who are from Detroit, San Antonio and the Triangle area of North Carolina.
They join me to talk about how God is at work through local ministries all across the country, encouraging and equipping healthcare professionals and and students to faithfully live out their God given calling. You don't want to miss it.
Thanks for listening today to Faith and Healthcare where our promise to you as a listener or better yet, a subscriber to this podcast is this.
We will do everything at CMDA that we can to keep your faith and healthcare connected.
We'll see you next time, Lord willing.
[00:52:27] Speaker A: Thanks for listening to Faith and Healthcare, the CMDA Matters Podcast. If you would like to suggest a future guest or share a comment with us, please email cmdamatterscmda.org and if you like the podcast, be sure to give us a five star rating and share it on your favorite social media platform.
This podcast has been a production of Christian Medical and Dental Associations.
The opinions expressed by guests on this podcast are not necessarily endorsed by Christian Medical and Dental Associations.
CMDA is a nonpartisan organization that does not endorse political parties or candidates for public office.
The views expressed on this podcast reflect judgments regarding principles, principles and values held by CMDA and its members and are not intended to imply endorsement of any political party or candidate.
