Lessons in Thanksgiving: the NHS

A Recent Experience
One member of my family ended up in hospital for tonsilitis this week. Some aspects of his care would call forth criticism by some, but believers are called to give thanks in all circumstances, and thankfulness requires thoughtfulness.

The tiny negatives
It took hours in A&E before he was dealt with and recieved his first pain killers. And then while he was waiting for a hospital bed he had to do with a hospital wheelchair and try and get some sleep sitting upright. And yes it was in a hallway propped agaist a door. And there were no pillows, but a kind nurse improvised, put some blankets in a  pillow case and brought him a make-shift pillow.

And then once he did get a bed, there was no ward space, so once again his bed was wheeled into a corridor - but the kind nurses put a screen around him for some privacy.

What incy wincy negatives.....

The enormous positives
We need to place ourselves in another country and look at the situation from their point of view. Then the focus becomes clear. How immensly priviliged we are!

"What, you had an A&E department in your own city? We would have to travel a hundred miles to find one round here!"

"What, you were seen within just a few hours? The queue at our nearest A&E stretches on for days!"

"What the treatment was FREE? We have to pay big bucks to get treatment here."

"What! You did not have to bribe the doctor in order to be seen? Here the only thing that talks is money."

Just as familiarity breeds contempt, so living in a land of ease breeds a critical spirit.

The kindness of people
Everyone working in that hospital was kind to us. The nurses, matrons, auxiliairies, doctors - you name it, they were helpful. The ward was warm. The ward was safe. A prisoner coming in for treatment was handcuffed (both hands) to a prison officer so he couldn't hurt anyone. There were security staff walking around. No bullets whizzed through the wards and no bombs fell on the hospital.

The medicines worked - and cost not very much in the big scheme of things.

The fruit of the Gospel
This kindness, this provision, this NHS, is not a chance thing, but is the fruit of living in a country that has been shaped by the Gospel. Where everyone at the point of need is treated for free. Where human life is valuable.

So we have every reason and duty to thank God for the NHS, even when it is under pressure.

What is an Evangelical?

Issues that raise the question....
Two recent issues made me ask the question: What is an Evangelical?

First, the furore against Franklin Graham. Franklin is son of Billy Graham, and, while we may not align ourselves with everything Franklin supports (that should not surprise us, for true believers are all different: only cult members are all the same), the Gospel Franklin preaches is "as sound as a pound." See here for a statement of faith.

Franklin Graham is planning a UK tour this year and while we expect the world to oppose him, we are shocked to find people who call themselves "evangelical" are also opposing him. A small number of them (none of whose names I have ever heard of) wrote to The Guardian to protest, see here.

Can a true evangelical oppose a mission designed to share the Good News with the lost? Emphatically not.

The second issue was an article sent out by the leaders of a large Christian Pentecostal "evangelical" denomination declaring that they are now accepting women into ministry. The "paper" demonstrates a shocking disregard of the Bible and a tragic seduction by unbelieving academia.

So what exactly is an Evangelical?
What are we to think, say or do?

#1  None of us should be surprised that the true church will be infiltrated by false teachers. That is the main warning of the letter of Jude. Heretics will slip in among the true flock. Look at what has happened to Steve Chalke. A man who once preached the Gospel now preaches a very different gospel, seduced by the academy.

#2  All of us should be on guard. We are in a spiritual battle. And nowhere does that battle reveal itself most openly than an attack on truth and the people who preach the truth.

#3  We should remind ourselves constantly what an Evangelical is. It may be that we have to ditch the title and call ourselves simply Bible believing Christians. An evangelical believer or church is a church that holds the Bible up as the final authority in all matters of belief and practice. We are not blown by every wind of doctrine. We do not follow the changing fads of the academy or culture, we believe in the perspecuity of the Scriptures. That big word means this: Bible truth as understood by the ordinary believer is Bible truth. You don't need a degree in theology or logic or first century history to understand the Bible. You just need the Holy Spirit plus some good friends around you who will push-back should you go astray. Plus the help of your church leaders. No amount of new research, for example, will undo the plain man's understanding of Scripture - that homosexual practice is sin, and that men are called to lead their wives and lead in the church: it's the plain teaching of Scripture.

#4  No-one should be moved. Finally, no-one should be moved, led astray, or seduced. In fact the very opposite! What is happening to Franklin Graham and what is happening in major denominations should cause us to dig in, to stand up for the truth, to be more determined than ever to share the Gospel, stick to the truth and live upright holy lives in an evil generation.

In a strange way we can even rejoice over these situations because they expose false teachers and cause God's people to be on their gaurd and stick to the truth!

Rejoice over error? I never thought I'd hear myself saying that, but it is true. Out of grit in oysters, pearls are formed. Satan always oversteps himself and God works for the good.

Why transitioning will one day be seen as medical abuse

Is it ever right to "change" your sex?
Two articles at the end of last year got me thinking:

Detransitioning - Telegraph Article

    and

Detransitioning - Sky News Article 

Both of them reveal that scores of people are detransitioning.

I am not here going to discuss the impossibility of altering  the chromosomes in every cell of your body, making the very idea of changing from one sex to another an impossibility, but leave that to the noble Dr Paula Johnson in her TED talk.

But I am going to make a "historic" prediction: come back in 50 years and stone me if I am wrong.  

Some predictions are foolish, some are wise
Some prediction are unwise. How will the UK fare out of the European Union economically? Who knows? Who will win the next election in the USA? Will Climate Change be reversed - is it actually reversible? Who knows?

But one wise prediction is this: in 100 years or less, the operation to change a human body from one sex to the other will be regarded as one of the most barbaric medical procedures ever conceived of and inflicted on hapless - and far more seriously, hurting - human beings. Transitioning is a double wammy. First the mental trauma they are passing through, then to add to it, "medical" butchery.

We will look back in horror at the very thought that medicine ever dreamt up or carried out these procedures. Chopping pieces off human beings, sewing on new pieces, nipping here, tucking there, mutilating body parts; pouring alien chemicals into human bodies. That we ever abused children with chemicals to retard or arrest their natural sexual development.

Josef Mengele will have to be forgiven.

Here are the reasons, from the lesser to the greater...

Reasons we will certainly regret this medical regress

(1) Medicine has plenty of historical horror stories

Look - white coats - they must be right

In the history of medical science, new is not necessarily good. There are lots of horror stories out there.  Perhaps the best modern example of abuse were the famous lobotomy operations where one part of the brain was severed from another part (the audacity in hindsight!). By the 80s these operations ended. Today, says Wikipedia, "lobotomy has become a disparaged procedure, a byword for medical barbarism and an exemplary instance of the medical trampling of patients' rights." Mark my words, Wikipedia will say the same thing about medical transitioning in 100 years, if not before. The idea that "medical science is always right", is about as true as saying "Barack Obama was always right." The idea that operations undertaken today will never be judged tomorrow is an arrogant miscalculation.

(2) Medicine is shaped by the cultural milieu
There is no such thing as neutral medicine, any more than there is no such thing as neutral astronomy. All human endeavours are driven and guided by the cultural thinking of the day. The key projects, to take one example, of astronomy today - we're talking billions of dollars - are bent on finding life on other planets. There is no neutral "let's find out everything that's out there," all research is focused down to one narrow goal, which is itself guided by evolutionary thinking (life must have evolved everywhere)  and a radical denial that human beings might just be unique.

So too with medicine. Medics kill millions of babies around the world before they have a moment to breathe because of the lying philosophy that a baby is somehow merely a part of a woman's body, in the same way that a wart or scab is part of her body: hence she has a right to get rid of "those cells." And now we encourage children and adults to change their birth sex - the only true sex - because of some ludicrous "spectrum of genders" philosophy.

Medicine follows the philosophies of the day, it does not possess some timeless neutral truth.

True Stories of Abuse

(3) Time will tell
It may be exciting to undertake novae operations, either as the surgeon or the victim. And the Adrenalin of the new often blinds us to the underlying deep-seated negatives or the long-term problems. We're on the cutting edge, folks, let's bury bad news.

But now as time passes, those who transitioned are telling their stories (see the articles above and the book to the right) and the true horrors of this medical abuse are coming to light.

Listen to Walt Heyer who went through this operation and detransitioned.

Hear him here: Walt Heyer speaks out

Wrong medicine always shows up in time. As more and more stories of medical transitioning abuse come out momentum will gather to ban it - and perhaps prosecute those who performed it. 

(4) We live in a tiny - completely untypical - historical blip
From the universal structure of historic languages (feminine, masculine, neuter) to the universal understanding of males and females marrying one another, our culture is on the wrong side of history. And we can see a reaction among some of our young people against this foolish tide of nonsense, as well as a massive resistance (but today only able to be expressed in the four walls of their homes, when Alexa isn't listening) of vast swathes of our population to these instinctively, and obviously, and foolishly wrong ideas.

Wisdom always scans the past for wisdom and asks "was there ever an age which promoted such ideas?" If not, wisdom treads carefully. 

(5) Changing sex is above all, against biology
Every cell of our bodies is sexed from birth (almost every cell). Unless you liquidise someone, change the chromosomal make up of every cell and then reconstitute their bodies, every transitioned body remains exactly the sex it was before it was transitioned. The body is not only sexed at the level of organs, it is sexed at the more fundamental level of cells.

This is the main reason we will look back in horror and disgust at what we are doing - because these operaions are against biology, against science, against fact, against truth. What aroogance we will one day say!

The difference between today and previous generations is that the Internet can carry false philosophies around the world making them, like a virus, spread faster and further. Truth on the web travels much slower. Nevertheless future generations will wake up once the detransitioners speak out and speak up.

I have missed out of my five reasons the most important. The Scriptures make it plain that God created us either male or female. The sex we were born with is our real sex, and only sex; and to meddle with that is to meddle with God's design. Living in a fallen world there will always be a small number of people whose gender has been messed up, but that does mean we encourage them to re-assign, instead we help them to cope with the ravages of the fall. I've missed out this reason, because, as always, God's Truth always lines up with the facts as we find them in the world.

Anger and pity
Our response to transitioning should be both a profound anger against those who promote such historically-blippish, medically abusive philosophies, and deep pity on those who drawn in and seduced by such mistakes and are forced to suffer the profound indignities of such bodily exploitation, abuse and maltreatment. The way to treat a person who feels different is not to affirm their feelings, no matter how strongly felt, but to help them through and in those feelings.

The Gospel brings common sense
Christians should respond in sorrow and love towards those who have been abused in this way. Christians never despise anyone, because Jesus didn't. And we should rejoice that the global and eternal Gospel sets us free from the errors of our transient world. So we should preach it with more passion and confidence than ever before, because it is the only answer to every human ill. The Gospel forms a new identity- no longer are we male or female, Jew or Gentile, free or slave - or any other fleeting identity, but our new identity is in Christ.