Jemar Tisby on Healthcare

Well, I was sent yesterday a tweet from Gospel Thought Leader on Twitter. If you're not following the

Gospel Thought Leader, I highly recommend him. He is full of winsome, very even -handed advice for all of you people who don't know how the gospel applies to everyday life.

He's a thought leader. He is very important in this conversation, and let me just emphasize that he is tremendously winsome.

Anyway, he sent me this video from Dr. Jamar Tisby. Now, I'm not sure if he's a doctor yet.

I think he might be almost a doctor, but I'll give him his due if he's a doctor. If he's not,

I'm not really sure, but Dr. Tisby here is talking to Covenant College about the long history of racism and Reformed theology, and there's a section that the

Gospel Thought Leader pointed out was particularly helpful, and this is a section where Jamar is going through the

Westminster Catechism, and he's talking about the Sixth Commandment. The Westminster Catechism is really good.

If you haven't watched or read it, I'm actually preaching through the Ten Commandments right now at my church, and it's tremendously helpful.

It really gives you a full -orbed view of what each of these commandments are. Now, you might know this, you might not, so this could be a review, but when

Jesus was asked what the most important commandment was, he said to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, all of that, and then the second is like it, love your neighbor as yourself, and really, those are summaries of the

Ten Commandments. The first four commandments are how to love God, and then the six commandments after that are how to love your neighbor, but even the

Ten Commandments are a summary because there's a lot of other commandments in the Bible as well, but each commandment in the Bible fits into one of these

Ten Commandments, so if you want to know how to love God, there's a lot of applications for how to love

God. If you want to know how to not kill, what's required in the sixth commandment, there's a lot of applications for that commandment in the

Bible, and so the Catechism does a great job putting it all in one place. It's a very, very helpful thing, and so a lot of times, these are much more than meets the eye, so when it says you shall not kill, there's a lot more required here, and Jamar's going to talk about that, but let's just listen to what he has to say, and then

I'll respond to it, because this is a common theme in the social justice debate. I think you'll find this pretty helpful. Let's listen to Jamar.

Own life and the life of others. It's quite general, but the larger

Catechism holds more detail. The larger Catechism says, in the answer, what's required.

It means avoiding all occasions, temptations, and practices which tend to the unjust taking away of the life of any, and protecting and defending the innocent, so apply that to slavery.

Were Christians defending the innocent? Were Christians avoiding occasions, temptations, and practices which tend to the unjust taking away of life?

He's actually right about this. I think that a lot of the sins of slavery in the

United States actually were breaking the Sixth Commandment in various ways.

I think he's actually right about that. Again, the Sixth Commandment is not just about murdering, although that is literally what it says.

It includes murdering, but it also includes some of the things he was talking about. He was quoting the larger

Catechism there, which is exactly right. I think he's right about that. I would say that some

Christians were breaking the Sixth Commandment in slavery. Some Christians weren't, but it depends on the details.

Jamar Tisbee likes to paint in broad brushes, and that's fine. Let's just continue. Then it goes on, what does the

Sixth Commandment forbid? In other words, to obey the commandment, do not do these things.

Forbiddeth the taking away of our own life, or the life of our neighbor unjustly, or whatsoever tendeth thereunto.

It's a good application of the Sixth Commandment, avoiding and forbidding things that tend towards the taking away of life.

That is very true. Listen to the application he's about to make. So might we add in addition to slavery,

Jim Crow segregation, lynching. Here's one, the lack of access to healthcare.

Here's one, the lack of access to healthcare, after a very thoughtful pause. This is something that Jamar Tisbee does a lot.

In fact, this is something that every social justice advocate in the church does a lot.

They'll say something that is so vague and so generic, and it sounds like talking points on the progressive side, but they don't actually go so far as to talk about the actual talking point on the progressive liberal side, and so they can always deny that they said it.

But Jamar Tisbee will post socialistic quotes constantly, and he doesn't say whether he agrees with it or not, but it's pretty clear that he does.

And so when people call him a socialist, they take offense, he's not a socialist, but it's very clear that he is actually a socialist, even if he doesn't quite know it yet.

But anyway, listen to what he said. He said, can we add Jim Crow to this? I think that's debatable, but I'll go with him there.

Can we add lynching to the sixth commandment? Clearly, I mean, that's not an application. That's just literally breaking the sixth commandment.

If you lynch a black person, and you're not the state, and you're not executing the death penalty as the state in a just way, then you are literally breaking the sixth commandment.

That's not a profound application. That's a very clear breaking of the sixth commandment. And then he says lack of access to health care, again, after a very thoughtful pause, and he says, here's one.

And it all depends on what he means. It all depends on what he means. And again, this kind of a vagueness is not helpful in this conversation, but I think everyone who hears him kind of knows what he means.

What he means is health care as like Obamacare, essentially, giving people access to health care.

Because here's the thing, though. He could mean a bunch of different things.

So on the charitable side, we could say, if you're a Christian, and you want to keep the sixth commandment, you cannot withhold health care from black people or Latinos just because you want to.

You don't like black people. You don't like Latinos. And so you're going to withhold health care that they would otherwise have access to.

So they want to pay you to heal their sickness or whatever it is. And you say, no,

I don't treat Latinos here. If you're doing that, and you're a Christian, you're in violation of the sixth commandment.

That's a sin. No question about it. But that's not actually what he says. He says lack of access to health care.

And so that can mean all kinds of things. That can mean if you vote against Obamacare, then you're breaking the sixth commandment and things like that.

And that's typically what people are talking about when they say stuff like lack of access to health care.

I mean, you can't just say these words in a vacuum and expect people to not assume that's what you mean.

I think that is very clearly what you mean, because here's the thing. If you wouldn't have said, here's one lack of access to health care, unless you weren't about to say something controversial, and that is extremely controversial.

In fact, it is so controversial. It's actually a sin to vote for a program like Obamacare, because here's the thing.

You can't keep God's law by breaking God's law. So you can't say, well, I'm keeping the sixth commandment by breaking the commandment against stealing.

Thou shall not steal is one of the commandments. There's a great meme out there of the Good Samaritan. And he's sitting there and he grabs the guy who's beaten up.

And the Samaritan says, hold on, wait right here. I'm going to go write some laws to help you out. You know what

I mean? And that's a great meme because you're not being the Good Samaritan by voting for the government to steal from people in order to give health care to other people.

That's not keeping the sixth commandment. You cannot keep the commandment by breaking another commandment.

God's law doesn't work that way. God's law requires that you love everybody with impartiality.

You can't be partial to the poor. And so if you're saying, well, I'm going to steal from rich people to give to poor people, you are not treating people with impartiality.

You're being very partial. You're being partial to the poor. The Bible is very specific to call out you cannot be partial to the poor.

And so God's love, the love that God requires from us is impartial. You cannot show partiality.

And unfortunately, Obamacare and other kinds of health care schemes, it's not just Obamacare, by the way. It's all the health care schemes that we have in the

United States. They're all breaking God's commandment. So you can't keep the sixth commandment by breaking another commandment.

It doesn't matter if it's thou shall not steal or something else. If you're breaking one commandment to try to keep another, you're in sin.

And so I would say that if you're voting for things like Obamacare, things like expansions of Medicare or even

Medicare at all, all that kind of stuff, that's showing partiality to the poor.

Now, I'm not saying you shouldn't give free health care to people. You should do that of your own volition. And so here's the thing.

I think doctors would do this if there was no Medicare, if there was no Obamacare. I think doctors would provide free services to poor people.

I think they would. Now, if they didn't, are they in sin? Well, that depends. But at the end of the day, you don't have the right to their stuff.

Nobody has the right to someone's labor. That's called slavery, by the way. And so if you're against slavery, you're against that kind of stuff,

Dr. Tisby, then you're against any kind of idea of someone having a quote unquote right to health care.

Health care is a service. It's, you know, no one has a right to your services. That's called slavery.

That's what the slave masters, they thought they had the right to the black people's services. Um, anyway, that's my response to this.

I thought that was very interesting, very thoughtful. Here's one access to health care. Well, it depends on what you mean by that.

But I think everybody knows what you mean is you unfortunately don't have the courage to just be forthright with what you're saying.

I think that's pervasive in the social justice space. They don't have the courage to actually say what they mean.

So then they give you the impression. They give you the impression. And hopefully they can trick you into thinking that health care access is essentially a six commandment issue.

Well, it could be dependent on what you mean. But again, if you were saying something uncontroversial, like Christians should provide mercy and grace and charity to the poor, you wouldn't have said, here's one access to health care.

Anyway, hope this was helpful. God bless. The thing about this video, don't fall for this rhetorical trick.

If you notice, he says, lynching and Jim Crow, those are two things that are very uncontroversially evil, right?

Very uncontroversially break the law of God. Everyone thinks that lynching breaks the law of God. Everybody thinks that Jim Crow breaks the law of God to some degree or another.

It might not be the same law, but they both break the law. And then he throws in the one that's controversial and actually incorrect.

Access to health care. That's a rhetorical trick because he's basically getting you to, this is a sales trick too.

This is a salesy type of a trick. He's getting you to agree with him. Oh yeah, yeah, lynching, that's bad. Oh yeah, yeah, Jim Crow, that's bad.

And then access to health care. He wants you to go with him all the way, but he hasn't proved anything. Later he says,

I could say more about that. Well, Jamar, we would like you to say more because that's where we'll know if whether what you're saying is in the