Category: Health and Medicine
What the Body Needs
For a tech-skeptic lover of Wendell Berry, Ivan Illich, and Neil Postman, as a family physician I sure picked the wrong job. Doctors have always used various technologies for treating patients, from the ancient Egyptian prescription to fumigate the womb...
The Blind Get the Last Laugh
“Did you play with other kids at the park today?” I ask my kids over lunch. “Yeah, we made a friend,” my son says, while my daughter chirps, “with a baby!” She is barely bigger than a baby herself. “But,”...
“Biopolitics” Are Unavoidable
In the struggle to fight COVID-19, terms like “public health” and “community health” have been bandied about in an attempt to describe the ways in which our health as individuals is not dependent on ourselves alone. Wendell Berry says: “I...
Covid-19, One Year On, Pt II: The Limits of Politics
One year ago today, the number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the US passed 85,000, surpassing China where the virus had begun, and giving us the unenviable distinction of being #1 in the world. Today, America still holds that...
COVID-19, One Year On, Pt. I: Threnody for a Buried Nation
One year ago tonight, I sat in the bar of the Hotel George in downtown Washington, DC, waiting for my friend to arrive. The TV in the corner was tuned to ESPN, but for once there was no game on....
Dementia and the God Who Remembers
Privation If evil is a privation of the good, as held by many in the history of Christian theology, that does not imply it is passive. An all too active force, evil might be akin to an insatiable blackhole, sweeping...
Book Review: The End of the Christian Life by J. Todd Billings
We live in a death-denying and death-defying culture. We know, on an intellectual level, that one day we will die, yet we tend to avoid contemplating this inescapable truth more than is strictly necessary. For modern people, death is an...
The Cross Amidst a Plague: Choosing Cruciformity Over Self-Interest
In the weeks leading to Easter, Americans found themselves, religious or not, on an enforced fast from normal life. The liturgical feelings associated with Lent became the daily realities of uneasiness, mourning, fear. There are the real personal fears, the...
What the Coronavirus Reveals: An Invitation to American Evangelicals Who Have Been Quoting that C.S. Lewis Essay
The argument of this essay is simple. I want to invite Christians, particularly American evangelicals, to a new consideration of how the coronavirus might cause them to rethink what kind of healthcare policy ought to mark a flourishing society. I...
Medical (and Theological) Reasoning in a Pandemic
“a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;” Ecclesiastes 3:3 A Common Word Between Medicine and the Church My day begins at 5:30 am. Not a bad start....