God Bless America?

The deeper our (and by our I mean yours AND mine) country’s debate on the health care crisis becomes, the more disenchanted I become in the ability for us as a nation to mend the divide between those that have and those that have not, those that care and those that do not, those that want to help and those that will not, and those that seek the help necessary from others that they can not provide for themselves and those that should not. It saddens me that many in this country have chosen to ignore a very serious crisis that has befallen us all, a crisis that we can not endure, a crisis that will lead to our economic demise, simply because we refuse to look at the long term consequences of our inaction.

I speak to people every day that have spent the last decade of their lives suggesting that the United States of America is a nation founded upon Christian principles. I have been told that without the grace and favor of God that we as a country would not have the glorious and carefree existence that we have grown accustom to. I have been preached to by my own pastors that in order to remain in God’s favor we must seek, not only as individuals but as one nation under God, to please our maker by our behavior and by our laws. Yet, our nation’s inability to decide weather or not it is right or wrong to provide somebody with quality care when they are ill is astounding to me as an American, as a Christian, and as a human being. When did we become so consumed with our own self satisfaction, our own need to have what is ours (after all we earned it), and our self righteous mentality that if they wanted it bad enough, they could get it on their own?

Some would answer this question by telling you that entitlements go against the deeply engrained ideology that this country was founded upon, some would call this socialism, and still more would simply say, “It’s not my problem.” I would ask you this, if we are a nation base in the belief of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, then how does health and well being of our citizenry fit in? Isn’t life based upon our state of well being? If liberty is the ability to choose our own path, should ones inability to pay into a system that is wholly overpriced and largely ineffective, determine the path that they choose? Why, in a Christian nation, is our ability to pursue happiness base solely on what we can and what we can not afford to pay for? How have we come so far (the Emancipation Proclamation, Social Security, fair labor laws, women’s suffrage, and civil rights), yet fallen so fast?

I believe if we had to look into the eyes of those whose lives have been shortened because of our short sighted and selfish choices, and watch as they die from diabetes without medication, cancer without chemotherapy, and heart disease without blood pressure medication, and watch as they live with intense pain without treatment, we would then be unable to ignore those in need. Because we would have to weep for those being strangled by a system that determines a humans life span by how much money they make. I have to tell you though that I am beginning to question that belief in the empathy of my fellow Americans. As this debate goes on, it seem to me as a country, we are more consumed with our fears of that great unknown called "change", than in the reality of the suffering of so many people we choose to call brothers. Why should God bless America, when we choose not to bless those of us we call Americans?