Our current healthcare system is the crowning achievement of modern civilization. So far as we can tell, we live longer and better now than ever before. This is not an abstract achievement - nearly everyone in the modern world is directly affected by this (like me - I’d be dead if it weren’t for modern healthcare, with the rest of my family). Sure, there’s lots of problems with modern society - finance and politics, anyone? - and there’s always been Galtists or Luddites who want to leave it all behind. But even the hippies in the Byron Bay forests come out when they’re sick.

However all this comes with a problem: the costs of healthcare are spiraling out of control. What few people realise is that this is inevitable: if you save people from dying from one disease, they’ll live longer and contract a nastier and more expensive one (and the worst case is old age). Keeping people healthy is a losing proposition - it gets harder and harder as they stay alive longer. The real problem is that no matter how hard we work at it, we’re all going to die.

When looked at from this perspective, our fabulous modern healthcare system looks rather like a band-aid:

“My people are broken–shattered!– and they put on band-aids, Saying, ‘It’s not so bad. You’ll be just fine.’ But things are not ‘just fine’!” (Jer 6 v 14, The Message)

The Bible tells us that the reason we die is moral, not physical: that in the beginning we sinned, and since then, we’ve been dying. (”Everybody dies in Adam” - “Because you ate from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from, you’ll be working in pain all your life long, until you return to the ground yourself, dead and buried; you started out as dirt, you’ll end up dirt.” 1 Cor 15 v 22 & Gen 3 v 17, The Message)

It follows, then, that if the problem is moral, the solution is moral. But at this point, many professed followers of Jesus take a wrong turn. “A ha”, they say, “so, if that’s so, then we should make everyone lead a moral life now, and it’ll all get better.”

Err, No.

Putting aside that problem that there’s no moral way to make people lead a moral life - you don’t need to know much history, or even current events, to know that - this dismisses Jesus’ sacrifice. “You didn’t need to do that”, they say to Jesus, “We can save ourselves in our own way. All we have to do is follow your teaching.” Well, that won’t work. Jesus didn’t sacrifice himself for nothing, and certainly not to have people tell him that they’ll find their own way, thanks very much.

Jesus sacrificed himself for us. And that’s no band-aid. So you don’t just stick it on from outside either: you drink it up.

Next post: Drinking up Jesus’ Sacrifice.