Religion: A Primary Force in Health

As the daughter of medical missionaries, I grew up with religion being a strong part of health and health care. I have worked in both government and religious health institutions and I admit that I always felt the most comfortable when the work of the institution was considered a service to God as well as to the people involved. This especially helped when caring for unappreciative people (as I often do in mental health) because God appreciates the work even if the receiver does not.

I was wonderfully reminded of the style of health ideals that I grew up with when I saw a new documentary this weekend called "The Adventists." This movie by Journey Films traces the history of The Seventh Day Adventist Church and their passion for health and wellness as a part of their religion that drives them to serve others also. Probably the most famous of their hospitals is the one at Loma Linda, California. The Adventists happen to be vegetarians, and I am not trying to say here that I believe we should all do as they do, but their model of passion about life for spiritual reasons is the big boom energizer of health that has become forgotten in the rush to find profitable markets to heal the sick.

I hear plenty of talk about changing our health care from an illness based system to a preventative and wellness based system, but I hear nothing of how to make people want to discipline their lives to be healthy. Certainly the government does not have this kind of motivational power; even the things they make illegal are abundantly used by citizens.

There are some individuals who have the self fortitude to discipline themselves for the sake of their own self esteem, or so that they can live longer with their children, or be an example for their children, but this percentage of our population is dwindling as we constantly increase the numbers of obese and morbidly obese people and children in our nation. Many of my generation were raised with health habits drilled into us by our mothers, but the sway of mothers over the diet of children is also a decreasing factor as mothers work and children fend for themselves with fast food.

The stunning theme that this documentary portrays is that passionate belief in something greater than ones self has been the motivation for healthy habits that have led to our great health care systems of today. I'm not Adventist, but I recognized the fervor and group discipline in them that I experienced in my own religious upbringing.


There is a telling little exchange in the movie "Mars Attacks" where a reformed prisoner who was a prize boxer talks about wanting to live cleanly instead of do a "job" for a wealthy loan shark. The boxer talks about getting in touch with Allah and giving up pork and finding out about peace in life. After this heart felt soliloquy the loan shark says "So you gave up pork?" Clearly the loan shark couldn't understand why someone would do anything that abandoned bacon and good chops, which made him oblivious to the spiritual strides also. But the point is possibly better made by the lack of understanding than a responding empathy. Those who reach the level of self control where they can make disciplined choices that end up improving their health and lives all together, do not fit into the world of risk, profit, gain and indulgence that drives a progressive economy. They become immune to the call to consume because they have their mind on something else.

There is an interesting observation in the documentary that people do not come into the discipline of healthy living until they fail or reach the bottom of their own attempt to live as they wish. Since I work in the mental health and substance abuse field, I am well aware that most treatment is wasted until the person really wants to change. This becomes a real conundrum when it comes to preventative medicine goals, because many people simply will not comply until they are ill and have no choice but to change.

When people who have come to illness through refusing to maintain wellness want health care, they want it to fix them while they continue to live their unhealthy life style. They want the pill or the treatment that will just put things back to where they were before their body wore out with their unhealthy habits. So they want to buy fixes, they don't want to learn changes. Here is where the role of religion and group dogma rescues people in a way consumerism medicine never can. Commitment to principles is inexpensive and self empowering. Consuming treatments costs money and creates dependency. The person who adds a passion for principled life to his or her health care considerations becomes free from illness and the system. The person who keeps trying to find some fix that will keep him or her from having to change becomes poor trying each new thing and dependant on the system to keep offering options other than change.

But submission to principle is no longer a significant factor of our society. At least, it is not expected anymore although it is sometimes admired when it is seen. And I pose the question again: Where will such truly healthy disciplines come from as religion declines in the country? The most ancient religious rules of our Judeo-Christian heritage had food and cleanliness guidelines. We now know that such things led to health among the people, but we have a governmental system that cannot dictate that. We have a governmental system that presumes that people will be self controlled for reasons other than government enforcement. When we were a widely religious nation, keeping our various food and life style restrictions, this worked. Since the current trend of bodily care has turned away from spiritual things and into a philosophy of self indulgence, we have big problems.

The Adventists documentary is a good picture of how things way outside the world of science and logic actually drive the benefits we have found in science and logic - in this case, specifically in health care. If we try to re-invent these benefits in health care without having the motivating factors, we will fail, like a house without a foundation.

My blog in general is dedicated to finding the lost spirit of health care in America. In this posting I have come, though the example of the documentary, as close as ever to showing that the health care crisis is in actuality a spiritual crisis and as such can only be fixed by spiritual means.