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| Men Weeding a Field by Dhammika Heenpella |
“For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard. After agreeing with the laborers for the usual daily wage, he sent them into his vineyard. When he went out about nine o’clock, he saw others standing idle in the marketplace; and he said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.’ So they went. When he went out again about noon and about three o’clock, he did the same. And about five o’clock he went out and found others standing around; and he said to them, ‘Why are you standing here idle all day?’ They said to him, ‘Because no one has hired us.’ He said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard.’ When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his manager, ‘Call the laborers and give them their pay, beginning with the last and then going to the first.’ When those hired about five o’clock came, each of them received the usual daily wage. Now when the first came, they thought they would receive more; but each of them also received the usual daily wage. And when they received it, they grumbled against the landowner, saying, ‘These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat.’ But he replied to one of them, ‘Friend, I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me for the usual daily wage? Take what belongs to you and go; I choose to give to this last the same as I give to you. Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous? So the last will be first, and the first will be last.”God’s Generosity, "Senator Graham Return to Sunday School"
The GOP Republican Congress and POTUS 45 just don’t know when to stop regarding their efforts to dismantle the Affordable Healthcare Act. They also seem to have no ability to recognize when they should embrace Single Payer Universal Healthcare and get on task and get it done. When it comes to healthcare, they know only how to bitch that there should be levels of reward versus healthcare being a citizen’s right. They gripe like the workers recruited early in the day as in Jesus’ story above. Senator Graham is patently offensive for putting forward a healthcare bill that would leave millions upon millions of our fellow citizens without healthcare coverage.
Personally, I think Senator Graham should have to live day in and day out for the next five years in the homes of families he would throw off healthcare coverage and that he would have to share in their suffering like any other member of those families when they can’t get medicines or can’t see a doctor or have a mental illness they can’t get treated. Perhaps Graham’s appalling and disgusting lack of compassion would transform to something that’s truly Christlike, because he evidences none of that now. I have an even better idea that in addition to living with families he would throw off healthcare coverage, Graham would also have to go back to Sunday School to pick up some crucial spiritual lessons and teachings regarding that we are one another’s keepers. Lessons that he has somehow forgotten during his time in public service and becoming a typical GOP tool of the rich and powerful.
Workers in the parable recruited late in the day were paid the same as workers who spent the entire day in the field. Those who worked only a few hours, as complained by the day long workers, shouldn’t get paid as much or benefit the same. Applying this notion of things to our healthcare system is that our fellow citizens should only have health insurance coverage to the level they deserve and can afford because of the job or work they do. The social justice notion of Single Payer Universal Healthcare, such as present in every other western democracy, is utter anathema to people like Senator Graham. They think the working poor or the sick only have the coverage they can afford to buy – sometimes Senator Graham, that comes down to a choice between food and the rent. How in good conscience and as a person of faith, so heartlessly abandon our fellow citizens to making such decisions. And don’t give me any of that bullshit about what the states should be responsible for and what the Federal Government should tackle. In case you hadn’t noticed, Senator Graham, we are all in this together and ignorance of that and how uneven the playing field would be from state to state, simply reinforces a perspective that you are disastrously out of touch with how greatly healthcare concerns every family in this country. When every person in this country gets the same level of Cadillac healthcare coverage and benefit you do as an elected representative, that’s when the healthcare system in this country will truly be socially just.
Why is it that POTUS 45 and the GOP Congress foam at the mouth over Universal Healthcare issue and not others. Why for instance when it comes to national defense, they don’t apply the same principle that the level of benefit should be commensurate to what a person can afford. Why for instance when it comes to our infrastructure like bridges or dams or our electrical grid they fail to foam at the mouth that the rich and powerful should have much better bridges and better dams and better electrical power than the working poor or the sick and disabled.
The thing that repulses me even more, is that our so many members of our GOP Congress proclaim themselves to be Christians! If so, they hardly understand the principles of God’s Generosity as Jesus taught. They understand it so poorly that senators like Lindsey Graham truly need to go back to Sunday School and repeat it all over again. What I wouldn’t do to have photos of Graham sitting on a tiny chair in Sunday School relearning Jesus’ message of God’s Generosity week after week and year after year until he finally gets it down – especially after his latest attempt underway in Congress to push a bill that will eventually eliminate Medicaid/Medicare altogether and get the Federal Government out of being involved in healthcare at. Graham, I don’t think I want to be you on Judgement Day when God deals with you and your soul-less ways toward your fellow citizens. You are a severe disappointment as a human being for putting forward a bill in Congress that will throw untold millions off their healthcare coverage. You understand absolutely zero relative to the principles of God’s Generosity as taught by Jesus.
Single Payer Universal Healthcare is a perfect example of God’s Generosity. It takes care of all of us without regard to whether you or I have worked all day, all year, or just a few hours, or no time at all. It only asks that people get the healthcare they need when they need it, nothing less and nothing more. Like whatever crop needs to be harvested so people can eat and not starve and therefore be healthier, Universal Healthcare is a commodity that benefits us all, just like our National Defense benefits us all, just like the Food and Drug Administration keeps us healthy and safe too.
Single Payer Universal Healthcare that benefits everyone the same, just as the workers found out in Jesus parable above, is a powerful step toward God’s Kingdom here on Earth, or what I like to call the Just and Peaceable Reign of God here on Earth. Why is this so hard for GOP Congressional Members to see, especially those like Senator Graham who proclaim themselves to be followers of Jesus. I don’t know what Jesus you follow Senator Graham, but whoever your Jesus is -- he’s utterly unrecognizable to me and to millions of other persons of faith in this country. The only way healthcare is going to work and do right by everyone in this country is not to put it back onto the states but to make it a right – an inalienable right covered and protected by our Constitution. Senator Graham, you have forgotten and disastrously lost sight of the preamble of our Constitution and so I remind you of it by repeating it here:
“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America..”Get your act together Senator Graham. Make Jesus proud of you again. Single Payer Universal Healthcare insures domestic tranquility, provides for the common defense by helping our citizenry be healthy --- and capable of engaging in defense. Without doubt, Single Payer Universal Healthcare promotes our citizenry’s general welfare and secures blessings not only to ourselves but also to our posterity --- for now and evermore.
Single Payer Universal Healthcare – get it done Senator Graham, and get it done now!
Brad Shumate
Free of Encumbrance
Eugene, Oregon
(Brad Shumate provides spiritual direction ministries in-person, via video-conferencing, by telephone, or through email consultation. If you are interested in benefiting from the healing ministries he offers through spiritual direction, please complete the contact form in the right column of this blog. Brad will respond within twenty-hours.)
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