health – Perspectives

We cannot follow all the UK news but last night Andy Knox (a GP and consultant within the NHS alerted us to an almost non-reported bill that the UK government has just turned down the protection regarding selling off the NHS. (Here is one reference I could find:
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/mps-nhs-vote-trade-deals-brexit-a4504631.html.)

This is something that maybe could have been predicted but is somewhat ominous. Interestingly in the past three or so weeks I had been somewhat focused on the NHS and wider health issues.

(For Andy Knox’s highly insightful thoughts some of them can be found at:
https://reimagininghealth.com/.)

I wrote an email a short while back to a couple of people who are working in the NHS and reading again thought for what it is worth putting some of the extracts from that here. (I appreciate that it is very UK focused (NHS) and that I am biased toward health care for all and not on the basis of income and therefore privatised. Apologies where what I write does not apply beyond that.)

It does not matter to me too much how one defines the demonic – classically as evil spirits or as spiritual non-personal powers (Walter Wink et al.) as the effect seems to be the same! The demonic is focused on dehumanising… hence the spirit of antiChrist denies that Jesus came in the flesh; enmity was declared to be between the seed of woman and the serpent’s seed; to fall short of the glory of God is to fail to be truly human etc. For this reason I see the NHS as a major target. Health care is easy to identify as a ‘good / Jesus-like’ career – not so easy to suggest hedge-fund management in the same category! We have also had a window into a revaluing of work with the term ‘essential workers’ during this lockdown. If healthcare is a ‘godly’ focus then we should not be surprised to realise that there is a strong attack against it fulfilling its mandate. If a dehumanisation process against workers is successful they will then find it harder to humanise those they care for. Hence I see a spiritual strategy that is to demoralise, dehumanise those who care, affect the culture at the core – like planting a poison at the centre. The next step is that once humanity is sidelined from something there is an openness to mammon (I see Jesus and Judas as a key paradigm to understand the interplay of discipleship, money and also religion.)

I see at the moment for many situations a 2 year period for preparation and significant paradigm shifts, from functionality to people centredness. I have been saying for many months that 2022 is when we will hit some major global crises. COVID is a crisis, but it is also a warning to make changes so that we are ready. If institutions can make a shift it will be surprising how many can come out the other side.

If the above is accurate then there is a window of opportunity now for the NHS. There will be some real heat that comes against (and might have my terminology wrong here) – the minister for health and others in places of authority / responsibility. But for those who are a ‘lower’ level there will be in a protected place. Although the 2 years is a window there will really be the possibility of a 5 year process ahead.

I see also that there are pockets of people in place around the nation that are pulling for a new ‘spirit’ in the NHS, so behind the scenes there will be a discovery of a growing set of hubs / clusters, an unofficial network.

The NHS is important also at this time in the context of the UK. It is not simply about defending what has been and how good it was, but it is a trend setter. The UK has to find a new identity – so this is not simply about a restoration of what was but a deep renewal taking place that will give it a new identity, and become something of a sign for the nation. Hence the battle.

I was hoping that Boris’ experience might have been a Damascus road (maybe with a small ‘d’) experience. From where I sit I am not sure it has been that – Paul said he was not disobedient to the heavenly vision, and the grace of God was not in vain toward him – maybe Boris has, at this point, not yet yielded. There will, though, be other remarkable events to some key people that will give further shake ups.

Changes, changes, changes. Who can predict the future? Post Brexit referendum the jury is still out as to what that all means. Gibraltar the clearest ‘remain’ vote (could this be down to vested interest?!!) and yet one of the biggest financial contributions to the leave vote campaign came from there. How will a year-old party shape up in France? Across the pond what is happening?

Dependent on the glasses one wears and therefore how we see the world I guess we could be anxious wanting to go back to some safe boundaries (for safe read yesterday and status quo) or we can see opportunities in the space that is opening up. I lean heavily to the latter. From a theological perspective I do so as my eschatology does not have space for a future antiChrist, but consists of an open future that we are challenged to shape in the light of the gospel of freedom; and from an intercessory perspective I see the open space as a result of prayer. Our task is to open space and let it be filled by those of positive vision for the future whether they have faith, as we define it, or not.

In some correspondence today I suggested there are three aspects of society that are essential to shaping the future at this time. I do not place them in an order of priority but suggest they are:

education
media
arts

All aspects / spheres of society are important but some have been colonised more than others; some have been suppressed more than others; hence I select these three as perhaps containing the greatest potential. In reverse order…

The arts. Years ago I gave a crazy prophetic declaration that when we learn how to value art the housing market will be re-valued (in many areas that means de-valued). When house prices dictate who can live where, we are not living in a free world. There are also come crazy valuations in the art world, but there are many artists (in the broad sense of that word) who are working with little return. Meanwhile there are those who make money from money… Paul was clear that those who are entitled to eat are the ones who are working, which of course begs the question as to how the word ‘work’ is to be defined biblically. I mentioned above that some spheres have been colonised, and some words certainly have. We have colonised ‘work’ along an ’employed’ / ‘unemployed’ line. Once we remove those terms from a creational context we will have very little left to pull us in a new-creational direction.

Artists are gifted to open our eyes, ears, emotions and imagination to where we could be going. There is a lament contribution that can be made that exposes the right grief about what we have done, but I think now we need more than ever a message of hope. Faith is related to what we hope for, it creates the shape for faith to develop.

The media. We have prayed for a new media. I admire the way that the media continues to push to get stories, even when so much of it has been designated as ‘fake’! The media is not unbiased, and this applies to the media that I like as well as the media that I disagree with. Thank God for social media, although so mixed, it gives access to alternative perspectives, sometimes alternative facts, but even when that is the case these are alternative facts coming from the bottom up rather than imposed from the top down.

A free media is vital. In most of our democratic western nations we struggle to really have a free media. The mainstream newspapers of the UK… the TV channels in Spain… ‘freedom’ is not the first word that could be used to describe them. But we are witnessing the same kind of shift as during the Reformation with the printing press and the release of Scriptures in the ordinary language. Controlling the press cannot and never will be absolute, and I applaud those who are committed to its liberation and doing so at personal cost.

Education. I love history, knowing the story of where we have come from is essential. The wisdom and knowledge that has got us here has great value. Animals seem to learn some aspects through instinct, but we as humans learn this through intentionality. We have the knowledge how to build a car, but imagine if you were the last human alive. I would struggle to put together a cart akin to one from ancient society. The knowledge and gifts are held corporately. We can build a cart, a car, a space rocket. Knowledge has great value in being passed on, but creativity birthed from questioning will take us further. Education is not simply teaching people what to think, it is certainly teaching people how to think, but perhaps its greatest goal is to teach people to question.

Neo-liberalism has all-but destroyed most aspects of the economic and business realms, so much so that there seems even in the Christian world very little radical thinking. Unless we have at the core the deliberate non-maximisation of profits, coupled to a strategic plan to be free from the love of money, and at least a measure of embracing the principle of jubilee there does not seem much hope for a change there. (And if this is not arrested I might well have to change my beliefs about an antiChrist – not because of the Bible but our inability to take the Bible seriously enough…)

So in this little musing coming out of this morning’s correspondence I am suggesting that the three areas of education, media and arts might be at the forefront of setting health care free from the monetary colonisation that is there… and from health care there might even be a shift elsewhere.

Tag: health

National Health Service

To boldly go

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