My institution initiated a new short course for 200+ first- and second-year MD and MD-PhD students across campuses in two states. The course was actually requested by the students. The theme was pressingly relevant – racism and race relations.
Interestingly, the organizers strategically created a 2-hour panel discussion for the first day of the online class. The topic? Comparative religion. The implied message is important – religion and faith tradition are often key parts of culture, and differences, lack of knowledge, and misunderstandings can easily become triggers for division, mistrust, fear, and bias. In the context of the healthcare system where these future doctors and scientists will serve, understanding religion and faith tradition may be crucial for building trust and effective communication with patients and colleagues, allowing shared decision-making and healing.
The panel blended laypeople and professional faith leaders – a hospital chaplain who serves all seeking spiritual support, a Catholic priest, a reformed Jew, a Muslim, a Sikh, a Hindu. I had the great privilege to speak as a non-denominational Christian believer.
After introduction of the panelists, each was invited to briefly introduce their faith tradition with up to four key descriptors.
Here are the four words I chose.
Emmanuel. This is a Hebrew word. It means, simply, “God with us.” Christianity shares with Judaism and Islam the story of Abraham, a Bible character whose personal encounter with a personal God is set perhaps 4,000 years ago. While the three great Abrahamic religions of the world spring from the story of this encounter between God and man, only Christianity recognizes that God himself returns to live with us and to die for us. Jesus Christ is Emmanuel – God with us. No other faith tradition is based on such a claim, or such a gift.
Rescue. The Christian faith recognizes that God has created this universe, and perhaps a multitude of other universes, for purposes that we cannot know. However, in the infinitesimal corner of this universe where the human story is being told, God’s purpose from the very start has been a rescue. God initiated the story of a world that would need a rescue because it is in rescue that we meet him and understand him. Christianity is the ultimate rescue story.
Separation. God is a rescuer and his rescue solves the problem caused by my behavior. I constantly and consistently fall short of my own ethical and moral goals for myself, let alone external standards. I feel guilty about it. My failures separate me from God because I recognize my undeserving imperfection. I struggle to be lovable, but fail. It is this fundamental separation, built into humanity, that is addressed by the rescue.
Done. Christianity is different from other world religions and faith traditions. Most are spelled “DO.” What must the adherent DO to improve or to achieve enlightenment or to be pleasing to God? Christianity is not spelled “DO.” It is spelled “DONE.” I have learned that there is nothing that I can do to make myself worthy of God’s love. He loves me not because I am good, but because he is good. Stunningly, in the Christian story it is the hero who dies for the villain. Jesus allows himself to be killed as an innocent sacrifice, once for all, sufficient to rescue every human who has ever lived, and every human who will ever live. All of us. I don’t deserve it. Neither do you. We cannot do anything to earn it. There is nothing we can do to make our God love us any more than he already does. The gift has already been offered. The work is done. Jesus did it. To the Christian, the purposes of life are to accept the undeserved gift of Jesus’ sacrifice, and to live motivated by gratitude, both now and forever in timelessness.
9.6.20
