WHY?
Healthcare is changing. Though once seen as a divine field, medicine has been transformed by rapid secularization and new economics that have fueled financial exploitation, divisive politics, and increasing frustration, cynicism, and disillusionment in those who once sought something more meaningful. While there have been exponential gains in scientific understanding and treatment achievement, changes in medical ethics, malpractice, and medical culture have also overwhelmed many healthcare providers’ ability to make meaningful and humble sense of the world. As a result, not only has healthcare lost much of its posterity, austerity, and integrity in our post-post-modern culture, but it has coerced Christians into a defensive and embattled posture in which they feel it is all they can do to simply be Christian and a healthcare provider, much less a Christian provider.
However, Edmund Pellegrino, founder of modern medical ethics and a Christian himself, once said, “Medicine is the most humane of sciences, the most empiric of arts, and the most scientific of humanities.”* By definition, medicine must bridge the most vexing dichotomies and paradoxes of our modern world: life and death, suffering and healing, spirit and body, science and faith. If it is to be of any value, it must make the transition from “benchwork to bedside,” across ever-widening socioeconomic gaps, and from sorrow to joy.
In short, the new nature of Redemptive Healthcare must be willing to and capable of adopting an innovative stance, again bridging seemingly disparate and conflicting forces with the counter-intuitive truth of the Gospel: that Jesus Christ, who was in very nature God, became a man and humbled himself to death, even death on the cross. . . . and that through that death we have forgiveness, healing, and resurrection.
This website hopes to be a part of the emerging movement.
WHO ARE WE?
We include a diverse panel of healthcare providers that are exploring what it means to serve the inner city. Some of us have lived “on the block”, representing some of the most dangerous neighborhoods of our respective cities. All of us believe in intentional community: that the exercise of life together in places we would not ordinarily be found is the manner in which we come to understand Jesus Christ better, who made his dwelling among us.
WHAT IS THIS?
We wish to share our reflections and experiences in:
- Healthcare & vocational training
- Health policy and health disparities
- Intentional community in the inner city
Many of us grew up outside the inner city but were somehow called to live and work in it. We wish to chronicle that journey here to be an encouragement to others who are exploring the same thoughts or hope to do something similar. We hope that you find it helpful in your journey towards Jesus Christ, who loves us and continues to redeem the world today. Our writings also serve as good personal catharsis.
WHAT DO WE BELIEVE?
Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:
Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be grasped,
but made himself nothing,
taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to death –
even death on a cross!
Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
and gave him the name that is above every name,
that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father. – Philippians 2
WOULD YOU LIKE TO SUBMIT YOUR THOUGHTS?
We are looking for those willing to describe their experiences with any of the above themes: healthcare, urban life, faith, and redemption. Please share ESPECIALLY if you have something you are struggling with! By sharing your disappointments, triumphs, frustrations, questions, and struggles, you give voice and strength to others in similar positions that would otherwise feel isolated. Serve them by lending your voice. Please e-mail your thoughts to admin@theurbanresident.com!
*Pellegrino, Edmund D. The Philosophy of Medicine Reborn. Ed. H. Tristram Engelhardt, Jr. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2008. 6. Print.
