As Peter Sammons reflects, the British worship their ‘health service’.
GETTING ALL RELIGIOUS
It was journalist Melanie Phillips who once quipped, “the NHS is the closest thing the British have to a secular religion” (and I apologize if I have misquoted her). She makes a valid point.
The NHS seems to be beyond rational critique and is seen in the minds of most people as a secular ‘Saviour’. When devised in the 1940s, the idea was to provide good basic care ‘free at the point of use’. By ‘basic care’, was meant the best care that might reasonably have been available at the time. But at that time, life expectancy averaged 64.01 years, and when people died, it was very often after a short illness. [ When State pensions were first introduced in Germany under Bismarck in 1889, people retired at 65 and the actuarial assumption was that they would on average live to age 66! ]
Today, life expectancy in Britain averages 81.15 years and people tend eventually to pass away after long and complex illnesses. Chronic conditions will dog most people for significant periods of their later life. Death is an absolutely ‘taboo’ subject, and there has never been a proper national discussion about how we care for people who are inevitably going to die. Is it right, is it justifiable, to essentially maintain people on ‘life support’ for years of chronic illness? How do we actually prepare for death?
DON’T TALK ABOUT IT!
Of course we live in a post-Christian culture and it is amazing how few ‘secularists’ are willing to speak of death – or even to contemplate it. As a Christian I find this dearth of death discussion, and this refusal to focus, hugely significant. As Western adults have (largely) rejected their Creator God and refuse to meet with Him, so – in turn – they have increasingly placed their entire faith in ‘religions’. In Britain the most pervasive religion is the NHS. There are others, but NHS has pride of place.
The ‘gods’ of the religions generally demand obsequiousness from their adherents. The NHS is no different, and the further to the Left in terms of political leanings, the greater the obsequiousness and observance. During the 2021 Covid imbroglio, we saw millions of people exit their homes once a week and witness before the heavens, manically bashing pots and pans, cheering, and (in very a British fashion) clapping appreciation for the great ‘god’ NHS. At the time I could not help but think, very few Christians would do this for Jesus, yet in 2021 virtually anyone with wind in their lungs, were out there on the street worshipping publically (“they have their reward already” (Matthew 6: 2-5)).
I forget which Labour MP once said ‘we must weaponise the NHS’. In 2022 Britain spend £283Bn on the NHS (which is said to be the sixth biggest employer in the world; Britain has under 1 % of the world’s population!) or 11.3% of gross domestic product. The BMA states that since 2010 Britain has ‘underspent’ on NHS to the tune of £362Bn, but they are a lobby group (the doctors’ trade union) and their figure might have more to do with ‘weaponising’ than with actuality.
To speak of the religion of the NHS we must reflect on popular ‘culture’. There are a number of long-running NHS soap dramas on television. “Angels” was a British TV seasonal drama dealing with the subject of student nurses, broadcast by the BBC between 1975 and 1983. It was described as the “Z-Cars of nursing”! The show’s format switched to a twice-weekly soap opera format from 1979 and there were 220 episodes. Whilst the God of Jacob may indeed send His angels in certain circumstances, in Britain we believe our angels are employed by the NHS.
HOW MUCH TO SPEND?
The blunt truth of the matter is that there is no sum imaginable that could possibly satiate the ‘need’ of the NHS for more money. Politician Nigel Farage once stated “Britain has a national health service, not an international health service”. In many senses, of course, he was right. His political point was that there were (still are) absolutely no controls over who can access deity NHS. Once a person sets foot in Britain, deity NHS will ‘receive’ them into the everlasting ‘health kingdom’. All shall be saved by NHS.
As ‘health’ spending grows inexorably, so spending on other essential services inevitably declines. There is a genuine potential for Britain’s NHS to trash the British economy -permanently – as investments in education, technology and innovation all suffer declining state- and private- support. This is known as ‘killing the goose that lays the golden egg’! Ironically, ‘Health’ spending in UK dwarfs security spending (283Bn for NHS, 54Bn for defence) at a time of growing international tension. As Britain’s defence posture becomes increasingly weak (in-credible), so foreign aggressors increasingly seek to exploit perceived weakness. Ironic indeed if the NHS – in practice if not intention – encourage the next war, given that Britain can no longer ‘afford’ a credible and flexible security deterrent (Britain’s standing army in 2026 will decline to 67K,the smallest it has been for 200 years).
Should Britain spend more to deter aggressors? Or spend more on the NHS to ‘care for’ the casualties of the inevitably coming war? Egg and chicken, or chicken and egg?
THE POWER OF LIFE AND DEATH
What has been the biggest, most long-lasting legacy of the NHS? It is arguably that the NHS has funded all abortions since 1967 (and often carried them out, as well). Since 1967 there have been something over 10M publicly-funded abortions in Britain (we have a population today of approx 67M). Over the same period a similar number of people have migrated to Britain from abroad – it is almost as if for every baby destroyed, God sends a direct replacement. Whatever our view on inwards migration, this must be said; whenever we see on our streets an obviously non-UK person, we should be reminded – there goes another baby who was denied the right to life. And all funded by the NHS. The power of life and death ……
The all-pervasive British unwillingness to discuss death and dying provides an easy ride for the growing euthanasia industry. Since people in Britain will be artificially kept alive for well beyond God’s ‘allotted span’ (three score years and ten, or fourscore – Psalm 90:10) often in increasing discomfort, so special arrangements (euphemism for euthanasia) must be introduced. So-called “assisted dying” is growing in popularity, and like abortions will in the (near) future be funded by deity NHS, albeit probably carried out by private ‘service providers’.
The so-called ‘suicide pod’ as developed by Dr. Philip Nitschke, the founder of Exit International, a pro-euthanasia group.
Men and women may be able to wrest a measure of ‘control’ over their exiting this Earth, just as they wrested control over who might enter it, but they are never going to wrest control over their eternal destiny. This remains resolutely in God’s hands.
THE POWER TO HEAL
I sometimes wonder whether the medical healings that we hear of in developing countries, some of them quite miraculous, reflect both local Christians’ more simple belief (faith) that God can and will heal, and their need to depend totally on Him because they have absolutely no other option. So here God acts decisively.
I also wonder whether our British/Western concomitant lack of healings (we simply put people on long-term drugs to treat symptoms) reflects our determination to trust deity NHS in preference to the God of Jacob. God does not share His glory with others (Isaiah 42:8). How often do we hear in prayers “dear God, please ‘help’ the nice doctors and the nice nurses to heal our old friend, Billy” (or whomever)? But precisely what are we asking?
When we ask such prayers, and if someone is ‘healed’, we then claim “look, our prayers were answered”! Yet a cynic would reply (and probably correctly) “no your prayers were not answered, rather the medicines worked as they are meant to”. So we are laughed at, and our God is denigrated. I am not worried at all about being laughed at – that goes with the territory of being a Believer. But I am concerned at how few are the healings we experience in reality. If we get in God’s way of healing, then He is surely entitled to say (if I may suggest this reverently) “If you want Me to heal, then ask. If you want to do the ‘healing’ yourselves then you are free to do so, but do not then ‘ask’ Me, and muddle up the issue. Make your choice, and live (or die) by your choice”.
Frankly too many Christians want to have their cake and eat it, as regards ‘healing’. Their true ‘faith’ is invested in the NHS (or other medical ‘services’). Yet as a ‘belt and braces’ alternative, they want to pray for healing as well, just in case …… Christians rarely encourage people to prepare for death, an eventuality that we must all face, sooner or later. Why not, I wonder?
I am well aware in writing this I raise a range of difficult questions, and of course health services are – in so many ways – a genuine blessing. Furthermore, God does indeed work in, and through, the medical ‘professions’. Yet He does not share His glory, and nor does He allow confusion as to who, or what, is doing healing. This is quite right! He should not share His glory!
DEBATE NEEDED
Here in Britain we need (but will never get) a sensible grown-up debate about the NHS and what can – and cannot – be afforded. To some Britain is today, quite simply, NHS. There is no bigger issue, no finer ‘morality’, no greater good, no finer cause. “Our NHS” heals us, and loves us from the moment we are born (should the NHS allow us to be born at all) to the moment “Our NHS” decides to switch off our life-support. How indeed “Our NHS” loves us! Given just a few percent more of the national wealth, the NHS will be able to “cure anything”, we are assured: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20211122-could-mrna-make-us-superhuman
So we do not have to reach out to the God of Jacob, any more. We are moving, in any case, towards becoming Homodeus, man as ‘god’. With our new technologies we can cure anything. We are masters of our destiny, and our ‘god’ is “Our NHS”. It is doubtful that the institutional churches will have anything useful to say on this except “man shall not live on bread alone, but the NHS can indeed live on the ‘bread’ of ever expanding public expenditure!”
But as suggested above, “our NHS” is a financial bottomless pit, and is in reality unaffordable. Like any false deity, it’s demands for obsequiousness become ever more shrill, and its requirement for ‘sacrifice’ ever more demanding. Through the United Nations’ new World Health Assembly and its associated ‘pandemic treaty’, the NHS shall act as judge, jury and executioner in determining which economies to keep open, and which to close – at least as regards the UK. Our new ‘god’s’ powers appear to have no limit!
I suppose in writing this piece, I shall now be identified as a ‘heretic’ and treated (or even not treated!) accordingly. Yes indeed, we British worship “our wonderful NHS’.
WORSHIP GOD ALONE
Back in the real world, and in the real eternity, all men and women are called to receive Jesus, as Lord and as Saviour. We may die in this world, but Disciples have security for the future, because He has given Himself for all of us! He is THE healer, not only of bodies and minds, but also of souls. Praise Him indeed!
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Peter Sammons is commissioning editor at Christian Publications International. He is author of “Rebel Church” (2013), “The Prince of Peace” (2015) and “Three Days and Three Nights – That Changed the World (co-authored with David Serle) in 2019.
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Other comments on euthanasia:
Kind Killers
https://christiancomment.org/2020/11/02/kind-killers/
It would be funny if…..
https://christiancomment.org/2022/01/01/it-would-be-funny-if/
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