Do Doctors Find Propaganda Value In Religion?

[ChuckK3]

Do doctors find propaganda value in religion? Perhaps they do. Why do people consult them? Because they are afraid to die, that's why! I am a testimony to that fact. Believe me, I would very much like to get to the point where I can tell the doctors to just plain kiss off! Because they take half of my hard earned paycheck, they have in effect made me a slave. But the only way they can really make me a slave is to make me afraid not to consult them.

When I started getting sick years ago, I thought I was going to die. The teachings of hell have greatly influenced my thinking, even though I was trying to fight those influences. If it weren't for the fear of hell, I would most likely had let nature take its course.

Doctors in the United States anyway are nothing but a bunch of huckstering businessmen. But their business would dwindle badly if people only stopped being afraid. That's why doctors need religion, so they can have patients to pay them money, so they can play golf on weekends and hire callgirls in the evening (what? don't they love their wives?). Perhaps to be of the medical profession was once a great calling (ie. Luke), but today it's a business opportunity.

This morning, when I was on desk duty, someone called me complaining of a noisy party. Our company's policy prohibits us desk people from acting in the scope of a police officer. So I had advised him to call the police. A few minutes later he calls back and starts giving me a ration of trash, saying he's going to complain about me to the management, because he expects me to act in a manner in which I'm prohibited to do so. In the course of his fussing, he talks about how he's a dedicated doctor, wanting to help people. I felt like giving him a piece of my mind, but I had to restrain myself. Just wait until I end up in his hospital and become his patient! I'll sure tell him what for!   

Well, I just needed to vent a little this morning, thanx.

Chuck

[Gizmo]

Chuck,
I appreciated your post.  I have very mixed mixed feelings about doctors.  They almost killed my son via malpractice.  I also work for a large group of specialists and some of them are so focused on money it makes me puke.  But some aren't and I think those docs really want to make a difference.  They do make a sheisterload of money.  If people want to know why our healthcare costs so much, just look at the salary of an average specialist.  Ours probably average $500K/year.  Ridiculous!!!  I read somewhere that US doctors make almost double those in Europe or Canada.

On the good side, competent docs did save my sons life and removed a benign tumor from my wife's kidney.

I am really into alternative medicine.  Have you heard of the Life Vessel???

Giz

[Jacob1207]

I have heard it frequently claimed that people make up religion because they are afraid of dying and need comfort.  You somewhat turn that around and say that certain people promote religion so that people will be afraid of dying. 

But people frequently go to doctors for matters which are not generally life threatening and thus would seem to be completely unconnected from fear of death.  These are quality of life issues, not death and dying issues.  Also, wanting to preserve or prolong your life isn't necessarily about a fear of death, but could be about a love of life and wanting to be around to see your grandchildren.  It seems to me that that is at least as strong a motivator for most people that I am familiar with.

If it were true that doctors were trying to promote themselves as defiers of death that could help people avoid eternal judgment, it seems to me that we would be able to find some signs of this.  Offhand, I cannot think of any.

However, that certain members of that profession are not good people and abuse their positions cannot be denied.  It is unfortunate that this is so.

[arcticmonster2003]

Believe me, I would very much like to get to the point where I can tell the doctors to just plain kiss off! Because they take half of my hard earned paycheck, they have in effect made me a slave. But the only way they can really make me a slave is to make me afraid not to consult them.

I have talked in different threads about our struggle with the system we live in, how it affects our decisions and where we place our faith, how it affects almost completely how we live our lives. From birth (or at least from when we are old enough to understand) we are taught that when we have a physical problem we consult a physician. Christians normally are taught that we consult both God and physicians. I pray about being set free from our system that makes us put our faith in things besides God. We as christians should at least ponder whether physicians should be a part of our lives. I am not judging here, as I also use medicine when I'm sick or in pain and wear contact lens, I am only mentioning a place of higher calling for us to ponder, where we put all of our worries in God's hands. I, personally am not afraid of dying, but I am afraid of pain and suffering or living dis-abled, and the truth is right now in this current system even though I wouldn't want to go to the doctor for a life-threatening disease that my family would feel that I was hurting them purposely by letting myself die and would compare "trusting on the Lord for healing" as suicide, and the truth is I would be trusting on the lord for his will to be done because

For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain

I would ask him if it was his will for me to live to heal me quickly and if to die (for we are all to die) to make it painless and let me not suffer the disease, as though without disease, to merely take my spirit (I bet telling my family this would go over real great), but you can see how I would also be dealing with other peoples issues and not merely my own. We can see that it is the system that tells people the proper course of action for all situations (God is never part of the proper course of action in our system), suggesting again our struggle against this system that has been created for us.

Ephesians 6:12  For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.



2 Chronicles 16
12  And Asa in the thirty and ninth year of his reign was diseased in his feet, until his disease was exceeding great: yet in his disease he sought not to the LORD, but to the physicians.
13  And Asa slept with his fathers, and died in the one and fortieth year of his reign.

I think as we grow closer to God, we begin to ask ourselves, if I were in spirit now, as a angel, standing before the throne of God, and I had a problem. What would I do? As we get closer to God, we begin to address our problems as though we really are standing before God. (we are afterall, we just can't see it)