Am I a Liberal?

I recently had the opportunity to give a lecture at the residency program where I trained. My lecture was entitled Perspectives on Global Health. My goal of the lecture was to remind the residents that there was more to medicine out there than what they saw on a day to day basis. It was also my intention to remind them that there are opportunities to make a difference.

However, several times during the lecture, I found myself making comments that might make stiff conservatives bristle. I talked about the fact that most of the top ten diseases (diarrhea, malaria, HIV, malnutrition) in the world were NOT the top ten diseases here. I made the point that many of the world wide diseases resulted from poverty. I made some "critical" remarks about the pharmaceutical industry that sells drugs (antimalarials) at prices that most of the world could not afford even though very few Americans actually contract malaria. As the talk continued I found myself talking about world hunger, genocide, and AIDS. I found myself criticizing US humanitarian aid as often being more about politics than real help. I protested that sometimes little of the aid actually makes it to the people suffering because a lot of the money gets tied up in bureaucracy. At the least it was a sobering lecture but more likely it was depressing.

Not that there is anything "wrong" with being liberal (see, there I go again), but I was surprised by how the lecture impacted me. Part of that comes from the fact that at times it seemed that I was really pressing the point trying to get across the facts of the problem. The sometimes blank looks of "how does this affect me?" from my audience bothered me. Now, there were some folks in the room who were right with me, but for the whole, most were trying to figure out the big deal.

And I guess that may be the other part that affected me. I realized while verbalizing the magnitude of the problem that it seems hopeless. I realized that nothing that WE do is effective. No big government aid project, no big charitable program, no 24-7 effort on MY part will even come close to changing the problem.

And maybe that's the ANSWER. WE are not the ANSWER, HE IS THE ANSWER. Only the grace of God, the forgiveness of sins, and the power of the Holy Spirit can change lives. Only the love of Jesus in the lives of hurting, helpless, downcast, and forgotten will result in healing of the broken lives and communities.

Maybe it doesn't matter if I am labeled "liberal" or not. Maybe all that is important is that I am broken by the brokenness and crazy enough to put my energies into making a difference. And maybe since I realize that we as humans are bankrupt to make effective change unless the Lord is in it, just maybe, I'm not a liberal after all!

Comments

[Andrew]

Sounds to me like you called it like you saw it...and there is nothing "liberal" about that. I think that we as conservatives evangelicals have become so afraid of the "social gospel" that we shun all social programs. This is lamentable.

Keep on telling it like it is.

[Tim]

I think you are right. It is sad that the "liberals" get all the "points" for showing concern for the very people that JESUS told us to watch for, help, and love. Jesus tells us to "do unto the LEAST of these". God instructs us to show mercy to orphans and widows. Why we let the liberals do this I do not know.

Without opening a can of worms, I think one of the biggest mistakes that President Bush has made during his administration is not "pursuing" the "war on terrorism", but his "drifting" away from Compassionate Conservatism.