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The Bible Says
A few weeks back I had a health problem. There was a build-up of water around my heart that resulted in a severe gain in weight. I followed the doctor’s orders, but my scales showed a weight gain day after day. Ken bought a new scale, but I couldn’t use that at all. It had a touchy mechanism, and I couldn’t stand perfectly still. At last I went back to see the doctor and I had been losing weight. The problem was in the scales! The Bible says quite a bit about weighing. In Bible times, money values were often determined by weight, and I assume their scales were quite accurate. In Zechariah 11:12 we read: “so they weighed for my price thirty pieces of silver.” According to the Open Bible, this amount would be $52.80 in today’s values, which was the amount of money Judas collected from the High Priests for betraying our Lord. That wouldn’t be a lot of money today, but I understand at that time it was a full year’s wages. Following is a list of present-day comparisons with the way things were in “previous generations,” compiled by Leroy Surface.
“In previous generations we had what we called ‘accidents.’ If someone walked down the sidewalk and fell and broke a leg, it was an accident. The local doctor would set the bone and make the cast. The cost would be so reasonable that the average working man, earning about $20.00 per day in the nineteen-fifties, could pay for it, and the incident would pass into memory. Today, in this generation only, the mindset is there is no such thing as an accident. If someone falls, it must be someone else’s fault. A crack in the sidewalk, a small limb fallen from a tree, perhaps a child’s toy in the walk. Someone must pay, and they must be punished. The one with the broken leg is rushed to the emergency room. The “ambulance” trip will cost $500.00. The emergency room will x-ray and sedate the patient and bill them $5000.00 for emergency and after care. The anesthesiologist will charge $800.00 to deaden the leg or put the patient to sleep. Then, if there are complications, the patient will be admitted to a semi-private room for the cost of something over $1000.00 per night. Add a few hundred here and there for the doctor that orders the x-ray, again for the one that “reads” the x-ray, pay another $100.00 for the plastic pitcher and drinking cup in your room, pay for your pillow and sheets, and the average working man, earning about $100.00 per day will be billed ten to fifteen thousand dollars, over six month’s pay for a day and a night in the medical system. If the patient has medical insurance, he feels fortunate, because he has been paying three to five hundred dollars a month out of his paycheck for the coverage. If he has co-pay, the patient pays a percentage of the bill, which is usually more than the entire procedure should have cost. If the patient has no insurance, he suddenly faces an insurmountable debt. His credit is hurt. If he pays the bill it will take him years to do so. “Now comes the accident lawyer. He explains that it really wasn’t the patient’s fault that they fell and broke a leg. Someone has got to pay. Will it be the sidewalk contractor? Or the city? Maybe it should be the adjacent homeowner, or perhaps a local business that sold the toy a child left on the walk. Who has the most liability insurance, the business or the patient? Sue them all, the contractor, the city, the parent, and the business. Not only must the real damages of medical and time loss be recovered, they must be ‘punished.’ Sue for primitive damage, a million or two million dollars. If the leg doesn’t seem to heal right, sue the doctor and the hospital. They must be punished. Liability laws were not made for the people, they were made for the accident lawyers. Of the billions of dollars that are in the liability pool of America, from thirty to forty percent goes to lawyers.” -Unquote.
- Leroy Surface, Behold The Lamb, (Calvary Outreach, Porter TX) March 2003 p.21 The above is not a personal complaint. I am extremely proud of our Deer River Hospital, doctors and staff. Furthermore, the County Agencies who care for me in my old age have all been kind, thoughtful and considerate. The writer quoted above had in mind the over-all standards of our present day.
We have attempted to take God out of our Code of Ethics and consequently, we have no code of ethics! It is human nature to be selfish. When given the opportunity to tip the scales to personal advantage, the unregenerated naturally do so.
There are three standards by which God will judge men: The Sermon On The Mount, The Golden Rule, and the Perfect Example of our Lord Jesus Christ. In the light of these three standards there is but one verdict for the human race: “Thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting!” This is why God in His matchless love, perfected a plan of grace, built upon the merits of Calvary alone (Eph. 2:8,9
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