National Journal: Why I'm Getting Sick of Defending Obamacare
After all, I was one of many clergy invited to hear of the brave, new world of the Affordable Care Act when it was still a gleam in the dustman's eye, as it were. We were assured by government types that this would save, SAVE!, the poor and elderly in our communities from economic ruin. Many of my perpetually dewy-eyed ordained colleagues, who are mostly the children of privilege who will never know economic ruin, nodded and smiled as if the Messiah had returned.
After over three decades of listening to politicians and government bureaucrats patiently explain to me how their program of shoveling tax dollars and free labor to their cronies in corporations [if Republicans] or unions [if Democrats] will mean the liberation of the human race, especially the impoverished and children, in ways un-dreamt of in apocalyptic literature, I tend to be less than enthralled.
So-called Obamacare was sold to clergy harder than anything I can recall. This meant that it was destined to be more expensive, less helpful, and far, far more complicated and confusing than what was being adamantly promised by the functionaries who were meeting with us to define our role in their version of reality. Such has been the case, as anyone save a secular ideologue can admit.
This is why Christianity needs to embrace its history as a belief practice that is "in, but not of, the world." The more often we are expected to serve as shills for a secular ideology, the further away we get from what was taught by Jesus.
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