Where Are Christians For Health Reform?

Posted on | December 25, 2009 | Comments Off on Where Are Christians For Health Reform?

Michael Millenson

(Original Post: December 23, 2009; Huffington Post)

Many of us Jews who take our Judaism seriously have been giving co-coreligionist Joe Lieberman a hard time, in the Jewish press and elsewhere for his obstructionism on health care reform. We believe the Connecticut senator’s actions are inconsistent with his famously deep commitment to religious observance.

Lieberman’s stance seems to me a painful violation of a number of Jewish teachings, not least of which (metaphorically) is the commandment of Leviticus 19:14, “You shall not curse the deaf nor place a stumbling block before the blind; you shall fear your God.”

But, of course, we Jews are not the only ones who embrace the ethical admonitions of the Bible. Christianity, adding a New Testament to what it calls the Old, stresses compassion to one’s fellow man in general (“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”) and to the poor, in particular (whose feet Jesus washes in the Gospel of John). (TO CONTINUE …)