By Gary Gunderson
FaithHealth is a young movement that brings the strengths of 21st century health science into relationship with the power and intelligence of the social structures of faith. For that matter, all of health science is a young movement. It’s hard to take seriously any health science before germ theory was discovered, and particularly the 1882 discovery of Mycobacterium tuberculosis.
Likewise, while things called hospitals have been around for many centuries, it would be hard to take them seriously until you could count on the doctors and nurses to wash their hands and have some common education standards. Antiseptic procedures date to Ignaz Semmelweis, who died in ignominy in 1865 before his foundational work in the transmission of disease in hospitals was accepted by physicians. Prior to that they felt insulted by his insistence they were the spreading diseases as they moved from one patient to the next.
The spread of psychological, social and spirit-based pathologies in the clinical environment may still be considered a cutting edge for truly modern integrated systems of health. This is new movement of integration—connection—is measured in decades, not centuries. This should fill us with hope, curiosity and energy as it means we are part of birthing something profoundly good.
Brilliant opposite
Dr. William Foege’s career has integrated faith through public service as a Lutheran medical missionary, as the Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and later in giving a bold vision for global health as a key advisor to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. He once told me that it was easy to have a brilliant idea; just think of the stupidest thing possible and do the exact opposite.
The FaithHealth movement is the brilliant opposite of the disconnection, fear and friction that marks the normal journey of health in any one life, family or community. It is normal—and stupid—for people and families in pain and distress to have to figure out how to connect with the weirdly incoherent institutions and providers who have the things we need to get better.
The brilliant FaithHealth opposite idea fits on a coffee cup: use our social strengths to get people to the right door, at the right time, ready to be treated and, most important of all, not alone. The only instrument complex enough to accomplish that for any single human is another human with eyes and heart wide open. The FaithHealth opposite is even smarter because it is also the opposite of the stupid idea that health happens one person at a time. Health is social, especially when we are hurting. We need a team of others.
This is the profound brilliance you see is in this issue that focuses on connections and the people known as Faith Health Connectors. These are caring people around North Carolina. Their role—and daily walk—is to remove fear, friction and disconnection from the lives of people by making the opposite real; by nurturing love, compassion and healing relationship that can bear the fruits of health.
Brilliant!
