When it comes to giving a testimony, there are some that begin with the now, seemingly squeaky clean speaker, describing how they were once the most evil person on the planet. Well, rest assured, I won’t be trying to make out that I’m squeaky clean but, when it comes to my past, what I once got up to might be something that genuinely shocks.
Because, you see, up until about seven months ago I was…and it’s hard for me to say this…
…a GP.
My reluctance to admit this is, of course, feigned, and done so with my tongue very firmly in my cheek, but it reflects the fact that GPs are once again being portrayed as public enemy number one – as those who are responsible for much of what is wrong with the NHS.
But, having worked as a family doctor for 27 years, I know that the truth is very different. I know how hard my colleagues worked and, no doubt, have continued to work since I retired from medicine in November of last year.
Throughout the happy years I worked at East Quay Medical Centre, in Bridgwater, Somerset, there were many funny incidents.
One of my favourites happened some years ago on a day that began with me performing a minor op. As I was administering the local anaesthetic. the syringe came off the needle and I ended up spraying a little of the anaesthetic into the eye of Doreen, the HCA who was assisting me at the time.
Happily the procedure continued without further incident but, an hour or so later, I was calling another patient from the waiting room when, out of sight of everyone else, Doreen saw me and started pretending to have a problem with her vision. There she was, winking and grimacing at me in an exaggerated fashion, just like some latter day pirate.
‘Who do you think you are?’ I asked, loudly enough for everyone in the waiting room to hear, ‘Long John Silver?’
At which point the patient I’d just called, reached me…complete with his false leg and a very pronounced limp.
Fortunately he saw the funny side!
But not everything that takes place in a GP surgery is as amusing. Sadly my one legged patient, and his wife who accompanied him that day, have both now died. And there were many other patients who suffered terribly, many of whom I was not able to help as much as I would have liked.
Over the years I have on occasions been asked how being a Christian affected my day to day work. But before I say a little about that, can I just be clear on a few things.
Being a Christian didn’t make me more caring than my non-Christian colleagues. Hopefully it made me more caring than I myself would otherwise have been, but Christians have no right to think that they are more caring than non-Christians.
Neither should it be considered that the ethical positions I took on matters such as termination or pregnancy or active euthanasia are ones that are taken only by those who profess a Christian faith. Many non-Christians hold the same position on these matters as I do.
And finally, being a doctor and a Christian didn’t furnish me with better medical treatments than my non-Christian colleagues – antibiotics prescribed by me didn’t work any better than those that were prescribed by my colleagues – though my handwriting, more legible than some, may have meant that my prescriptions were a little easier to read!
As such, whether or not you’re a Christian, you should want to be treated by a competent doctor, not a Christian one – though I like to think that the two aren’t mutually exclusive!
And so to those situations where my being a Christian did affect my work. For the most part they related to matters that, whilst presented as a medical problem, medicine had little or nothing to offer – areas in which, blindly putting one’s faith in medicine, was not only unjustified, but also potentially harmful.
Because whilst there is much that medicine can offer the patient who suffers from depression, it has nothing to offer the person who is simply unhappy. Whilst there is much that medicine can offer the patient who suffers from anxiety, it has nothing to offer the person who is merely anxious. And whilst there is much that medicine can offer the patient who is suffering from symptoms as they approach death, it has nothing to offer the person who is actually about to die.
But in all these situations I had the opportunity, privilege and joy of being able to say something very different to what my non-Christian colleagues were able to say. Because I could point my patients away from themselves, to something bigger and better – namely the objective truth of the glory of God and the wonderful hope that is found in the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Let me explain – take unhappiness for example.
I saw many unhappy patients with low self-esteem and a catalogue of problems which I was powerless to do anything about. I could of course listen and empathise, and I trust that that was at least a little helpful, but, still I would be left wondering, what would really make a difference?
So, stuck with anything to suggest, I would sometimes ask this question ‘What do you want from life?’
And the reply that almost always came back was, ‘I just want to be happy’.
But of course I knew that – everyone wants to be happy.
So the next question became ‘What is it that makes you happy?’
And that is where many people came unstuck – because it was often the case for those who sat in my room, that all the traditional answers to that question – family, status, relationships, possessions – had manifestly failed to bring about the happiness they desired.
And so I would ask another question:
‘Have you ever climbed to the top of a mountain and admired the view, or looked up into the night sky and been amazed by the stars? Have you ever stood on the coast when the waves were crashing against the rocks or marvelled at a particularly beautiful sunrise or sunset? And when you have been in such a place, have you ever thought, “I could stay here and enjoy that view forever”?’
Most people I asked this question readily agreed that they had. At that moment they had felt happy, satisfied – not because of who they were or what they had, but because of what it was that they were experiencing. That is, they were standing on the edge of greatness and felt satisfied simply by being able to witness that greatness.
And so my advice to my unhappy patients was to look outside of themselves for that which is truly great?
My patients wanted to be happy. I wanted them to be happy too – infinitely and eternally happy. And for that, I believe, they needed, not high self-esteem but to esteem highly the infinitely and eternally great.
Now ideally I don’t want to be merely 50% or 75% happy – if it’s possible I want to be 100% happy. Likewise, I don’t want to be wholly happy for just one day – for one month, one year or even one lifetime. Given the chance I want to be 100% happy for all eternity.
And that’s why I’m excited by Psalm 16:11 which tells me that
‘In God’s presence there is fullness of joy, at his right hand there are pleasures for evermore.’
Sounds good doesn’t it? Well, that’s because it is!
And don’t make the mistake of thinking that all this pursuit of pleasure is just another form of self-gratification – because it’s not! On the contrary, to delight in God is to give him glory for the soul satisfying deity that he is. To dutifully obey God, and only begrudgingly give him praise, serves only to minimise his worth whilst at the same time suggesting that it is we who should be admired for our efforts to please him.
I am indebted to John Piper for this illustration. Imagine it’s my wedding anniversary. I come home from work and rather than simply entering my home, I ring the doorbell instead. And when my wife opens the door, I pull out a bunch of red roses. My wife is delighted and says ‘Oh Pete – why did you’?.
And I answer, ‘Because it’s my duty!’
Such a response is unlikely to please my wife! For it suggests that it is me who should be admired for so diligently pandering to my seemingly needy wife.
So let’s try again.
Once again I arrive home and ring the doorbell. Once again my wife opens the door and when I present her with the roses, she once again says, ‘Oh Pete, why did you?’
But this time, I answer, ‘Because I couldn’t help myself! Go and get changed, I’m taking you out for dinner. Because nothing gives me greater pleasure than my being with you!’
My wife would like that. Admittedly she’d be surprised and probably just a little suspicious but, leaving such considerations aside, she wouldn’t think that my actions were selfish, that my only motivation was only to do what would give me pleasure. Because to delight in my wife is to honour her, not me.
And so it is with God. Delighting in him, honours him. By delighting in him, we give him praise.
But none of this is meant to suggest that, for Christians, sadness is a thing of the past. On the contrary. But the hope of a better tomorrow changes how we feel about today.
Suppose, back when I worked as a GP, a patient came to see me with a really nasty chest infection. They feel horribly unwell and are seriously worried that they will never recover. But then I give them a prescription for some antibiotics and promise them that, if they take them, they will soon be restored to health.
Immediately they feel better – even though they aren’t
How could they be, they’ve not even picked up the prescription yet. But they nonetheless begin to feel better because they have believed my promise that better is what they will one day be.
Well God has made a promises too, one’s that can be depended upon far more reliably than any promise made by any doctor ever. Specifically God has promised a day when all our tears will be wiped away, a day when death will be no more [Revelation 21:4].
And because his promise is so certain, there is a sense in which ‘all is well’ even as our tears continue to flow and daily we are surrounded by death and disease.
‘Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes in the morning’, says the Psalmist. Such a certain hope can, I believe, sustain folk through even the darkest days. It does me.
But what about anxiety? Many people are anxious. Not in a pathological, abnormal, neurotransmitter kind of a way, but in the way that we are all when it comes to the things that concern us. For some the uncertainties are many and the associated anxiety high. They understandably want to know what tomorrow will bring and just how things will eventually work out.
But Medicine, of course, can’t tell them!
It was once suggested to me that anxiety was a form of arrogance. Now it’s important to appreciate that I am not saying that all anxiety is arrogant – if you’re tied to a railway line and, as the train approaches, you feel a little apprehensive, that’s not you being arrogant. On the contrary, that’s just you being normal. But the idea that some anxiety is a form of arrogance was one that helped me with the anxiety I sometimes experienced when working as a doctor.
The idea is that our anxiety is sometimes born out of the belief that it all depends on us. So for example, a patient comes to see me with a headache. After a careful examination, I conclude that there is no sinister underlying cause and offer appropriate reassurance. However, having parted company with my patient, it is quite possible that I would be left wondering ‘What if it was a brain tumour after all’ and then find myself anxiously fearing the consequences if, as a result of my making a mistake, there is a significant delay in diagnosis.
Now the guy who suggested to me that anxiety was arrogance, would at that point say to me.
‘Who do you think you are? You’re only a doctor.’
And of course he’d be right.
I was just a doctor and a pretty average one at that. I was not the best doctor in the world, nor was I the best doctor in my practice. Indeed, sometimes I wondered if I was the best doctor in my consulting room when it was only myself and my patient who were there!
And even if I had been the best physician on the planet, even then I would only be able to do what a doctor can do. And no doctor can diagnose a brain tumour in a patient who presents with a headache which has none of the characteristics of that more sinister underlying cause.
To think otherwise would indeed have been arrogant.
Now this does not absolve any of us from the responsibility of doing our best, but we all need to realise that our best may not be good enough. We have to come to terms with the fact that we do not control the future, we cannot solve everybody’s problems, that we are, inevitably, only human.
Or, to put it another way, we are not God.
But God, reassuringly, is!
So yes, we should do what we can, but at the same time we need to come to terms with the fact that we are weak. And we cannot hope to be anything but anxious if we insist on taking on the responsibility for everything that ever happens.
For that we need someone bigger than ourselves. Someone bigger, wiser, and stronger.
I believe that God is that someone – someone who is sovereign, who is in absolute control. Someone who is both all good and all powerful – someone who is, therefore, all we could ever wish for him to be.
Which is why the Bible is giving sound advice when it urges us to ‘cast all [our] anxieties on Him’. God is amply able to cope with all that we cannot. And, what’s more, he is pleased to do so too. Because, we are assured, ‘he cares for [us]’ [1 Peter 5:7]
So I would often encourage my patients to accept their limitations and acknowledge that they are not God. Because, rather than on themselves, the future ultimately depends on the one in whom we can all confidently put our trust.
Guilt is another problem that was often presented to me by patients. Sometimes, of course, that guilt was an irrational guilt and, in such circumstances I would try to help people see the irrationality of what it was they were feeling.
Now you don’t need any Christian faith for that – a bit of CBT will, for the most part, eventually sort such people out. But what about real guilt? What will help:
• the man who has built up enormous gambling debts that now threaten his family’s livelihood
• the women who drank heavily during her pregnancy and whose child now has learning difficulties
• the man who can’t get over the guilt he feels for the sexual crimes he committed many years previously.
What will help these people? Not CBT – their guilt can’t be rationalised away. Because they know that their guilt is real.
I had one patient who came to me because of the guilt she felt over the abortion she had maybe 20 years previously. I asked her why she felt guilty. Because it was wrong, she told me. ‘Says who?’ I asked. Her eyes looked heavenward.
What could I say to her? That she was mistaken? That I was sure it was for the best? That God didn’t mind? None of those answers would have helped her because…well because she wasn’t stupid.
Like all those others whom I mentioned earlier, she considered her guilt to be real.
As indeed, do I consider mine.
Medicine has nothing to say to the genuinely guilty. All the CBT or anti-depressants in the world won’t help them in the slightest.
Most people know they are not as good as their own publicity. We don’t live up to our own standards. I know I don’t. And if we care to think about it, if we don’t come up to our own standards, we surely don’t come up to the standards of a holy God.
We may endorse the so called ‘golden rule’ – to love our neighbour as ourself – the only problem being that we don’t even begin to come close to keeping that rule. And if you’re not convinced about that, take a look at ‘The Parable of the Good Samaritan’, and you’ll realise just how far short you fall!
Which means, if God is both good and just, then we have a huge problem – because a just God must punish our wrong actions – together with our wrong thoughts and our wrong words too. All my earlier enthusiasm for enjoying being in the presence of God comes to nothing if God is against us because we are guilty of wrong doing.
As I say medicine has nothing to offer such a patient. But the Christian gospel does. Only Christianity offers a solution to the problem of our guilt before a holy God. And so I would sometimes tell my patients the gospel. I’d say to them:
Think of it like this. You and Jesus have separate accounts – accounts that reflect how good you are. Only your account, like mine, is in terrible debt because of all your wrong doing – because of all your sins.
Jesus’ account, on the other hand, is overflowing with good deeds – for he lived a sinless, perfect life – the only sinless, perfect life that was ever lived. His was the only life that ever lived up to God’s standard.
Now the good news of the gospel is this. God takes your record of sin, and credits it to Jesus whilst, at the same time, taking Jesus’ perfect righteousness and crediting it to you.
And then, he punishes your sin by pouring out his wrath on Jesus. A willing sacrifice, Jesus acted as your substitute and died in your place, suffering the punishment that you deserved. As he hung on the cross, he was satisfying God’s justice. Your sin was atoned for, was dealt with, such that it no longer remains to be punished. What’s more, with Jesus’ righteousness credited to you, God can look on you as if you had lived the perfect life that only Jesus lived
That is very good news. That is the gospel!
And so, as forgiven people, we can now come into God’s presence – not fearful of his judgement against us, but in peace – able to marvel at him and enjoy him forever.
And so, when my patients came to me about their sense of guilt, I again encouraged them to look outside of themselves. Rather than imagining they could bring about their own rescue, I urged them to accept that they need to be rescued by somebody else.
That somebody is Jesus who, on the cross, has already done all that is necessary to bring about the rescue, not only my patient requires, but you and I require too. In this we can rejoice – that because of Jesus Christ we have already been wonderfully saved.
In short, we all need to stop trying to forgive ourselves but rather accept the forgiveness that is offered by God.
And so lastly a word about death.
Medicine can ease the pain of death and delay the time of death, but it cannot remove the inevitability of death. Christianity, however, can – since it assures us that death is not the end – that there is a resurrection to come. The Christian has a living hope, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, of an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled and unfading, kept in heaven for us. (1 Peter 1:3-4)
No matter our current difficulty.
Make no mistake though, death always brings sorrow – let’s not pretend that when a Christian dies, other Christians are nothing but overjoyed. Not at all. Even so, there is, for the Christian, hope and joy in God, even as we experience suffering and sadness.
And it is the gospel that is the cause of this hope and joy. Because of Jesus there is hope in the greatest difficulty – not because he’ll cure all our illnesses, resolve all our relationship difficulties, and ease all our financial concerns in this life – but because there’s more to life than merely our 70-80 years here on earth.
It’s not about us. It’s about God. We need to be content to allow him to be the hero of our story and the sooner we grasp this, the sooner we’ll be happy, the sooner we’ll be at ease with the world, and the sooner we’ll be at peace with God.
Which is all very well – but is all this talk of Jesus true. Because if it’s not, I’m just deluding myself, irrespective of how lovely the delusion might seem.
Well I believe the gospel is true. And not because of some gooey feeling that I experienced whilst a preacher was speaking to me at a vulnerable time in my life and emotive music was being played in the background.
Not at all!
My faith is based on an objective and external historic reality – namely the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Unlike any other religion, Christianity makes historical truth claims – claims that stand up to close scrutiny.
Because contrary to what many believe, faith is not a leap in the dark. Rather, faith, as defined by the Oxford English Dictionary, is belief based on evidence, testimony or authority. As such, my sure and certain hope that after death I will one day be resurrected and go on to experience endless pleasure in the presence of God [Psalm 16:11], far from being just wishful thinking on my part, is, in fact, an entirely rational belief based on compelling evidence for the historicity of the empty tomb, credible eye witness testimony of those who saw Jesus after he had been raised from the dead, and the authoritative word of the one who spoke the universe into existence.
Paul, writing in the New Testament, spoke of 500 people, who saw Jesus after the resurrection – many of whom were still alive at the time of writing. Essentially he was saying to his readers that if you don’t believe that Jesus rose from the dead, go and ask the eye witnesses who were still alive at the time and who could, therefore, continue to testify to the truth.
As such, you can believe in the resurrection as confidently as you can believe my story about the one legged patient that I told at the start of this blog. At present, you have only my word to go on, but you can nonetheless be confident that it really happened because I am an eyewitness to what really did take place all those years ago. And if you don’t believe me, go and ask Doreen, because though the patient has now died, Doreen is still very much alive!
Noted philosopher Anthony Flew was once asked how his notoriously atheistic beliefs would change if Jesus really had been raised from the dead. His answer was that if Jesus had been raised from the dead, that would change everything.
Shortly before his death Flew authored a book entitled ‘There is a God’. He had simply followed the compelling evidence and concluded that Jesus really had been raised from the dead.
And that, he realised, really had changed everything!
And so I now work for the Slavic Gospel Association, an organisation that supports the church in Eastern Europe and Central Asia and Far East Russia.
Why?
Well that’s another story, but suffice to say that, despite all the good that medicine can do, it cannot deliver the eternal life it seems to sometimes promise. Furthermore, I believe we all need a saviour more than a surgeon, Christ more than a cardiologist, and Jesus more than a GP.
And, I’m delighted to tell you, whilst GPs may be in short supply and, as a result, often hard to get hold of, Jesus is only ever a prayer a way.
Related posts:
To read ‘The Way Ahead – from EQMC to SGA‘, click here
To read ‘Lewis Capaldi – Retired Hurt: The Need for Kindness’
To read ‘Three Times a Patient’, click here
To read ‘Professor Ian Aird – A Time to Die’, click here
To read ‘On Not Remotely Caring’, click here
To read ‘On Approaching One’s Sell By Date’, click here
To read ‘The Abolition of General Practice’, click here
To read ‘Contactless’, click here
To read ‘An Audience for Grief’, click here
A selection of other blogs related to medicine.
To read ‘The Dr Scrooge Chronicles’, click here
To read ‘The Dr Mungo Chronicles’, click here
To read ‘Paddington and the Ailing Elderly Relative’, click here
To read ‘Vaccinating to remain susceptible’, click here
To read ‘Eleanor Rigby is not at all fine’, click here
To read ‘General Practice – still a sweet sorrow’, click here
To read ‘On being overwhelmed’, click here
To read ‘General Practice – is time running out?’, click here
To read ‘Blaming it on the Boogie’, click here
To read ‘Health – it’ll be the death of us. Is there institutional arrogance in the NHS?’, click here
And a selection of other blogs on Christian themes:
To read ‘All’s Well that Ends Well’, click here
To read ‘The Resurrection – is it just rhubarb?’, click here
To read “Hope comes from believing the promises of God”, click here
To read ‘Faith and Doubt’, click here
To read ‘What becomes of the broken hearted? Sorrowful yet always rejoicing on Palm Sunday’, click here
To read ‘Why do bad things happen to good people? Sorrowful yet always rejoicing on Good Friday’, click here
To read ‘Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things? Rejoicing, though temporarily sorrowful, on Easter Day’, click here.
To read ‘T.S. Eliot, Jesus and the Paradox of the Christian Life’, click here
To read “Why do bad things happen to good people – a tentative suggestion”, click here
To read “Suffering- A Personal View”, click here.
To read “Luther and the global pandemic – on becoming a theologian of the cross”, click here
To read ‘The Sacrifice of Isaac – Law or Gospel?’, click here
To read ‘Water from a Rock’, click here
To read ‘Real Power’, click here
To read ‘Foolishness – Law and Gospel’, click here
To read ‘The Promise Keeper’, click here
To read ‘The Rainbow’s End’, click here
To read ‘True Love?’, click here
To read, ‘But this I know’, click here
To read ‘I’ll miss this when I’m gone – extended theological version’, click here
To read ‘On being confronted by the law’, click here
To read ‘The “Already” and the “Not Yet”’, click here
To read ‘Rest Assured’, click here
Some musings 