Not long after I was speaking with a man I’d just met. When I learned that he was a recently retired physician, I asked what he thought about the raging national debate over health care reform. His training and experience, I noted, gave him a perspective that I would greatly value. He thought about my question for just a moment, and then replied, “How about those Steelers?”

After we shared a quick laugh, I pressed him a bit on his evasive response. I gathered from what followed that he was reluctant to express any opinion on that particular subject because he recognized how complex, difficult and explosively divisive it is.

How about you? Do you have an opinion on that thorny issue? More to my point here, does Christian faith guide us at all in this area?

The short answer to that question is, of course, a resounding yes! We can surely trust that the God who numbers the very hairs on our heads (Luke 12:7) cares about such major concerns in our lives as health care.

That said, I’ll also be the first to note the obvious: I have no quick and easy solutions to offer to a problem whose resolution has eluded minds far greater than my own. But the Bible just as surely does speak to us in helpful ways as we face this great concern.

In the first place, we need to bear in mind that again and again Scripture presents to us a God who cares deeply for the needy, the least and lowest. True, Jesus notes that the poor will be with us always (Matthew 26:11, Mark 14:7; John 12:8). But that tragic reality does nothing to blunt the concern of the God who always hears the cry of the afflicted (Job 34:28). He who is the constant refuge of the poor (Psalm 14:6). He thunders from heaven, “Woe to those who make unjust laws, to those who issue oppressive decrees, who deprive the poor of their rights and withhold justice from the oppressed of My people, making widows their prey and robbing the fatherless” (Isaiah 10:1-2 NIV). Scripture agrees with the conventional wisdom that the world owes no one a living, going so far as to insist that “if a man will not work, he shall not eat” (2 Thessalonians 3:10). And it’s undeniably true that if we as the church of Jesus Christ did a better job of meeting real material needs all around us, there would be less of a clamor for government involvement. But God’s great love for the helpless demands a large measure of compassion whenever we consider health care.

Furthermore, in light of the acrimony surrounding debate over health care, we should bear in mind that Scripture commands us to disagree agreeably. St. Paul reminds the Ephesians that their lifelong process of growth in the things of God should regularly involve them in “speaking the truth in love” (4:15). Whenever people handle the truth — whether Ephesians are grappling with the pressing concerns of their church 20 centuries ago or we’re debating health care today — we’re entirely justified in bringing a real passion to the table. But Paul’s “in love” qualification would require of us a level of decency that all sides in our current debate have too frequently failed to demonstrate.

At the end of the day, there really is an illusion at the heart of the health care debate: the illusion of risk-free living. Even though we all know better, on some level we imagine that we can, with good enough insurance, guarantee ourselves long and pain-free lives. But we surely do well to seek to view all our musings on this undeniably important matter through the lens of the One who said, “I tell you not to worry about everyday life — whether you have enough food and drink, or enough clothes to wear. Isn’t life more than food, and your body more than clothing?” (As indeed life is more than medical insurance or even what we call good physical health.) “Seek the Kingdom of God above all else, and live righteously, and He will give you everything you need” (Matthew 6:25, 33 NLT).

Rev. John Culp is pastor of Tower Presbyterian Church, Grove City.