What if salvation wasn’t free? What if Jesus made us pay a fee for his forgiveness every time we sinned, and that fee was based on the severity of the sin and the length of time we remained in that sin? What if there was a copay every time we got on our knees to pray for forgiveness and that copay was driven by our obedience to Him whether intentional obedience or unintentional obedience? For the benefit of unintentional obedience to exist then there must be a consequence for unintentional disobedience and what if those consequences place your salvation in severe jeopardy and the more you unintentionally disobey, the harsher the consequence. Since this disobedience is unintentional, we have no idea that the disobedience exists and now we are reaping consequences that are only getting worse, leaving us no choice but to go to Jesus. When we come to Him, He tells us He can remove our all our consequences and fully restore us but the monetary price we must pay for restoration is exorbitantly high. Now our forgiveness is contingent on how financially responsible we are, the type of money we make on our jobs, or the type of job we have. Jobs are of course tied to our education levels which drive our earning potential.
Say we aren’t that financially well off and our credit isn’t that good. We aren’t as educated, so our jobs don’t pay as well but we are in a position where the consequences for our unintentional disobedience have gotten so bad it leads us to the mercy of Jesus and He is gives us a monetary price we have no ability to pay. Our unintentional disobedience history shows that our unintentional disobedience is not so different or may be even better than someone else’s who came to Him right before us but because they had the ability to pay, theirs was forgiven. Now we are left to continue to reap consequences of actions we didn’t even know existed. What are we left to do? Our salvation is lost without Jesus’ forgiveness.
Now enter the U.S. Healthcare system where monetary value trumps human life and health. Everything we do within the U.S. Healthcare system is tied to a dollar amount and the unhealthier we are, the more it costs either us or someone else. Our ability to pay for our health dictates our quality of life for better or for worse but its not our health we are paying for. It’s our ability to be forgiven of our mistakes or the mistakes of someone else. That’s we are paying for.
When we encounter the U.S. healthcare system and begin doing business with it, it’s normally because we are experiencing signs and symptoms of a disease we got from someone else (communicable disease) i.e. COVID-19, or a disease we are genetically and/or behaviorally susceptible to (non-communicable disease) i.e. cardiometabolic diseases, heart disease. Certain non-communicable diseases known as chronic non-communicable diseases, are leading causes of death and disability. These diseases get worse over time if not properly addressed but the problem with properly addressing these diseases is they can go undetected for years because signs and symptoms appear as normal bodily function. So, you continue in unintentional disobedience to how your body was created causing consequences of that disobedience to get worse over time.
Let’s take weight gain for instance. We’ve been told slowly progressive weight gain is a normal bodily function, right? As we age, our metabolic rate slows, and over the years we consistently gain weight at a slow pace. We have been trained to automatically think this is a normal bodily function and it is a normal bodily function that can lead you right into a chronic non-communicable disease that will have you doing business the rest of your life with a healthcare system whose mercy is contingent on your ability to financially pay for your unintentional disobedience for the rest of your life. This slowly progressive weight gain is known as creeping obesity which leads to a plethora of chronic non-communicable diseases that cluster, one leading to the other.