Monthly Archives: January 2014

Death Panels and the Kidney Machine Exercise

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Back in October, a well-known ministry, which I respect, published an article decrying a high school for using the “kidney machine exercise.” Basically, the exercise is a group decision-making process involving the allocation of scarce resources. In this case, there is a kidney dialysis machine, a set of candidates who are given various characteristics, and a panel (the class) to determine who should get time on the machine. The ministry called this practicing for ObamaCare Death Panels.



Without making any judgment on the Affordable Health Care Act (ObamaCare) and without knowing exactly how or why the high school teacher conducted the exercise, I wrote to the ministry with an alternate view…

You should know that the kidney machine group exercise has been around for at least 40 years. I used it in an Air Force leadership school in the late 70s. It’s a good “rainy-day” activity that involves leadership, group dynamics, interpersonal skills, etc. How are the decisions made? Who dominates the discussion? Can the participants reason with each other with respect or are there one or more bullies? With respect to not wanting to put a value on people based on arbitrary criteria, the option to choose randomly is always there. I observed one group making the decision that way. “I’m not comfortable with this discussion. Can we choose the people randomly?” Everyone agreed.

If you don’t like kidney machine and its association with ObamaCare’s “death panels,” you can do the same exercise and call it the lifeboat problem. There are 10 people in the water, and the lifeboat holds only 5. This was a real-world problem during the sinking of the Titanic, and the honorable men chose to let the women and children go ahead of them. By contrast, 150 Haitians were killed when the boat they were in capsized. The boat had a capacity of 25, and my experience with Haitians leads me to believe they have no concept of “capacity” nor a mechanism for choosing.

People make decisions on criteria of their choosing all the time. For example, I was recently criticized by a fellow believer for going to Starbucks. My friend chooses to boycott Starbucks because of their support of the homosexual rights movement. There are at least two values at work there. One is the value that one should boycott businesses you don’t agree with. This is not a value I share. The second value is that a business’s stance on homosexuality trumps everything else. Also not a value I share. What if I value Starbucks’ commitment to helping poor farmers in developing countries more than I devalue their position on homosexuality in this country?

The real point of the kidney machine (or lifeboat) exercise is for people to have criteria for making decisions (even if one criterion is choose randomly) and be able to articulate their position in a compelling way. Those are skills everyone needs.

And a larger lesson may be, Do we have to continue to provide fuel for those who think that Christians are against everything? Can we try a little harder to exercise 1 Corinthians 13 love? “Love is patient and kind…it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way.”

Joseph Did as He Was Told

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I intend to use this space to post observations and things I’m learning about discipleship, the church, leadership, and life! My goal is to write something once or twice a week.

Here are some thoughts from my Time with God a few days ago.

Joseph, husband of Mary, did what he was told.

But as he considered these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, “ Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” (Matthew 1:20-21)
 
When Joseph woke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him: he took his wife, but knew her not until she had given birth to a son. And he called his name Jesus. (Matthew 1:24-25)
 
It’s easy to take Joseph for granted, but his obedience was critical to the salvation story. We’ll have two more instances in Matthew 2. Note here that the angel asked Joseph to do two things: don’t fear to take Mary as your wife and call his name Jesus. And in verses 24 and 25 he did precisely that. “He did as the angel of The Lord commanded him.” He took his wife and he called the son’s name Jesus.
 
Doing what God wants. James 1.22, “But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.” That should be the theme of my life. As an example, since I journal my Times with God (TWG) using Evernote, I can see how many there are. I’ve just noticed that I’ve recorded 190 TWGs since April 15. But there are about 260 days between then and now. Or about 37 weeks. Is 5 days per week of TWG good? Or would daily be better? My wife, June, and I just committed to exercise every day in 2014. Can we also commit to TWG every day in 2014? Also, to put what we read into practice?
 
Joseph did what he was told. And it’s only a sentence in the Bible, but his obedience would have been difficult, yet it was a critical part of Jesus’ life.