Uncouth PerspectivesNot on the rug, man.

I was reading some ethics work by Stanley Hauerwas, and I came across an interesting topic: Do doctor’s have more power than ministers? To start, let me relate the passages that stood out to me.

My way of explaining this is that when someone goes to seminary today, he can say, “I’m not into Christology this year. I’m just into relating. After all, relating is what the ministry is all about, isn’t it? Ministry is about helping people relate to one another, isn’t it? So I want to take some more Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) courses.” And the seminary says, “Go ahead and do it. Right, get our head straight, and so on.” A kid can go to medical school and say, “I’m not into anatomy this year. I’m into relating. So I’d like to take a few more courses in psychology, because I need to know how to relate better to people.” The medical school then says, “Who in the hell do you think you are, kid? We’re not interested in your interests. You’re going to take anatomy. If you don’t like it, that’s though.”

Now what that shows you is that people believe incompetent physicians can hurt them. Therefore, people expect medical schools to hold their students responsible for the kind of training that’s necessary to be competent physicians. On the other hand, few people believe an incompetent minister can damage their salvation. [Emphasis added]. This helps you see why that what people want today is not salvation, but health. And that helps you see why the medical profession has, as a matter of fact, so much power over the church and her ministry. The medical establishment is the counter-salvation-promising group in our society today.

The Hauerwas Reader, 2001. Pg 611.

He makes some very interesting claims in these short paragraphs. As a person who does not believe in an after-life, this is nothing short of simple sense to me; that is, personally I place no stock in the salvation principles of a minister and, in fact, anything that a minister can do to better their personal and psychology skills to help people better deal with this life, the more I support it.

What about people of faith, however? Coming from a point of pure logic, it makes sense that a person would seek salvation as a means of prolonging one’s life. That is, mortality is a horrible and scary idea and anyone who truly faces the idea is scared witless. Which is one of the reasons that idea of salvation is important–to know and understand that “the end of life” is not the end. However, in this modern age, do people of faith see life, in today, as more important than salvation? Is the idea of salvation as believable, or worth working for?

One argument possible idea circumvents the above questions, but it deals with Christian Protestantism, or the influence therein. That is, when salvation became a personal issue, the priest/pastor/minister diminished in power. To clarify what some might argue, salvation may have always been important to the individual, but one of the changes made in the Protestant reformation is that salvation became something possible through an individual’s relationship with God, not because of a priest or the church.

My conversation obviously focuses on Christianity and leaves a glaring hole where other religions fit in, yet I am curious as to thoughts on this issue.

What do you think; do doctor’s have more (earthly, secular) power than ministers?