A message for doctors (and the rest of us too)
A prominent Michigan story featuring Dr. Kristin Collier made national headlines this week. Dr. Collier is a professor of internal medicine at the University of Michigan and was chosen by students to be the speaker at the initiating White Coat Ceremony. The news highlighted the event because many students walked out just before her speech as a protest against her pro-life stance.
I hope they will listen to her speech in their quiet dorm spaces because it was a powerful message saturated with the implications within medicine of what it means to be human, made in the image of God.
“Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.’” Gen. 1:26
Imago Dei - you and I are made in the image of God. It’s the essence of what it means to be human, a God-breathed creation. This makes us distinct from all the animals, the entire created earth, to the most skilled robot that could be produced. We are not just flesh, but are body and soul, created for a relationship with God and each other.
You can listen to Dr. Collier’s speech here, which starts at the 1:46:00 mark. Her message is to doctors but is one we all might benefit from as we interact with fellow image-bearers.
Quotes that struck me from the speech:
“The result of burnout is depersonalization, where you see others as non-persons. They are something in your way.”
“The risk of this education and the one that I fell into is that you can come out of medical school with a bio-reductionist, mechanistic view of people and ultimately of yourself. You can easily end up seeing your patients as just a bag of blood and bones or human life as just molecules in motion.”
“We couldn’t save one of our own and lost the belief that medicine could be our savior. Many of us had made medicine into what theologians call an idol. We had placed unrealistic hope into something medicine didn’t deserve and couldn’t live up to. When our idols come crashing down, pain ensues, but the right order of things shines out of that darkness.”
“How can the suffering we see paradoxically make us flourish on the inside? Suffering can either harden you and make you a burned-out machine, or you can allow the vocation to soften you. To cultivate compassion, love, justice, and mercy.”
When Disease and Disability Come
We are not machines, yet we often attach respect and prominence to those with the most abilities, independence, health, and accomplishments. We often reduce people to these categories and assign value accordingly.
When machines break, we toss them aside. But in Christ, there is no shame or discarding in sickness, aging, disability, or disease. Instead, these become vulnerable places to see our dependency on God, the brokenness of our humanity, and the completeness of Jesus Christ for our soul and body.
Only the Christian faith brings such dignity to places of dependence and disability.
Only the Christian faith declares to believers that their weakness is the material needed to experience Christ’s strength.
Only the Christian faith proclaims the divine stamp of God’s image in every single person.
What a gift for those of us who require the care of others to function or who are caregivers for others. It is an exhausting calling but a sacred one that uniquely allows us the privilege to live out the reality of the Imago Dei.
What an encouragement when enduring the painful loss of health due to age or disease. In Christ, these physical dependencies are not places of shame but places to experience the fullness of Christ and his comfort. And weaknesses that mark us for Christ’s present consolation and the coming resurrection.
There is much more to say about caregiver burnout and depersonalization, chronic illness, and delayed hope. But for now, lean on Christ and look to him in faith. He gives us strength and joy while actively restoring our humanity and the image of God in us. He will continue working this in us, through sickness and health, until we are with him and are fully restored.
“So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day.” 2 Cor 4:16
Much Love,
Kara
P.S. I was intrigued by Dr. Kristin Collier’s story and found this account of her encountering Christ in Scripture and coming to faith here. I thought you might enjoy as well.