Today on 60th at Lex I saw an unfamiliar car, a grand touring sedan, very large and impressive. Kind of ugly, though.
I crossed the street to look. It was a Maybach, a specialty label of DaimlerChrysler. They run $350,000. The plates said MD, and I noticed a parking privilege placard on the dashboard, for Cabrini Medical Center.
We might not like it that a doctor has that much disposable income to spend on an ugly car. (Though I'm sure it's got a great ride and great back seats.) But even if we don't like it, we certainly find it tolerable, and our whole health care system supports it.
In different centuries it was clergy who had that kind of excess wealth. We didn't like that either, back then, but we tolerated it, and our whole cultural system supported it.
I don't want to go back to that. But I do notice that, if money expresses cultural value, how much more our culture values the health of the body than the condition of the soul.
About Me
- Old First
- Daniel James Meeter grew up in Manhattan, Bedford-Stuyvesant, Jersey, and Long Island. He was ordained to the Reformed Church ministry in 1980, and has served churches in Jersey, Michigan, and Ontario. He earned a Ph.D. from Drew University in 1989, and has published two technical books in theology as well as many articles. He is married to Rev. Melody Takken Meeter, the Director of Pastoral Care at the Lutheran Medical Center of Brooklyn. They have two married children. The Old First Mission Statement: Old First Reformed Church is a community of Jesus Christ in Brooklyn. We welcome persons of every ethnicity, race, and orientation to worship, serve, and love God, and to love our neighbors as ourselves. We embrace the following missions: 1. To offer God's word, prayer, the sacraments, and discipleship; 2. To offer outreach, education, fellowship, and music; 3. To offer sanctuary to anyone seeking spirituality and hope; 4. To offer hospitality to community groups and the arts; 5. To care for the gifts we have been given through our Reformed Church, including our historic sanctuary and building.
1 comment:
Our health-obsessed culture is also straining for immortality of the body without much inquiry into the state of the souls that lives ever longer in those bodies.
Health-club memberships among the 40- and 50-somethings are booming, at least in the big cities. I wonder what the figures are for worship service attendance?
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