DESCRIPTION
Our health system doesn’t work for the most vulnerable. It’s time for people of faith to respond with concrete action to demonstrate God’s love and effect real change. Here’s how.
The dialogue on how to fix US health care is mired in partisan policy debates. Rather than idly waiting for the gridlock to resolve, people of faith can live into their call to care for the underserved right now. Drawing from his experience as medical doctor, pastor, and founder and CEO of the nation’s largest charitably funded faith-based health-care center, Scott Morris sheds light on how we can live out a crucial aspect of discipleship by ministering to the vulnerable and underserved among us.
Through the stories of people too often ignored or dehumanized, Dr. Morris addresses the financial and social barriers to health care for low-income and undocumented individuals, the lack of affordable medications, the challenges of chronic disease and behavioral health issues, and the promising outcomes of faith-based care that treats the whole person. As we continue to reckon with the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic and the inequities in our health systems it has highlighted, Dr. Morris’s book calls readers to awareness, action, and advocacy in their local communities on behalf of those who have no one else to turn to for quality care.
Table of Contents
Foreword by Jim Wallis
1. Living Water in Cactus, Texas
2. Flipping between a Living and Health Care
3. Faith during a Pandemic
4. Why Do Those Pills Cost So Much?
5. Back to Work with Duct-Taped Knees and Broken Smiles
6. No Papers, No Health Care
7. Tackling Preventable Chronic Disease
8. What’s on Your Mind Is in Your Body
9. Echoes of God’s Love
10. A Vision of God’s Redemption
Group Discussion Guide
REVIEWS
“Dr. Scott Morris is the kind of person who, given a shovel and a mountain to move, would say, ‘Now, where exactly would you like it to go?’ In Memphis he pioneered a new way to address the health needs of the working poor. He models holistic medicine in all its dimensions, and this book shows how.”
—Philip Yancey, author of Where the Light Fell and What’s So Amazing about Grace?
“Leonard Cohen sings, ‘There is a crack, a crack in everything / That’s how the light gets in,’ and Scott Morris tells the inspiring story of how we can enable the light of God’s love to shine through the cracks of our broken health-care system. Scott helps us see the light through stories of unconditional love and challenges us to learn to love as Christ loves and let the light shine through to change our own communities.”
—Brian K. Milford, president and publisher of The United Methodist Publishing House
Publishers Weekly
“This is a powerful indictment of America’s profit-obsessed, red-tape-riddled healthcare industry.”
Interpretation
“Morris is right—Christians must stand in the gap, and this book is important reading for any church leader who wishes to incorporate healing into their mission. Although effective for self-reflection, [Care] can easily be used in adult education programs, as it includes a group discussion guide. Jesus continues to speak to us when he says, ‘The poor will always be with you’ (Matt 26:11). This book asks us to hear and respond, as Jesus did, with healing.”