Lausanne World Pulse – Themed Articles – Shalom & Eirene: The Full Framework for Health Care

By Apolos Landa Tucto
February 2009

Our present world and society is longing for meaning and wholeness. A major contributor to this state is the dualistic worldview legacy of modern, Western culture. Rich and poor, male and female, white and black are asked at every corner to choose between different dimensions of human life, as if the lines of these dimensions were not crossing each other at one point: the person. According to Kenneth Luscombe,

Body and soul, health and disease, individual and community, order and freedom, power and love, God and the world, subject and object, fact and value, science and religion and so on, are viewed as if these were irreconcilable opposites.1

Cradled in this context, the mentality of the Church and Christianity has not given enough centrality to wholeness and harmony in all spheres of human life, especially in its temporal and physical conditions and relationships. Thus health, equity, and justice, as key conditions for reconciling humanity and the world into wholeness, tend to be neglected.

Preparation for Just Eternal Destiny?
 Western theology did not escape that tendency and became profoundly influenced by Greek speculative philosophy. A dualistic distinction was drawn between what is considered the eternal, spiritual, and unchanging reality and what is the temporal, material, and changing world. Within that view, the end purpose of being truly human belongs only to the eternal and spiritual and not to the body, the organic, the communal, and the ecological relationships. Furthermore, the human as an immortal essence does not depend upon the material and temporal dimensions of existence. Therefore, the ultimate need of a human being is the salvation of his or her immortal “soul.”

This has biased the scope of missions and health care. Consequently, mission’s duty in the traditional theological term is to save humans, either collectively or soul by soul, from hell to heaven. Thus, any other temporal concern for status or relationship is viewed only as a preparation for that ethereal destiny.2

The Western influenced dualism of “spirit” versus “body” in today’s Christianity is totally alien to the

biblical view of the person.

On the other hand, health care is becoming increasingly more concerned with technology and medical means than with the total welfare of a person and community in the search of common wellness and wholeness. We should not be surprised, therefore, by the tremendous human longing for wholeness and the no-less-tremendous search for holistic deliverance and healing that characterize the emerging postmodern society.

The Interconnection between Spirit and Body
 The Western influenced dualism of “spirit” versus “body” in today’s Christianity is totally alien to the biblical view of the person. When God formed Adam’s body from the dust of the ground and breathed life into it, he became a living nephesh (Genesis 2:7); that is, a living “soul,” a living being.

This Hebrew word for “soul” indicates a human individual as a totality, in complete integration. And as God created male and female in his own image and likeness, “humanity bears the divine imprint, not just as disembodied soul, a spark of divinity locked up in the flesh,” but as a person that, in every dimension of his or her being, relates to and reveals the glory of his or her creator in harmonious mode with the rest of creation.3

When Paul says that our “…whole spirit, soul, and body be kept blameless” (1 Thessalonians 5:23), he is not talking of these as superimposed and separated realities or entities, but rather of a multidimensional, integrated totality as he wishes that “the very God of peace [shalom/eirene] sanctify you through and through.”

Dr. Apolos Landa Tucto is founder of Asociacion San Lucas in Moyobamba, a comprehensive community health project in northeast Peru. He is also regional coordinator for South America of the Luke Society, Inc., facilitating indigenous health professionals with a call for rural community health endeavors.