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The best doctors are those who, where possible, can diagnose the cause of an illness accurately and give proper medication or treatment for it, rather than merely treating the symptoms.
Our world is cursed not only with physical illnesses, but also with even more grave spiritual illnesses. Some of these relate to mankind’s daily behavior; some with his or her religious doctrines and practices. Some of them overlap in both areas. In fact, some involve medical, ethical, and spiritual issues all at once. An old radio commercial urged smokers to buy a certain brand of toothpaste especially formulated to remove the ugly tobacco stain from one’s teeth. Thus, we have a classic case of ignoring the cause while treating the symptom. Those who quit smoking to remove the cause of such ugly stains are the wise ones. Even wiser are those who never start. In the same class are the messages urging drunkards to let someone drive them home from the bar or the party instead of driving themselves. The wiser and more effective course is to attack the cause—sober up and stay that way.
In the 1960s, liberal sociologists pretended to decry the growing plague of teenage sexual promiscuity that increasingly (and predictably) led to venereal disease, unmarried parenthood, and abortions in epidemic numbers in subsequent years. At the same time, most of these social “experts” continued (and continue) to encourage the growth of these problems by their amoral/immoral philosophies. Instead of getting to the root of these problems (violation of God’s moral laws) their “solutions” are entirely symptom-oriented: Provide birth control devices (for “safe sex”), abortion with or without parental knowledge or consent, and treating the ravages of VD with medication. Will it never dawn on such Godless fools to strike at the cause of these tragedies by insisting on Biblical chastity?
This problem has its strictly religious applications, also. In the denominational world that professes belief in the God and Christ of the Bible, each group has its own laws, ranging from such outlandish things as ordaining female preachers and/or bishops (including homosexuals) to the almost universal denial of the necessity of baptism for forgiveness of sins (Acts 2:38, etc.). All such things are merely the symptoms. The cause is a rejection of the Authority of God and His Son by rejecting the Bible as the infallible, inspired Word of God. Likewise, when a brother or sister deliberately refuses to do what he/she knows pleases the Lord Jesus, such disobedience is only the symptom. The cause is far more serious: lack of love and reverence for Christ and His authority (John 12:48; 14:15). We must all do our best to treat the cause.
[Note: I wrote this article for and it was published in The Edifier, weekly bulletin of Pearl Street Church of Christ, Denton, TX, November 30, 1989, of which I was editor.]
Attribution: From thescripturecache.com; Dub McClish, owner, curator, and administrator.
