In the not too distant past I worked in a team responsible for dealing with software defects (also known as ‘bugs’ or ‘unintended features’). As this was all we did, day in and day out (other teams developed the new features), it was very easy to fall into bad pattern of thinking about our product and those who produced it: ‘How did this ever work?'; ‘What were they thinking??’ etc. When you only ever see something in a broken state, it is easy to assume that it is always, and has always been, broken.

Why do I tell you this? I fear the same thing has happened to Christopher Bogosh in writing Compassionate Jesus: Rethinking the Christian’s Approach to Modern Medicine. Bogosh works as a nurse in an American hospice organisation, which means that he spends a lot of time with those who are terminally ill. As a result, though his book purports to ‘rethink modern medicine’ at large, his focus seems much more directed toward this specific aspect of the medical system and, unsurprisingly, he finds much to critique.

Bogosh’s main thesis is that modern medicine as a philosophy (distinct from medical science, a methodology) represents a form of idolatry that places hope in man’s accomplishments rather than in God. In particular, he takes issue with the belief that people should seek to live as long as possible. To hold this belief is to place one’s mortality in the position supreme good. ‘In the twenty-first century, hospitals, not churches, have become the places most people in the United States look to for healing and hope. This is tragic, because the church provides the only answer for everlasting healing and hope’ (10). This, if true, is a telling indictment. In support of this, he offers many examples of people who have exhausted all possible medical alternatives, incurring great physical, relational and financial stress for the sake of a few months more.

As an alternative, Bogosh proposes what he calls ‘compassionate care’. Medical science may be used, but only in a way that expresses one’s faith in God and brings glory to him. ‘Life at all costs’ has no part in a Christian worldview; indeed Jesus himself neither healed everyone he met (though still obeyed the Sixth Commandment perfectly), nor did he seek to avoid an early death at the age of 33. He also develops a similar argument from Job, noting that Job desired death in order to avoid the unfaithfulness that prolonged suffering might bring (Job 6:8-10). Bogosh goes on to apply these principles to various end-of-life care situations: terminal cancer, persistent vegetative states, euthanasia and so on. He summarises: ‘Compassionate health care seeks to promote the restoration of human wholeness that is spiritual in nature at present and physical in the future, and it recognizes the limits of trying to eradicate illness and disease through human intervention here and now. The timeless teaching of Scripture has always been that there is hope and healing in Jesus Christ, not in Asclepius, medical science, and certainly not modern medicine’ (38).

Insofar as he has challenged a prevailing worldview that life should be pursued ‘at all costs’, Bogosh has done a great service. But, as noted above, his focus on medicine’s role at the end of life leads to an unbalanced assessment of medical science. Whilst he draws a distinction between the worldview (‘modern medicine’) and the mechanism (‘medical science’), Bogosh does little to develop how Christians may validly use the latter within the will of God to prolong life. One wonders, for example, whether the Apostle Paul might have utilised today’s medical science as part of his resolve to live for the sake of his converts (Phil 1:21-24)? What of those Christians who have fought for life and gone on to live productive lives for Christ, or non-Christians who have come to faith as a result of their reprieve.

In summary: Christopher Bogosh has offered a thoughtful reflection on modern medicine as it applies to those at the end of their life, and gives pause for thought on one’s motives in seeking medical intervention. Yet those looking for a ‘Christian Approach to Modern Medicine’ in general will be left wanting more.