Resident devotional day 5: The people who "can't be helped"

And why do you look at the speck in your brother’s eye, but do not consider the plank in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, “Let me remove the speck from your eye, and look, a plank is in your own eye?” Hypocrite! First remove the plank from your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye. Matthew 7:2-5 NKJV

In your journey as a doctor, you will meet patients who end up in the hospital not as a result of bad luck or unfortunate life circumstances, but mostly due to their own terrible choices. The alcoholic who crashes into the emergency room wasted again and again. The 30-year-old raised in a seemingly upstanding family who got into drugs when they were 15, and who now can’t get off cocaine. The homeless patient with a list of health problems so long you don’t even know where to start or whether you can help with any of them. The 50-year-old truck driver who spent their life smoking, drinking and eating fast food, and who comes in with a heart attack due to their habits. The psych patients who yell obscenities at you almost immediately as you enter the room. I could go on.

It can be tempting sometimes to put “those” people in a category: the people who can’t be helped. The people who don’t deserve to be helped. After all, they had the choice to not live a completely sedentary lifestyle, or to not get on drugs because of boredom, or to not become homeless, right? Or at least, to not shout swear words at you for no reason. Right?

Don’t be so quick.

You are meeting these people at one moment in their life. You don’t know their entire life story. Maybe that 30-year-old did grow up in a family with money and went to a good school, but their parents divorced or they suffered sexual abuse in school, and drugs were the first thing that helped them cope with the pain, even for a little bit of time. Maybe that alcoholic is drinking their sorrows away because they’re grieving the loss of their spouse or best friend, or the loss of their job. Maybe the 50-year-old truck driver could have done better, but they were doing what they saw their parents and grandparents do before them, and no one was around to teach them how to be healthy while on the job. There are various reasons why people end up in the circumstances they are in, and while we certainly have control over how we respond to our circumstances, we cannot just assume that everyone starts with the same hand in life or has the same amount of support.

In the passage for today, Jesus talks about how we should not judge people, and gives a rather weird analogy. He says that you cannot remove the speck in someone else’s eye without first addressing the plank of wood that is in your eye. The thing is, if you have a plank of wood in your own eye, that will distort your vision. Maybe the speck you’re seeing in someone else’s eye really is a plank, or maybe it’s just a speck. Either way, you don’t have the whole picture, and the only person whose vision and whose sins you are accountable for is your own. 

Do you see a patient with a problem that is obvious to everyone but them? Good! Ask yourself if you have any problems or foibles that you haven’t dealt with yet, even if everyone in your life can see them. Some sins are hard to shake, period. Everyone needs grace. And everyone has access to grace through Jesus, who even though he had every right to judge the world, came to save everyone from their sin instead (John 3:17). By giving healthcare to those who don’t necessarily “deserve” it, you are reflecting the mercy of God, who gives rain to the just and to the unjust, and who extends his grace for anyone who will receive it, no matter how bad they’ve been.

Give mercy to your patients, just as God extends his mercy to you.