SURVIVING THE SUFFERING, LLC
EUSTIS, FLORIDA

In the Bible, there are several instances where people were carefully chosen for their duties.  In Judges chapter 7, we are told of instructions God gave to Gideon as he prepared his army to attack the Midianites.  God felt that it was important to demonstrate His divine providence by having Gideon obtain victory in circumstances that would be otherwise impossible.  He did not want Gideon winning the battle with a large number of men.  In verse 2, "The Lord said to Gideon, 'The people with you are too many for me to give the Midianites into their hand, lest Israel boast over me, saying "'My own hand has saved me.'"   First, God told Gideon to dismiss anyone who was afraid, and promptly 22,000 up and left, leaving 10,00 behind.  Then He told Gideon to send his men down by the water, and told him to separate the men by the way that they drank the water, and he retained only the 300 men that brought the water to their mouths by their hands.  And with only those 300 carefully chosen men, Gideon and his small army defeated the Midianites. Now we come to the real tectonic shift in the grounds for choosing who will be a doctor.  When I applied for medical school, only one in seven applicants was accepted, and at my particular medical school, it was one in twelve.  One of the tests we all had to take was the MCAT, Medical Colleges Admissions Test, sort of like an SAT for aspiring physicians.  Not only did we have to have decent grades, we had to score well on this test.  We were tested on the knowledge we had acquired as undergraduates that we would need to succeed in medical school and as practicing doctors.  We were tested on biology, anatomy, chemistry, physics, and biochemistry.  It was an exceedingly rigorous examination, designed to select only those with an aptitude for learning the intricacies of the human body and its diseases.   In medical school, we would later learn every muscle, tendon, nerve and bone in the body.  We would learn every single chemical reaction and hormone, and the derangements of these functions as they caused illness.  God is sovereign over all, and yet we are allowed to make choices.  He has shown us in His Bible the importance of picking and choosing wisely.  Ironically, those who choose who will be a doctor today will likely one day in advancing age be patients who will need the utmost of skill and knowledge to diagnose and treat their illnesses, and will they then regret their choices?   Those who vote for leaders that create the unwelcome environment in which physicians practice will also be receiving care from doctors that were poorly qualified applicants who were some of the few available for positions where there was not much competition.   Unfortunately, almost all of us at one time will need healing services delivered by those chosen not for their aptitude for medicine but for their politically correct social beliefs.  As a physician and Christian, my counsel to you would to be to pray to never get sick.