Dr. Weil says being a doctor used to be viewed as a calling, a profession, not something people did to gain fame and fortune.
Doctors served the greater good and desired to make people well. Money hadn’t become the driving force behind treatments.
I’m afraid this affliction affects all of our professions, certainly those that
I know personally.
Too often pastors no longer genuinely care about guiding and protecting their sheep. Instead, they seek fame, media recognition, and mega-church pastor status. All too many screw their sheep–on various levels.
Too many teachers want to be administrators who draw much bigger salaries than their faculty and pushing them around, multiplying like rabbits, while the teachers’ numbers dwindle and many leave because they are treated badly by administration, students, and finances.
Too many counselors want to be famous therapists who make loads of money but don’t really care about helping their clients to lead better, more productive lives, and so on. To help people, we must call them on their BS.
That may mean they’ ll quit because too few rea
lly want to change. They’d rather think others around them must do that.
People no longer want to be statesmen and women but politicians, owned by big business and their lobbies. They say they care about the good of the country, but they are too busy lining their pockets and screwing their aids and whomever they can to co-operate and move genuinely
good ideas and laws forward.
Banks should help people advance the common good by lending money at fair r
ates and operating honestly.
Insurance companies should protect us from disasters and accidents of all kinds. Instead their CEOs desire power, lavish lifestyles, ridiculous salaries and bonuses–and bailouts, made from the hides of the people they ought to serve and help.
I’m afraid if we don’t get things turned around and reassert our humanity, taking up the notion of having a profession again–of obeying a noble and high calling–we’re doomed as a nation. Money just isn’t what life is all about. Nor is power. We find satisfaction in serving, in working for the common good.
Jesus said it’s the love of money that is the root of all evil, not money itself, for that’s only a tool. He was right.