Beginning his interview of then Health and Human Services Secretary appointee, Robert F. Kennedy, republican senator Ron Johnson lauded Kennedy, a democrat, for setting aside his political differences to work with President Trump on an important initiative: finding the root cause of so many chronic health problems in the United States.
“We need to get to the answers [of chronic illness],” Johnson said.
“There is no issue that should united us more than this chronic health epidemic,” Kennedy agreed. “There is no such thing as republican children or democratic children; these are our kids. Sixty-six percent of them are damaged. I know what a healthy kid looks like, because I had so many of them in my family. I didn’t know anybody with a food allergy, peanut allergy. Why do five of my kids have allergies? Why are we seeing these explosions in diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, neurological diseases, depression? All these things are related to toxicity in the environment.”
Kennedy is right, at least about the explosions in disease—ask any doctor. As potential HHS secretary, now confirmed, he claimed he is the person to fix the problem, too.
“I don’t think anybody is going to be able to do this like I have—because of my peculiar experience; because I’ve litigated against these agencies. When you litigate against them, you get a PhD in corporate capture [where private industry uses its political influence (money) to take control of the decision-making apparatus of the state], and how to unravel it. I’ve written six books about these agencies. I know a lot about them; and I know how to fix it. And there’s nobody who’ll fix it the way I do, because I’m not scared of vested interest.” Rather: Kennedy is neither (a) a corrupt bureaucrat nor (b) scared of Big Corporate Food.
So, Kennedy has the answers to human health. But does he? All he is really saying is government agencies, specifically the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), apparently, are on the take and corrupt and allowing people to be chemically poisoned by Big Food. Per the Trump era, we know political corruption government-wide is incontrovertibly true. But people are being chemically poisoned? Is making their customers and fellow human beings sick really the strategy of America’s food producers?
Meanwhile, doctors one and all are complaining that Americans are not only eating too much but have unhealthy diets, and are advising them to eat less, exercise more, and lose weight. Instead of chemical poisoning, could this be the problem? Gluttonous Bending-Elbow Disease and a lack of self-discipline?
If Kennedy were to say, “Americans are fat and unhealthy. Eating too much they’re digging their own graves.” The medical community would certainly agree. But how would those remarks go over with the masses?
About as well as they would over in the doctor’s office.
“You’re fat and unhealthy, Mrs. Smith. You’re digging your own grave.”
Gasp! “Why, the nerve!”
“At 5’2” and 345, Mrs. Smith, I feel obligated to intervene, to limit the blast radius.”
Suffice to say, where it concerns health and healthcare praise from the masses, targeting Big Food is much more profitable.
Okay, so what happens when we sue Big Food into oblivion, mark all their corporate chests with a giant red A, and then have the same problems we had before? What then? When we find out we still haven’t the solution? When we still have the explosions of diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, neurological diseases, depression—all these things related to the poisoning of our daily bread by Big Food?
Who do we blame then?
Trust me, a culprit will be determined, suspects ranging from the earth’s toxic soil to every participating food production, handling, and preparatory entity and product in between—too many waves in microwaves. Too many metals in silverware. Too much non-stick on non-stick items. Someone will be culpable, because there is money and celebrity in it—monetary jury awards from litigation, and heroism for being the person to defeat corporate evil and heal all humankind.
Incidentally, notice how the evildoers are always corporations? Know why?
Because that’s where the money is!
So basically, a lawyer and politicians are claiming human health is within their domain and under their control. Listen to them. Trust them. Do what they say, and the result is human health and healthcare Nirvana! After centuries of medical practice, and with such incredibly advanced medical tools and technology, nobody knows more about the human body than modern medicine and physicians. At least they can say, “Yeah, we’ve seen this before. Let’s start a potassium drip and monitor blood pressure. That should fix it.” At least physicians have a background in the human body and human health, and vast, centuries established research resources at their disposal. Medicine is more prepared than ever to diagnose and treat illness and disease. Yet even physicians have their limits. Else when someone dies, physicians wouldn’t say, “Well, we did all we could.”
Perhaps no one would die, or even suffer, if physicians were as medically qualified as lawyers and politicians.
The point is human beings are claiming to have the solutions to human health, to effectively have control of human health. While some possess superior knowledge and expertise in the field, does the discussion of human health really begin and end with human beings? Is the healthfulness, the very lives, of all humankind really in human hands?
Shoulder-wedging my way through the human hubris, I have a question:
Where does God fit in to the human health discussion?
Presumably, 2.5 billion Christians and Jews around the world would like an answer to the question, too. The creator of the universe and all living things doesn’t have a say in human health?
Reading my Bible, I time and again come across human health related implications, and even proclamations, within the text. Contrasting all the human doctrine about human health with scripture directly in hand, I catch myself asking:
Is anyone else reading this freaking thing?
The fact is there are but two theories of human origin, evolution and creation, and the issue of human health is implicitly bound to one of them. On one hand are human beings—science, medicine, and politicians and lawyers, evidently—claiming to have the answers to human health, which, regarding the politicians and lawyers, doesn’t appear to be about health so much as it is green. Or as God would put it: mammon. And on the other hand is God, whom the scriptures repeatedly confirm as, well, the boss of everybody and everything, to include human health.
Like it or not, the Bible does come with certain unavoidable implications. For example, if God created everything, then his power and authority are not only implied, but supreme. Who can challenge a being that speaks a universe into existence and creates humans from dust?
The Creator, God controls everything, and humans are his subjects. He declared himself the “alpha and omega,” the beginning and the end, which is almost universally interpreted as a mere power flex. However, it means something deeper, that God is the beginning and end of all earthly matters, is indeed the ultimate “truth” in all matters. All earthly matters begin and end with him, specifically the matter of human health. Whatever humans conclude or say about human health, or about any other issue of the human experience, for that matter, is a subordinate view.
The most obvious example of God’s control is his power over life and death. He obviously created life, which implies he can destroy it, too. There are many biblical examples of this destructive power, too. One being the flood, where every human on earth but Noah and his family perished. A more singular and practical example is the death of Uzzah, an unfortunate man who merely touched the Ark of the Covenant to steady it. The offense angered God, who summarily killed Uzzah on the spot.
Taken to a local hospital, one could be certain physicians would conclude an opposing cause of death. Uzzah’s heart gave out; he suffered a myocardial infarction. He had a stroke, was suffering severe dehydration. And evidence for these conclusions may even present.
But we all know the real cause of death in this case: God.
The Supreme Commander of Human Health.
Would the medical community ever make such a diagnosis? That God did it?
Folks, we’ve determined that God killed this poor man.
Have we ever heard this determination even once?
Another example is Nabal, an evil human being. Nabal angered King David, who was riding out in a fury to get even. Nabal’s wife, Abigail, rode out to stop the king. Per an offering of food and drink, she begged and subsequently inspired the king’s mercy on behalf of her husband. True to his words, “Vengeance is mine,” God, for David’s discipline and mercy toward Nabal, “smote Nabal, that he died.” Nabal’s heart, the scriptures say, “died within him, and he became as stone.” Ten days later, he succumbed. Nabal was a rude, mean-spirited man, and a gluttonous drunk. Taken to the local hospital his death would have surely been labeled alcohol-related—addiction, abuse—or a result of his apparent gluttonous habits.
But again, we all know the real cause of death: God.
The most thoroughly compelling example of God’s power over life, death, and human health is King Hezekiah. A loyal and beloved servant of God, the king lay sick in bed. Via the prophet Isaiah, God told the king to set his affairs in order because he would not recover from his ailment. Distraught, the king prayed, asked God to remember his devotion and loyalty. Moved with compassion, God not only healed the king, but granted him 15 more years of life, er, health.
So, if God healed the king of his ailment, then it can be inferred God was responsible for the ailment, too. Then granting the king 15 more years of life, er, health, the conclusion is obvious—
God is in absolute, unopposable control of human health.
Birth to death, every single aspect of human health falls within God’s domain and is under his command. Go ahead, pick an ailment. Any ailment. Let’s take leprosy, for example. Modern medicine tells us leprosy is a chronic bacterial infection that primarily affects the skin, nerves, and mucous membranes. A plague that, thankfully, modern antibiotics can now cure, that is if God allows. How do we know God has power over leprosy, and over its cure and incurability? That God is the final health and healthcare authority? That the very breath and life of all humanity, the level of sickness and misery and suffering and healthfulness people endure and enjoy, is in his hands alone?
Moses, the book of Exodus:
“And the Lord said furthermore unto [me], Put now thine had into thy bosom. And [I] put [my] hand into [my] bosom, and when [I] took it out, behold, [my] hand was leprous as snow.”
Afterward, God had Moses return his leprous hand into his coat and, pulling it out, it emerged cured. In preparing Moses to lead his people out of Egypt, God used the incident to convey not just his power and authority, but his control over human health, which he later demonstrated even more profoundly via the Egyptian plagues—frogs, lice, flies, murrain, boils, hail, locusts, perpetual darkness, death of the firstborn—before the Jewish Exodus from Egypt. And if people need to hear God directly proclaim his power over the disease and ultimately human health. Speaking to Moses and Aaron:
“I put the plague of leprosy in a house of the land of your possession.”
Just as he put the plague on Moses’ hand and then cured it.
So, what about a more common health problem, like, say, hemorrhoids. Hemorrhoids are swollen and inflamed veins in the rectum and anus, a condition doctors say can be caused by straining during bowel movements, sitting on the toilet for long periods, lifting heavy objects, obesity, and certain medical conditions such as portal hypertension. The condition can be hereditary, too. Uncomfortable though the ailment is, people use over the counter remedies to mitigate the discomfort and, in most cases, consider it a temporary nuisance born of mostly common, everyday influencers.
Could such an average, ordinary health condition be under God’s control, too?
Could such an ailment even be found in the Bible?
Indeed, it can.
The Philistines took the ark of God from the Israelites and brought it to the people of Ashdod, the sixth-largest city in Israel, on the Mediterranean coast. This apparently displeased God:
“But the hand of the Lord was heavy upon them of Ashdod, and he destroyed them, and smote them with emerods [hemorrhoids], even Ashdod and the coasts thereof.”
In response, and to rid themselves of the uncomfortable plague, the Philistines took the ark to Gath, a Philistine city. What happened to the people of Gath?
“[God] smote the men of the city, both great and small, and they had emerods in their secret parts.”
Modern medicine also says hemorrhoids can develop without any apparent cause at all. Perhaps there is a Divine cause it should now consider.
How about pregnancy? The entire process of bringing life into the world is obviously a human health matter. Women want to have children. In the most favorable conditions, some repeatedly try and fail inexplicably. How come? They meet all the necessary requirements, have all the required equipment. So, what is the problem? Modern medicine has its own answers to the difficulty. But could God, the Creator, have control of the womb?
“Before I formed thee in the belly, I knew thee,” God famously told the prophet Jeremiah. So then, that would imply, yes. God not only has control of the womb, but both control and foreknowledge of the life that is formed within. A good example is the prophet Samuel and his mother, Hannah. One of two wives to Elkanah, Hannah, though fully equipped and striving, could not become pregnant. Why not? Samuel, via his signature book:
“The Lord had shut up her womb.”
Though modern medical tests would have surely declared otherwise, Hannah’s inability to have children wasn’t for infertility or some other common modern medical reason. In control of human health, God was preventing conception. Distressed, Hannah prayed fervently to God, who heard her petition and had compassion, and blessed her with one of the Bible’s most esteemed prophets, Samuel.
Another highly esteemed biblical figure, Abraham, lied about his attractive wife to protect themselves. Visitors in a foreign land, Abraham feared other men would slay him to have his beautiful wife for themselves. So, he told everyone she was his sister. The news pleased the land’s king, Abimelech, who sent for Sarah and took her for himself. God showed the king in a dream, however, that she was Abraham’s wife. Despite immediately returning Sarah to Abraham, there was yet a punishment for King Abimelech. The Punishment?
“The Lord has fast closed up all the wombs of Abimelech’s house.”
God issued a plague of infertility, which was rescinded only after Abraham prayed for the king and his house.
Plagues, pestilence, disease, human suffering and healthfulness—it is all clearly and indisputably in God’s control. In other words, everything related to human health is within God’s domain and under his command. At least, if one believes the Bible and in God. Humans endure hardship and infirmity at his discretion and command, which means his pleasure and displeasure with people individually is the sole determinate in their affliction and healthfulness. The Psalmist made this crystal clear:
“Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits. Who forgiveth all thine inequities; [and] who healeth all thy diseases.”
Of course, certifying the Psalmists’ claim was Jesus himself, the Son of God, who, during his relatively brief time on earth, resoundingly reaffirmed God’s control of human health. Observing Christ’s miracles firsthand in the City of Nain, the disciple and physician, Luke:
“And that very hour [Jesus] cured many of infirmities, afflictions, and evil spirits; and to many blind he gave sight.”
Jesus healed every health issue known to humankind: the deaf, the crippled, the anxious, blood diseases, cancer, Multiple Sclerosis, etc. And yes, even the ailments headlining a “chronic health epidemic” in a senate appointment hearing: “diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, neurological diseases, depression.” And if all that wasn’t proof enough of his father’s absolute power over human health, Jesus even raised people from the dead:
“Lazarus. Come forth!”
A four-day-old dead guy emerging from his tomb is what they call: compelling evidence of human health power and supremacy.
Now. All this isn’t to dismiss or disparage modern medicine or science. These are important institutions and people doing vital work on behalf of humankind. Humans are fortunate to have scientists searching for cures, and doctors diagnosing and treating the afflicted. Humanity desperately needs scientists, physicians, and cures. In fact, it should be inspiring to this collective, to these chosen few, that God saw fit to make a physician, Luke, one of his son’s disciples. It is extremely high esteem. Humanity needs lawyers and politicians leading the advocacy charge, too, making sure we’re doing all we can as societies and nations to best ensure the health of respective citizenries.
The problem, however, seems to be remembering who is actually in charge. Concerning human health, there is but one authority—but one sovereign determining human health and sickness, life and death, and in lone, unopposable control of the entirety of human health. To every human being, what issue is more important than health? There are a lot of important issues, certainly, but none more important. People want to be healthy and want their friends and loved ones to be healthy, too. As for the answers to this much desired human healthfulness, Moses offered the best prescription. Speaking to the Jews post the Egyptian Exodus:
“If thou will diligently hearken to the voice of the Lord thy God, and will do that which is right in his sight, and will give ear to his commandments, and keep all his statutes, I will put none of these diseases upon thee, which I have brought upon the Egyptians. For I am the Lord that healeth thee.”
Translation: Human health and well-being are in God’s hands alone.
Nothing gets people’s attention like health problems, which is why God uses human affliction. Per his eternal mercy and goodness, however, he provides scientists and doctors to mitigate and manage the fallout and damage. But ultimately, God is in control. Complete control. Human health is in his hands. There is no money, no mammon, in this conclusion. But it’s nonetheless true.
So, instead of pinning our health future to an appointment hearing in a senate office building, or on any other humans, for that matter. Perhaps we should include this apparently new data, if ancient and original, in the search for better human health. Perhaps Making America Healthy Again begins there.
©JMW 2/2025
All Rights Reserved
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John Mark Warren 