Medicine Series: Introduction

Return to the Original State of the Whole Man

You know how you can believe in God, worship Him daily at Mass, keep His commandments, and think to yourself, “I am a balanced Catholic. I serve God first, and live my life outside church with the good conscience of a good person, and because I am so balanced, no one can accuse me of being a fanatic;” and yet, one day, the Lord calls you into a deeper communion with Him that completely upends your world, and you can’t shut up about Him; suddenly, you are so full of joy and peace that to the outside world, you are definitely a fanatic… but you don’t care?

Well, such has been my relationship with medicine.

I often prelude in conversation, in an attempt to explain my point of view, that I see medicine very differently from most people, and the other person will shake their heads and say, “I’ll bet we see it the same way.”

I haven’t the heart to disillusion them.

They say this because they believe in supplementing with vitamins and minerals, in drinking healthier water, in avoiding chemicals, gluten, soy, and processed foods. They say it because they believe in organic farming, sustainable living, and fewer electronic devices.

So do I.

These things are self-evident. With a glance around our world, we can and do see how we have poisoned those very things that ought to bring us life.

How, out of a desire to produce more, we have in fact produced less. How, to produce more wheat, we have produced poor wheat; and to produce uniform rice, we have cast out billions of varieties of rice; how - to grow larger vegetables - we have depleted their nutrient levels; and to whiten our teeth, we have poisoned our drinking water.

A Matter of Fact

Those who say they agree with me, who have yet to hear how far down the rabbit hole I have traveled, you who are, in all probability, reading this blog, it is to you I write. Because though you may not have followed me all the way down to be crowned as a Mad Hatter, yet you are an outlier in society.

You see what is self-evident because you have your eyes open. You see and recognize the misuse of our planet, you see the poison being introduced into your children, and you can taste the difference between organic and processed…. You are unique.

This, I’m sure, is no surprise to you, because you do not need me to tell you that society at large is blind to these facts. You see it in the subtle eye roll of your neighbor when you ask if the party will have a gluten-free option, or if you should bring your own. You see it in the school system that still fills your child’s diet with estrogen-infused soy. And you feel it in your stomach, when you eat at McDonald’s.

These are facts. They are inconvenient facts, but they are facts we consider worthy of notice, since they mean the health and well-being of ourselves and our children.

More and more millennials are coming down with auto-immune diseases each year. The statistics of children with allergies, compared to even a hundred years ago, are staggering. And the number of voices clamering for forced vaccinations each year are deafening.

A Radical Shift of How to View Medicine

But all this is noise. Vanity of vanities. Ladies and gentleman, we are getting lost in the weeds, and we have forgotten to search for the wheat. We are so bogged down in facts, in the eyerolls of neighbors, and in the clamor of threatened freedoms, that we have lost the thread of our humanity.

And it is to our humanity that I wish to speak.

This is not a series to awaken you to the evils of modern-day gluten. There are plenty of resources out there for that, and you can look them up on the web if you’re curious. No, this is a radical series. This is a series about the whole man. Half practical, half philosophical, I voice it here on the off-chance that by doing so, I may influence deeper personal insight for you, my reader, and hopefully allow you to live in greater joy and health than ever before.

Article 1: Three World Views Regarding Pain

Article 2: There is No One Cure

Article 3: Survival of the Fittest vs. The Design of the Soul

Article 4: Pain is Part of Life

Article 5: The World Has Abundant Answers

Article 6: A Basic but Radical Definition of Medicine