Some folks toss around labels with the same mistaken understanding as some doctors diagnose diseases. Some folks assume they know a person by a few words when they meet them in a comment stream, in the halls and classrooms at church, or the coffee shops in their communities--then they categorize them immediately. Many are like the doctors who diagnose a first-time patient in an examination room by by a few symptoms the patient gives, without adequately reading their prospective patient's health history. It happened to my husband and almost killed him.
The cardiologist thought by my husband's description of pain in his left shoulder blade (and the fact that he'd lifted some heavy tile that day), meant that "he probably just has pinched a nerve". I knew that was not the case. I knew my husband well. He does not complain about pinched nerves. He does not get up in the middle of the night and take aspirin unless he has a full-blown migraine. He worked in construction for an entire year with a pinched sciatica which constantly shot pain through his hip and leg. He never once complained. His limp signaled to me that there was something truly wrong and we got him help. So...when the cardiologist summarily dismissed my husband's complaint with a pinched nerve, I wanted to sock him upside the head. (I didn't, of course.) But I pleaded the case with the surgeon who had been called in by the emergency room who felt the symptoms my husband described was a heart attack brought on by blockages, or a possible aortic tear.
The surgeon overrided the cardiologist and argued our points and, reluctantly, the cardiologist agreed to more blood tests, scheduled a stress test for the next day, and admitted him to the hospital to observe him overnight. He did that with caveats. He removed my husband from the ICU and sent him back to the regular floor and told the nurses that he wasn't in any real danger but to administer the pain meds as requested. This was one of the foremost cardiologists in Oklahoma, folks. He'd done more cardiograms than any other cardiologist. Thousands. He rebuffed our words as if they were gnats in his face. He figured he already knew what was wrong. He didn't see any need to do anything more than send my husband home and schedule a few outpatient testings for whenever.
Later that night, everything changed. They immediately put my husband on intravenous nitroglycerin, canceled the stress test for the following day, and scheduled an internist to come in and prescribe thyroid medicine for his total lack of thyroid hormone in his system. They also scheduled a cardiogram for him. The cardiologist was extremely embarassed and aplogetic following the procedure that showed 5 blockages which verified a really bad heart attack had occurred the day before. My husband's 100% blockage in one artery and 95% blockages in two other arteries, and 75% blockage in the remaining two arteries, had him on target for a massive heart attack that would have claimed his life had the cardiologist sent him home and our empathetic surgeon had not intervened.
Needless to say, my husband should never have been transferred from ICU but should have gone immediately for the cardiogram. Waiting damaged the largest part of the heart muscle and left my husband with congestive heart failure. When we discussed the situation afterwards with our surgeon, I asked why he'd intervened on my husband's behalf when he had the same information as the cardiologist. He said, "Other factors weighed heavily that there was more involved than a "pinched nerve"."
The "other factors" was listening to the patient's words. Hearing the disagreements of his family. Discerning the facts that my husband's one act of lifting tiles did not match up to the normal everyday work he did as a construction worker. That my husband's history of "never complaining" about pain such as "sciatic nerve" didn't equate with waking in the night and coming to the hospital to have it addressed. Especially when my husband's history showed he didn't go to the doctor for anything. Our surgeon saw that there was more to my husband's situation and argument than what was being dismissed by the cardiologist.
The point in this anecdote from my past is simply to say, that before one accuses another of "religious legalism", they should investigate the history of the person they are accusing. A person much wiser than me recently shared some thoughts that helped me pose these thoughts: Do their accusations truly match up with the idea that is "roundly condemned in Scriptures?": The idea that by "doing" [or not doing] certain things we may earn the right standing before God", as in the rich young ruler's inquiry of Jesus? The "kind that is condemned which "demands" what is minor and what is a matter of wisdom and holiness? Some folks "have no understanding of the doctrine of separation from the ways of the world. A quest for holy living is simply not legalism. Neither is preaching of such a quest legalistic."
For another idea on what can happen as a result of making a mistake in evaluating another's house, and making an error in judgement, go HERE. selahV
