Surgical Malpractice in the Body of ChristWhen it comes to operating on the wrong body parts, it seems like nobody can do it better than the doctoral staff at the Children’s Hospital of Orange, California. In the past few years, the hospital has been responsible for inserting tubes into the wrong ear of one child, loosening tissue under a child’s tongue instead of behind the child’s upper lip, and even cutting into the wrong side of a child’s skull during brain surgery. Fortunately, these situations have all been corrected, but an investigation is now being conducted by state regulators.
On second thought, maybe I need to take back what I said about “nobody doing it better” than the Children’s Hospital in Orange, because sometimes those of us in the body (church) of Christ tend to carry out surgical procedures on the wrong parts of Christ’s body. Sometimes, unfortunately, when a bad situation is discovered in a particular area of the body, and some cutting and removing or some fixing and enhancing is required, we go about trying to cut or fix the wrong part of the body! It’s as if some parts of the body are off limits to corrective surgery, and so we foolishly think we can perform surgical procedures elsewhere that will somehow miraculously correct the diseased or hurting part of the body that we don’t even touch.
These situations should be corrected immediately, and we should strive to perform surgery on precisely those parts of the body that need it. Lest we think we can get away with malpractice, we should be mindful of the fact that an investigation is certainly underway, and it’s being conducted by the divine regulator, none other than God himself.
