A Broken System, Part 1

Most peo­ple have at least a vague sense that the sys­tem is bro­ken. What I mean, is that we all as­sume there are peo­ple and pro­grams “out there.” If you get sick, you need help from the med­ical sys­tem. If you’re strug­gling emo­tion­al­ly, you may turn to the men­tal health sys­tem. If your kids need ex­tra help in school, the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem has the an­swers. And if you’re wrestling with life’s big ques­tions, you’re more like­ly to look to sys­tems that pro­vide spir­i­tu­al and moral guid­ance.

What most peo­ple don’t re­al­ize is that all of these sys­tems are, in fact, one care­giving
meta-sys­tem. Stop to think about it for a mo­ment and it’ll be­gin to make sense.

When a per­son be­comes anx­ious and de­pressed, they are more sus­cep­ti­ble to illness and to stress-re­lat­ed auto-im­mune dis­or­ders. They are in­clined to iso­late from friends and fam­i­ly, to call in sick for work, and to strug­gle in their re­la­tion­ships at home. At the same time, their
out­look on world, God, and the fu­ture can be­come dark and hope­less. In oth­er words, a break­down in one area of our lives can af­fect us in mul­ti­ple ways. If a per­son only gets care or treat­ment for one area of chal­lenge, they may make lit­tle progress with the over­all strug­gle.

We hu­man be­ings are com­plex! Our bod­ies are in­flu­enced by our minds, and vice ver­sa. If we spend all our time treat­ing one and not the oth­er, we may make lit­tle head­way.

If hurt­ing peo­ple are to have hope of heal­ing and whole­ness, we need sys­tems that re­late to each oth­er the way hu­man be­ings ac­tu­al­ly func­tion. We need med­ical and men­tal health care sys­tems that talk to each oth­er. We need spir­i­tu­al guid­anceand emo­tion­al sup­port, not one or the oth­er. And we need care­givers trained to think be­yond their ar­eas of spe­cial­iza­tion.

Our cur­rent sys­tem doesn’t work this way. At Cor­ner­stone, we’re work­ing to fix a bro­ken
sys­tem in or­der to care for the bro­ken peo­ple in our midst.