Welcome to the “Doc-sy” series, as in OrthoDOXY (right doctrine), where you will find short essays aimed at truth, especially truths pertaining to whole person health.  These essays arise from the life of a “Doc” practicing medicine while also leading my own family through a crazy world.  These endeavors exceed the capacity for this one post to cover or to even introduce adequately.  For this reason, several essays following this brief introduction will address several foundational concepts or principles before continuing with regular installments regarding truths of whole person health from a Biblical perspective.  Today, I will share a short clip of my personal journey in pursuing truth, my perception of the problems we face today regarding truth, and a brief overview of what is coming in this series. 

              While other essays will provide more insight into the life that led me to write these installments, a quick self-introduction is in order.  The truths or “Doc-sies” that I hope to share with you in the coming weeks and months have been shaped by over 50 years on this earth directly and indirectly experiencing life in a fallen world.  I have witnessed the need and practice of such “docsy” truths for the better and for the worse with chronically ill patients asking hard questions about physical and spiritual health.  I have lived the need in endeavoring to raise 6 children alongside an amazing wife in a world gone crazy. I have witnessed through the stories of my patients’ lives how these principles and “doc-sy” truths work themselves out.  I have worked to care for my own body’s health and the health of my family as well as my patients applying whole person truth.  I have shaped my own spiritual life and counseled the spiritual life of others using God’s Word.  I have walked through dark nights of the soul with loved ones.  During these times I have not only seen the fruits of Biblical views of health and life but also the adverse effects of having bad views of health and life.  Now I want to offer light for those following their own health journey’s so they can avoid missteps which I struggled with or watched others struggle through.

              We, meaning our once more Christian society, came to this need for a reappraisal of what whole person health means to a Christian for many reasons.  On one hand, we in society forgot the source of truth.  God and His Word has been pushed to the wayside by the modern world as a source for truth.  In forgetting God, we also forgot the means of knowing truth through His Word and through reason or logic.  Instead, we have pursued autonomy from God, moving from rationalization to irrationalization.  We disliked God’s truth so we sought truth outside of God.  When the crises and storms of life hit, much anxiety and fear came with them as we lost a foundation on which to stand.  We have been looking in all the wrong places and been too pragmatic as well as short-sighted. 

              Truth about health encompasses more than can be even outlined in this introductory essay.  At the very least the series will address and discuss: (the fancy theological terms are in parentheses for those interested)

• What is truth as well as its source? (metaphysics)
• What is man? (ontology and anthropology)
• What is man’s telos or purpose? (teleology)
• How does man know anything?  (epistemology)
• What is man’s measure for right and wrong, good and bad, success and failure? (ethics)
• How does man understand physical and spiritual health and the relationship between them?

              These essays offer much more to come in upcoming installments.  I will start with several foundations on which the following floors can be built week by week.  On each floor we will work through filling in the rooms one or two at a time.  Sometimes we will step back to look at the big picture, sometimes we will hone in on the details.  Over time, I hope to develop a full-orbed Biblical view of health while dispelling the half-truths, misconceptions and flat-out deceits in regard to true whole person health and true medicine.

              I hope to point us back to God.  By pointing to the Bible and to the reality of reason which comes to us as part of the image of God in Man, I hope an emphasis on “doc-sy” as in Orthodoxy will lead to orthopraxy or right practice in life.  This orthodoxy and orthopraxy has a hope to restore healthier more abundant whole person health in body and spirit, individually and relationally.

Next in this series… What is truth?