c. 2000 Religion News Service

(Tom Ehrich is a writer and computer consultant, managing large-scale database implementations. An Episcopal priest, he lives in Durham, N.C.)

UNDATED _ At 30 minutes, I call a halt.

No more reading old magazines while a television blares. No more waiting for the physician to get around to my scheduled appointment.

As a professional consultant, if I were 30 minutes late for an appointment, I’d be fired. So today, I fire my doctor. The lame excuse, “The doctor is running behind,” doesn’t cut it. I cancel my appointment and tell a surprised receptionist, “I’ll go elsewhere.”

I also send an invoice to the doctor for 30 minutes of my time at my professional rate. The message on my invoice: “My time has value, too.”

I am not by nature a crabby customer. But I bill by the hour, and this doctor just stole an hour of my time, counting travel.

Where to go next is a difficult question, of course, for I don’t know of any profession that is as high-handed about its customers’ time as the medical profession.

I know the standard excuses: emergencies, people whose needs took longer than expected, and if that were my need, wouldn’t I want my extra 10 minutes?

Nonsense. When I arrived for my appointment, my file appeared to be one of 10 in the queue. That’s 10 patients for three physicians, all due to arrive at more or less the same time. Therein hangs the tale, not in some noble Hippocratic duty.

“They stack us up to make every one of their minutes count,” says a patient, and then “complain about how stressful their lives are.”

“Physicians think their time is somehow more valuable than mine,” says another patient.

“I hate to think of the countless hours I have waited in doctors’ outer offices, wishing I had the nerve to walk out on one of them,” says an elderly patient.

One woman tells of reading half of a long novel while waiting in an examination gown in her gynecologist’s office. She, too, walked out.

After a succession of long waits, a woman billed her physician for time wasted. She says she received an apology, “though no check was enclosed,” and a note in her chart: “DO NOT MAKE THIS PATIENT WAIT.”

It’s nothing but ego, says a patient, a neurotic need to validate themselves by forcing others to wait.

Perhaps the most precedent-shattering thing that Jesus did was to assert that every life had value. The women who came to him had as much value as the men. The children had as much value as the grown-ups. The gentiles had as much value as the Jews. The lost had as much value as the found, the sinners as much as the righteous.

John says the disciples found Jesus’ teaching “difficult” and hard to “accept.” He identified himself with the Father. He compared his body to the manna eaten in the wilderness. He contrasted spirit and flesh. He talked of “eternal life.”

Most difficult of all, however, was the undercurrent of radical equality. He gave his flesh for “the life of the world,” not for the victory of the tribe. He used words that we translate as “whoever” and “anyone,” saying that all who came to him would be received, all who ate of him would receive life.

In their formation of a common life, believers shoved this undercurrent of radical equality to the side. They labored on doctrines and procedures, but dared not approach what was truly difficult and unacceptable in Jesus’ teaching. They left in place the hierarchical mindset that Jesus had sought to undo. They perpetuated the ancient belief that some lives have more value than others, and that some lives, therefore, have no value at all.

Today’s scene in a medical clinic is more than poor management. The hourlong waits imposed on customers reflect a belief that some people’s time is expendable, that some must lose time so that the doctor can glide from room to room and feel the satisfying press of demand.

That attitude is simply wrong. Morally wrong. If Jesus taught nothing else, he taught that every life has value, and that our common life must be grounded in mutual respect. Some might bill more for their time, but everyone’s time has value.

DEA END EHRICH