The Audience

21 September 2019 12:50AM IST

          Social cognizance (I do not know if there exist such a term “officially”, but hey, let me use it anyway). I’d like to define it as the overall awareness, or unawareness that is exhibited by the community in various aspects of life (Note to self: very bad in making definitions, would be easier to use an already existing one). Anyhow, here is my point, the level of awareness has risen much in our community. Back then, barely a handful of us would be able to answer to the question: What are your rights? What are your duties? Nowadays, most of us are able to answer these kinds of questions, or are we?

          As a medical doctor, and also from a very small state, with everything small in it: from economy to mindsets, I have observed changes that the non-medical natives of my home have been exhibiting lately. It is difficult to say whether the advent of media and (ab)use of technology is increasing the sensitivity of the people or vice versa. Note that I have chosen to use “sensitivity” and not something like “awareness” or “education”.

          There was (and still is) facebook, then whatsapp, then Instagram and the world just keeps on making more social platforms. There were journalists and editors, now everyone is posting the “latest news” in the comforts of their home from the small devices that sits atop the palm of their hands in their comfortable little homes from sources no one bothers to ask. We are in an era of rapid technological development. Not just technology, everything is moving on extremely fast pace.

          Motor development (or so it is called in medical terminology) starts from social smile, to head holding, to sitting with support, sitting without support, crawling, standing, odd steps to gracious ramp walks, rickety walking to running. But nowadays we are not just running into the future; we are hopping into the future! Leaps of development is achieved every now and then.

          As though seemingly mimicking these developments and growths, the changes in the behavior of the non-medical natives of my home state turns from private discussions to public scorn. The social internet platforms are just perfect for posting insults which they otherwise would not dare speak out. Nigh anonymity in social websites have provided these cowards with an opportunity to speak whatsoever ludicrousness their little minds can fabricate as they hide behind fake names and fake profile pictures.

          People do not listen to reason anymore, and I chose to use the word “sensitivity” over “awareness” or “education” because educated people are sensitized and equipped with information with which they can be reasoned with, discuss and improve whilst sensitivity without proper education is like an open mouth with extremely bad breath which attracts flies.

          Somewhere along the line medical doctors have become culprits. And this is most unsettling. We are acclaimed religious people, we go to church every now and then, churches are opened almost all the time. Not only that, we believe in an Almighty God, we have both religion and education that teaches us the limit of human power over lives. But it is the most spiritual, most “righteous”, those who never miss church programmes, those who are having “personal” interactions with “God” that are first to condemn, to verbally abuse, to exact virtual sentences. And this is more unsettling because the religion that we follow teaches us forgiveness, humility, love and kindness.

2 Timothy 4:3-4 For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths.

          I used to think this verse is meant for spiritual leaders and pastors and church people. But I thought wrong. The condition of medical doctors in this so called “post-modern” era of ours is as true as the Bible say it is in this letter to Timothy. People do not listen to reason anymore. They google their symptoms and diseases and they think they are as good as someone who spend 54 months in medical college reading books the thickness of which they would have never thought possible for a single book and another 12 months in internship just to be able to do the only most basic of medical practices.

          I have met many “smart” people who completely deny my diagnoses, and kept on denying it just to be able to say “That doctor doesn’t know shit”. There are thousands of people who have smart phones in their hands but still apply lime paste at the back of their ear lobes when they have acute urticaria. Many people still think drinking alcohol and passing out is having fun. And the social websites are filled with hate comments and condemnation over some seriously biased posts, but no one is curious of the other side of the story; perhaps people are having too much fun defaming a medical doctor.

          I never realized how much people hated us when they are healthy, but becomes shamelessly needy over the smallest of infirmity. We have a proverb in our local language which says something like this: Do not be rude to anyone you meet on the road (believe me, it sounded better in the local dialect). What the proverb is trying to say is, do not be rude to anyone, you may meet them again someday, what goes around comes around. That same doctor you wisely spit your hate-words on will tend to you when you’re ill, and you may say “There are many other doctors, I won’t go to this shitty doctor” but believe me when I say this: the world is round, and it is a very small world.

2 Timothy 4:5 But you, keep your head in all situations, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, discharge all the duties of your ministry.

          As a believer, my job in medical science is made many times gracious than it would have been have I not the grace of Jesus Christ in me. It is only recently that I learnt the phrase “Keep your cool”, but the Bible already said it clearly and truly: Keep your head in all situations. And it doesn’t stop there; I am told to endure. To be an evangelist is to be gracious, kind, loving and forgiving. My ministry is the ministry of healing.

          Christ is the forefather of healing in its true form. Health is a complete state of physical, mental, social and spiritual well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity (spiritual was removed for the sake of atheists, or something like that but I like it anyway so). Christ teaches us the complete package of life on earth, and he also practices complete healing.

          Medical doctors are human beings with human limitations and errors. It is the grace of the Lord and the miracles of Christ that upholds us in our daily lives as perpetrators of the healing ministry of Jesus Christ. And we shall subsist, whoever the audience may be.