Bible Text: Matthew 7:12 | Speaker: Dr. Harold J. Sala | Series: Guidelines For Living | In everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets. Matthew 7:12

The movie, The Doctor, is the story of a young surgeon, Dr. Jack McKee, whose future is drastically changed by a cough that won’t go away and a raspiness in his voice. The cause: cancer of the larynx.

Dr. McKee, who had surrounded himself with the trappings of luxury—a powerful sports car, a picture- perfect home, expensive suits, and a beautiful wife—has no use for compassion. In fact, he views it as weakness. He tells the doctors he is training that a surgeon’s responsibility is to be good, get in and get out, and save the patient’s life. Being emotionally involved with your patient, he says, is a hindrance.

McKee did his surgery with music filling the operating theater, making borderline remarks to the nurse and wisecracking with fellow doctors. Then in a fit of laughter, Dr. McKee began to cough up blood, and a subsequent exam by a pretty new female doctor who is all business, bursts his bubble of superficiality. “Doctor,” she said, “you have a growth in your larynx.” Bang, just like that! His future is “on hold.” His expensive toys become meaningless.

Soon the doctor becomes a patient, and his status as a staff surgeon is reduced to that of the bearer of a blue hospital medical card. Now he’s a number, a statistic, who has to wait his turn like everybody else, and he chafes at the system. Yelling “Do you know who I am?” doesn’t really matter to the core of nurses and hospital attendants. Minus his white coat and stethoscope, he’s just another patient.

Based on Dr. Ed Rosenbaum’s book, A Taste of My Own Medicine, the movie is a graphic picture of how easily we lose touch with the reality of what is happening to those whose lives we touch every day. Following unsuccessful attempts to treat the growth with radiation, the doctor is forced to confess his dislike and abuse of a fellow surgeon and asks him to remove the growth. The surgery is successful, and following a frustrating recovery, Dr. McKee again begins to brief his surgeons in training.

This time it’s different. McKee begins by lecturing his interns on the fact that the people they are working with are human beings, and that someday they will be on the other end of the knife, so they had better learn what compassion is all about. He orders them to remove their white coats, put on hospital gowns and be patients for 72 hours to learn how it is when a person has to depend on the professional.

If he understood what he was doing, he didn’t indicate it. But McKee was really acting out what Jesus said long ago. “In everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets” (Matthew 7:12).

There is one thing for sure. A surgeon who is reduced to being a patient, never again presumes to be the skillful manipulator of organs and sick bodies. He’s learned compassionate care by being on the other side of the scalpel. I have to say in defense of the medical profession, most of the people I have worked with in medicine are there, not because of the money they make, but because they care for people.

Whether you are a minister, a doctor, a nurse, a bus driver, or a social service worker, it is people with flesh and blood to whom we minister—not clients, patients, or customers. People are individuals with fears, hopes, expectations and disappointments, and beneath the professional veneer or the image we project, we are all very much the same when it comes to matters of life and death.

Putting yourself in the position of the one you work with will go a long ways to bring compassion to bear on the healing of mankind. Think about it.

Resource reading: Matthew 9:35-38