The legal standard used to preserve fundamental rights provides a surprising template for making fundamental health choices from a godly perspective.

In the realm of law, there are a variety of legal standards.  The particulars of a situation dictate what standard has to be met.  For instance, if you’re on trial for a crime, the prosecution has to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that you committed the crime in question.  “Beyond a reasonable doubt” is the standard.

When it comes to the government’s suspension of fundamental rights, a special standard is used, referred to as “strict scrutiny.”  According to strict scrutiny, the government must have a “compelling interest of the highest order, not otherwise served” — which is to say, the government needs to have an obligation that’s just as essential as the fundamental right, and if they do, they have to find the least restrictive way to intervene.

For example, freedom of religion is a fundamental right.  But let’s say your neighbor’s religious beliefs involve human sacrifice.  The government has a compelling interest of the highest order here — they have an obligation to protect their citizens against murder by other citizens.  So here the government may intervene to prevent human sacrifice.  For the government to forbid people with this religion from gathering, from reading religious texts, etc. would be beyond their compelling interest in protecting citizens against murder, so these would not be “narrowly tailored” approaches designed to address the issue by the least restrictive means.

That’s a pretty extreme example, but hopefully it illustrates the principle clearly.

What does this have to do with godly health choices?

You’re probably wondering what in the world this has to do with making godly, healthy choices.

I strongly believe that good stewardship of God’s creation — including our bodies — requires that we honor His original design.  This means that I avoid or pass over some things that others take for granted.  Until recently, I’ve had an intuitive sense of why I intervene on some occasions but not others, but I’ve struggled to articulate it.

Then I realized that my standard is essentially a version of strict scrutiny.

I infringe on God’s original design only when it’s necessary to satisfy a compelling biblical-moral interest of the highest order, not otherwise served.

The preservation of human life is a moral interest of the highest order.  (The theoretical preservation of human life is not, because it’s theoretical, not actual.)  But “not otherwise served” matters, too.  If there’s a way to serve the same basic purpose, with less disruption to God’s design, then that’s the preferred route.

At the extreme end of the spectrum, this explains why a hysterectomy is a reasonable course of action if the uterus is riddled with cancer, but randomly removing uteri from healthy women is not reasonable.

A less obvious situation would be an illness which, on rare occasions, is fatal.  In many cases, this is really a theoretical risk: maybe you’ll be exposed, maybe you’ll contract the illness, and maybe you’ll be among the few who have severe illness.  But even if we assume this is a risk worth mitigating, what is the least disruptive way to do that?  The most conventional means is to use a vaccine, which introduces known toxins and often skews the immune system.  In many cases, supplementing certain vitamins, which support God’s design for the body, is also a viable way to mitigate the risk of severe infection.

The bottom line is that what is wise and God-honoring in one situation isn’t necessarily wise and God-honoring in another.  The circumstances matter.