As a quick update, my son Jon was readmitted to the hospital. He has developed a condition that requires hospitalization but should clear itself in a few days. Thanks for the many prayers from our many friends.
I was traveling in India several years ago and saw for the first time people with leprosy. I shall never forget looking into the haunted eyes of a beggar who had lost his ears, fingers, and had other open wounds where the disease was ravaging his body. I stopped our taxi and gave the man some money as he stared blankly into my eyes, almost as though he was looking through me with his haunting expression.
I knew there were places on earth where such diseases were still prevalent, but it was with utter amazement that I learned that the city of Los Angeles is having an outbreak of this disease. I researched it and discovered that leprosy is not a disease consigned to Biblical times. More than 200,000 new cases are recorded each year globally and three million people are living with irreversible disabilities, including blindness, because of leprosy. Leprosy is a chronic, progressive bacterial infection that causes severe, disfiguring skin sores and nerve damage in the arms, legs, and skin areas around the body. As noted, the disease has been around since ancient times, often surrounded by terrifying, negative stigmas and tales of leprosy patients being shunned as outcasts.
How Is Leprosy Contracted? A bacterium spreads leprosy. The condition is contagious, and untreated individuals can spread the bacteria via droplets from the nose and mouth. The ancients understood the contagious nature of the disease, but not its mechanism. A person is five times more likely to contract the illness than another member of the population if they encounter someone with leprosy.
Other diseases in addition to leprosy are reemerging in some parts of America, again including Los Angeles County, that we haven’t commonly seen since the Middle Ages. One of those is typhus, a disease carried by fleas that feed on rats, which in turn feed on the garbage and sewage that is prominent in people-packed “typhus zones.” Although typhus can be treated with antibiotics, the challenge is to identify and treat the disease in resistant, hard-to-access populations, such as the homeless or the extremely poor in developing countries.
Dr. Marc Seigel prophetically stated: “. . . it seems only a matter of time before leprosy could take hold among the homeless population in an area such as Los Angeles County, with close to 60,000 homeless people and 75 percent of those lacking even temporary shelter or adequate hygiene and medical treatment. All those factors make a perfect cauldron for a contagious disease that is transmitted by nasal droplets and respiratory secretions with close repeated contact.”
Indeed, a study released from the Keck Medical Center at the University of Southern California looked at 187 leprosy patients treated at its clinic and found that most were Latino, originating from Mexico, where the disease is somewhat more common. Leprosy is even more prevalent in Central America and South America, with more than 20,000 new cases per year. Given that, there is certainly the possibility of sporadic cases of leprosy continuing to be brought across our southern border by hundreds of thousands of immigrants undetected, we cannot ignore this issue.
In the days of Christ, lepers were treated as outcasts and had to warn others, “Unclean” when anyone approached. Jesus famously healed several lepers during His time on earth. My heart goes out to these poor souls, and I pray they can find treatment. The disease can be successfully treated but unfortunately leaves devastating disfigurement, nerve damage, and other problems in its wake. The key of course is early detection and better preventative measures of basic hygiene.
Although we can’t know all the reasons that God allows disease into our lives, biblical leprosy is a powerful symbol reminding us of sin’s spread and its horrible consequences. Like leprosy, sin starts out small but can then spread, leading to other sins, and causing great damage to our relationship with God and others.
The people who promote allowing anyone and everyone to simply walk across our border and subsequently tolerate the filth of the drug-infested, homeless camps on the streets of LA, San Francisco, NYC, Portland, and elsewhere are no doubt genuinely trying to help. Indeed, I know with certainty if I were living in one of those countries I would do exactly as they are doing and that would be to come to America using any method I could to get across the border in search of a better life for my family.
What has been lost in this country is common sense. Do we want to take the United States back to the Middle Ages? Do we want poor desperate people to suffer here in the same manner as they are in their native countries? The solution is near impossible, but we must secure borders and allow those who apply to enter in an orderly fashion. We can help people more by teaching them to help themselves in their own country. My Bible study partner is currently in Rwanda, and their ministry is developing a program to send their brightest students to Ivy League schools in the U.S. and after completion, they will return to Rwanda to build their own country where people will not want to leave. Our leadership seems to do nothing but engage in political wrangling and ignore the deeper problems. Go figure. Like sin, the worst thing possible is to simply ignore the problem and allow it to continue to destroy.
1 Corinthians 15:57
But thank God! He gives us victory over sin and death through our Lord Jesus Christ.
Have a great weekend and go to church this Sunday!