God's Plan or Wisdom of Man? Part II: Decline

I realize that we no longer live in a perfect Eden.  Our bodies are imperfect and can have genetic abnormalities resulting in body parts or systems that may need medical intervention in order to operate properly.  Our world is not improving--it is degenerating and is full of contamination and corruption that can cause conditions which are not treatable by nutrition alone.  I recognize the obvious need for doctors and medicine.  Doctors and scientists are valuable and necessary, and God has gifted them with intelligence and the abilities to make life-changing advances in medicine.  But medicine, in a way, is also declining as it gets farther and farther from recognizing and working with the Design.  Things are done because they can be done--but not because they should be done.

If I'm in some kind of accident and sustain traumatic injuries, I would like to be taken to a hospital and treated by qualified doctors, thank you very much!  If I break a bone or need an organ transplant, I would like a qualified doctor or surgeon to operate on me.  Our country is arguably the best in the world in trauma care; but when it comes to health care, we fall disgracefully short.  The problem is the arrogance of the medical community at large, believing that medical intervention and "new" substances created by humans are an improvement on the original design.  Homeopaths, naturopaths, nutritionists, herbalists, chiropractors, acupuncturists, massage therapists, etc., all provide alternative treatments that work with the body and recognize its design, but they have been labeled quacks, vilified, and targeted by the medical establishment in our country.  [Actually, it's modern medicine that should be labeled "alternative" since it has only been around for a couple hundred years.]  In modern medicine doctors are taught to rely on new technology, invasive techniques, and man-made drugs without taking into consideration the original design.  They are not, however, educated in the foundation of health, which is nutrition.  When addressing virtually any health condition, nutrition and diet should be addressed FIRST.  Western medicine pushes pills first.  This approach is backward. 

Let me give a few other examples of how modern medicine replaces original design with manmade wisdom.

1. Childbirth.  A perfectly natural process that has been totally transformed by modern medicine.  We have forgotten that a woman's body was specifically designed to carry and deliver a baby without any outside intervention.  We no longer believe that a healthy baby will result unless the woman and baby are examined, tested, poked, and prodded monthly, if not more often.  We no longer trust women's bodies to go into labor naturally when the time is right; instead, artificial time lines are followed and unnatural interventions imposed when the body's timing doesn't coincide with the mother's or doctor's schedule.  Women no longer trust their own God-given ability to tolerate labor and delivery without medications or procedures.  Convenience and comfort trump design.
2. Illness.  Virtually every illness is treated with medicine (over-the-counter or prescription).  Fevers are suppressed.  We have forgotten that our bodies have immune systems to fight illness and that a fever is simply a sign that the immune system is functioning.  Suppressing fever is suppressing the immune system. The original design is forgotten.  In recent years, due to the over-use of antibiotics, we have learned to allow a virus to run its course, but bacterial illnesses or infections still must be treated with man-made antibiotics.  We have forgotten that the body is designed to fight both viral and bacterial illness.  We are unaware that many foods/herbs contain potent natural anti-viral and anti-bacterial nutrients which have no side effects and are as effective or more effective than man-made medicines--all of which have negative side-effects. 
3. Vaccinations.  Again, we do not trust the immune system to do the job it was designed to do.  We forget that diseases can be defeated without man-made substances.  We forget that natural immune-boosting nutrients are able to prevent disease altogether or greatly reduce severity of symptoms.  We fail to realize that vaccines bypass the natural processes of how viruses/bacteria are introduced into the body and subsequently attacked by the immune system, which results in a compromised, temporary, and inadequate immune response.  We don't realize that the presence of antibodies does not represent immunity.  We forget that a natural response to disease is healthy and offers permanent immunity.  We also forget that natural exposure and natural response to germs, pathogens, and disease is vital to strengthening the immune system.  We don't trust the design.

**The above statements are generalities.  Obviously there are cases where the body, for whatever reason, doesn't function the way it was designed and requires medical intervention.  The problem is that Western medicine has moved from intervening only when necessary to intervening in almost all cases unnecessarily.

Another thing to consider is that our food itself--the source of nutrition--has changed and degenerated over time.  In the beginning, when God created all the animals, water creatures, birds, and plant life, it was all declared "good."  Perfect, sufficient, and complete.  But the animals we eat today are not the same as the animals God created in the beginning.  Today, the water creatures are contaminated by pollutants in the water.  The birds and animals are fed diets they weren't designed to eat and given hormones to make them grow faster and fatter than they were designed to grow.  Then they are given antibiotics to fight the disease and sickness caused by those unnatural diets and hormones.  We eat obese, unhealthy meat from unhealthy animals, and the drugs in their systems end up in our systems.  Even wild fowl and animals are not the same, because their diets are also contaminated by pesticides and pollutants.  The plants we eat now are not the same as the plants God created.  Our nuts, grain, fruits, vegetables, and herbs are sprayed with toxic pesticides.  With the development of GMOs (genetically modified organisms), those toxic chemicals aren't just sprayed on the outside of plants, they are now inside the very seeds and are part of the genetic coding of the plants--you can't wash those pesticides off!  The soil itself is not the same; it has been drastically depleted of nutrients by modern farming practices which means the plants grown in the soil are nutrient-deficient from the start.  Then there is the fact that much of the "food" we consume can barely be considered real food.  The original grains/plants are left with little nutritional value after all the processing they undergo.  Rather than fresh, living food full of naturally-occurring nutrients, we tend to consume large amounts of refined, processed, chemically-laden food products full of artificial ingredients that have little to no nutritive value of their own, so vitamins and minerals have to be "added."  Very little of the standard American diet resembles the living, nutrient-dense foods God created in the beginning.

Step 2 in changing the way we view health is to recognize the difference between the state of affairs at the beginning of time and during ancient cultures and the state of affairs in our modern world.