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INCLUSION

If the Calgary Health Region enacts proposed new policy guidelines, the Bible could become contraband in hospitals in that city. The new policy, though still under review, proposes removing Bibles placed by the Gideons International from all rooms and banning distribution and display of any printed religious materials within Calgary’s hospitals.

Toni MacDonald, the Calgary Health Region’s Director of Spiritual Care says the policy won’t be decided for a couple of months. MacDonald says the policy is the best way to avoid religious discrimination or the appearance that the organization favors one religious group over another. McDonald says, “There’s no interest on restricting access. It’s just that we want it to be non-discriminatory. There’s not enough room in the drawers for all of the materials.”

—Canada.com News, Bible may be banned from city hospitals, Health region wants to be fair to all faiths, October 20, 2003, Illustration by Jim L. Wilson and Jim Sandell

One way to be non-discriminatory is to treat everybody the same by giving them all the same thing—nothing. And if inclusion is your top priority, maybe that option makes sense. But really, what MacDonald is suggestion isn’t inclusion, but exclusion. He is excluding God’s Holy Word from his hospital to fulfill its historical role as more than a tool for “spiritual care,” but as the transforming, live-giving word of God.

John 6:68-69 NASB “Simon Peter answered Him, ‘Lord, to whom shall we go? You have words of eternal life. [69] And we have believed and have come to know that You are the Holy One of God.’”