Purpose and Providence: An Outline for Christian Practical Wisdom in Health Care

Decision-making in health care is often challenging and therefore requires practical wisdom. The domains of such wisdom involve goals, perception, ethics, deliberation, and motivation. For Christian patients, there is a need for practical wisdom founded on Christian commitments that shape and guide these domains according to a Christian understanding of life, health, technology, illness, suffering, and death. In this essay, I outline a Christian approach to practical wisdom in health care by infusing Christian beliefs and values into a general framework for practical wisdom in medicine I have described previously. I organize this approach by referring to Christian purpose, vision, ethics, piety, and practice. The result is a framework that intends to integrate faith and reason so that what we believe as Christians forms how we think about health and guides what we choose or decline when considering the possibilities that come before us in health care.