The Doctor They Laughed At

In 1847, Hungarian physician Ignaz Semmelweis noticed something devastating in the Vienna General Hospital. Women in the maternity ward staffed by doctors were dying of childbed fever at five times the rate of those attended by midwives. After weeks of investigation, Semmelweis identified the cause: doctors were moving straight from autopsies to deliveries without washing their hands.

His prescription was breathtakingly simple — wash with a chlorine solution before examining patients. The doctors were insulted. They were educated men, gentlemen of science. The idea that their own hands carried death seemed absurd, even offensive. Many refused outright. Some mocked Semmelweis publicly. They wanted a sophisticated explanation, a complex cure worthy of their status. Instead, they got a basin of water.

Those who humbled themselves and washed saw mortality rates plummet from twelve percent to barely one. Those who clung to their pride kept burying mothers.

Naaman stood at the banks of the Jordan with the same indignation. He was a decorated commander, a man accustomed to grand gestures and elaborate ceremonies. Wash in this muddy river? Seven times? It was beneath him. Yet the healing he desperately needed waited on the other side of obedience — not impressive obedience, but the simple, humbling kind. God rarely asks us for what seems worthy of Him. He asks for what will free us from ourselves.