There are many things Ann Coulter could be writing about... many things that she could use her pugilisitc style to attack, to criticize, to impugn ideas and even people should she choose... but Christian missionaries going overseas to help out the needy?
Whatever good Dr. Kent Brantly did in Liberia has now been overwhelmed by the more than $2 million already paid by the Christian charities Samaritan's Purse and SIM USA just to fly him and his nurse home in separate Gulfstream jets, specially equipped with medical tents, and to care for them at one of America's premier hospitals. (This trip may be the first real-world demonstration of the economics of Obamacare.)
There's little danger of an Ebola plague breaking loose from the treatment of these two Americans atthe Emory University Hospital. But why do we have to deal with this at all?
Why did Dr. Brantly have to go to Africa? The very first "risk factor" listed by the Mayo Clinic for Ebola -- an incurable disease with a 90 percent fatality rate -- is: "Travel to Africa."
Can't anyone serve Christ in America anymore? ...
America is the most consequential nation on Earth, and in desperate need of God at the moment. If America falls, it will be a thousand years of darkness for the entire planet.
Not only that, but it's our country. Your country is like your family. We're supposed to take care of our own first. The same Bible that commands us to "go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel" also says: "For there will never cease to be poor in the land. Therefore I command you, 'You shall open wide your hand to your brother, to the needy and to the poor, in your land.'"
Right there in Texas, near where Dr. Brantly left his wife and children to fly to Liberia and get Ebola, is one of the poorest counties in the nation, Zavala County -- where he wouldn't have risked making his wife a widow and his children fatherless.
But serving the needy in some deadbeat town in Texas wouldn't have been "heroic." We wouldn't hear all the superlatives about Dr. Brantly's "unusual drive to help the less fortunate" or his membership in the "Gold Humanism Honor Society." Leaving his family behind in Texas to help the poor 6,000 miles away -- that's the ticket.
Today's Christians are aces at sacrifice, amazing at serving others, but strangely timid for people who have been given eternal life. They need to buck up, serve their own country, and remind themselves every day of Christ's words: "If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you."
There may be no reason for panic about the Ebola doctor, but there is reason for annoyance at Christian narcissism.
the Emory University Hospital. But why do we have to deal with this at all? The title of this God forsaken piece Ms. Coulter has published is Ebola Doc's Condition Downgraded to Idiotic. More God forsaken is the reaction I'm seeing on Facebook. People are praising this. People are actually suggesting the piece is spot on.
A doctor is moved to serve in a place many would never think to go, he takes risks, he makes sacrifices, all to help the least of these.
And he's called idiotic. His service is ridiculed. He's impugned and his motives questioned.
And people are praising this. People who are Christians no less.
It's truly sickening. Actually, it's disgusting.
Here's a little more about the man Christians are bashing, pieced together from a sermon he delivered just before heading to Africa:
“In October, [my wife] Amber and the kids and I are moving to Monrovia, Liberia, to work as medical missionaries at ELWA Hospital,” Brantly told the congregation at Southeastern Church of Christ in Indianapolis. “For two years we will live and work and serve among the people who, until the last 10 years of peace, had known nothing but the violence and devastation of war for the previous 20 years.”
He added, “I’ve never been to Liberia.”
Why did he decide to take his family to “this far-off place” he knew nothing about?
“It’s because God has a call on my life,” Brantly said.
Quoting the Apostle Paul, Brantley urged the congregation to live boldly, saying, “God did not give us a spirit of timidity.”
The sermon offers a deeper look at the man whose life has been permanently damaged by his work, and how his faith drove him to sacrifice.
“On difficult days,” Brantly said, “when I want to give up or when I wonder if I’ve made the right decision, retelling my story reminds me of how God has brought me to where I am.”
It takes a certain amount of chutzpah and a great deal of arrogance to knock Doctor Brantly's actions as those steeped in idiocy. A great deal of arrogance.
Simcha Fisher speaks for me in her related piece that should be read in its entirety:
Here’s the deal, for anyone who thinks Colter is kinda sorta mean, but kinda sorta has a point: yes, it is true that there is such a thing as missionaries who do more harm than good. Yes, it is true that some people claim to be serving God, but really they’re just trying to make themselves look good.
Is there any evidence that Dr. Brantly is guilty of any of that? I honestly don’t know. I haven’t been following the story. Coulter doesn’t give any evidence in this piece that she knows any more than I do from reading headlines.
Coulter is playing to the crowd who always say, “Fix America first.” And I always say, “Why?” Are Americans more important than citizens of other countries? Is their suffering more meaningful? If we evangelize them, does their conversion give less glory to God than the conversion of an American? If they die of starvation and disease, do their families grieve less than the families of dead Americans? And if not, then what could possibly be wrong with going to help them in the way that you know how?
Xenophobia is just racism for people who think big. There’s nothing noble about turning your back on people who suffer, even if they’re people who speak a different language or live in places with silly names. If we were all just supposed to hunker down and play to the home crowd, then the apostles themselves were off to a pretty bad start, gallavanting all over Greece and Ethiopia, Persia and Turkey. Didn’t they realize there were still some people back home — their own countrymen — who could have used their help?
For that matter, why couldn’t Jesus just stay put? I guess he never heard of Fix Bethlehem First. Instead, He had drag Himself all the way to Jerusalem, and then climb all the way up on a hill, and then all the way up on that cross, as if to say, “Look at me! I’m saving everybody!” And meanwhile, I suppose His mother and his friends had to think about the hotel bills, the travel expenses . . .
Talk about a Christian narcissist. Yeah, Dr. Brantly is just like that. What an idiot.
I'll take Dr. Brantly's idiocy over the idiocy I'm seeing in Coulter's piece, and the idiocy I'm seeing in those who agree with her, any damned day.
Any. Damned. Day.
Carry on.
