By James Wilson
Ann
Coulter’s August 6 piece drips with arrogance and contempt for all that makes
America great. She imagines she is
defending the nation, not to mention her Christian faith, but she is way beyond
the pale. She describes missionaries
like Dr. Kent Brantly as idiotic and narcissistic – her words – for going to
treat victims of the ebola virus and coming home infected with it. She thinks she is helping all of us stupid
and self-absorbed missionary types. Ms
Coulter, for the love of God, stop helping us.
Please.
Coulter says
Brantly cost his sending ministry – Samaritan’s Purse – more than the value of
his service because they had to send two Gulfstream jets to bring the doctor
and his nurse home for life saving treatment.
She wonders why he – and others called to the mission field – are not
treating Hollywood power brokers right here.
She reasons that if he leads one of them to Jesus it might trigger a
turnaround of the cultural mindset of the entertainment industry and help win
the culture wars now contending for the soul of America. And a resurrected America – she says – will
do a whole lot more good for a hungry and desperate world than bringing medical
care to a few African natives.
She throws gratuitous
insults about the needy in our backyard before returning to her theme that
Brantly – and any who think like him – should be spending their energies at
home and – specifically – evangelizing through their services rendered here –
the big money folks who can turn us on a dime with the re-application of their
big bucks influence. She actually
accuses Brantly of grandstanding by going overseas. As she puts it, he is considered heroic by a
grateful public for leaving the comforts behind but his more valuable service
in the slums of Detroit would be ignored and he needs the roar of the crowd to
feel okay.
Never mind that
nobody ever heard of Dr. Brantly before he contracted a life threatening
infection in his chosen mission field.
If he went to Africa to become famous through martyrdom his problem is
not narcissism; it’s a psychotic death wish.
Truth is Brantly is neither narcissistic nor psychotic. He is a servant of Jesus who goes where the
Boss says to go and does what the Boss says to do. He is the warp and woof of what makes America
the nation she is created to become.
The Second Great Awakening began around 1800
in frontier canebreaks and fundamentally transformed American life over six
decades. It birthed and raised the
Abolitionist Movement, the Temperance Movement, the free-for-all Public
Education Movement, and the American Character that affords equal opportunity
to folks raised in mansions and log cabins – the character so extolled in
DeToqueville’s famous treatise, Democracy in America. The core of our culture is that we are not
about ourselves; we are about all God’s creatures, and to a large extent even
when we reject Him. Our culture is what
His influence formed in us and without it there is nothing to win in a culture
war.
Does that mean
we only help those we see outside our borders?
Of course not. People with a call
to serve tend to go where they are sent and do what needs to be done. I have made more than twenty overseas mission
and ministry trips overseas and a good many more to various states. Yet as a pastor I led ministries to local
homeless populations and about seventy-five per cent of my efforts remain local. Does Coulter spend time at her nearest
shelter? I have not heard about it.
I have heard the
same contempt she gives Brantly from people who call themselves friend with no
intent to have a friend’s back, and people who call themselves family with no
idea of belonging. I recall the uncle
who berated me for my “vacations” to Fiji where I worked fifteen hour days in a
mangrove swamp – real glamour stuff.
Then there was the radio sponsor who left his bill unpaid and blamed me
for leaving the country. I never saw
them down at the rescue mission either.
The good news is
most Americans either do the kinds of things I do or provide the support that
enables them. God made us such, and the
worst danger we face is losing our DNA as givers and lovers – of God and of
each other. Jesus says – in Matthew 25
and elsewhere – when we do it for the least of these we do it for Him. His help is indispensable if we would be real
Americans. Coulter’s we can do
without.
James A. Wilson is the author of Living
As Ambassadors of Relationships and The
Holy Spirit and the End Times – available at local bookstores or by
e-mailing him at
praynorthstate@charter.net
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