Posted on 08/10/2014 3:14:46 PM PDT by Morgana
“I think I speak for all of the writers on this website when I say that her piece is distasteful, ridiculous, and just plain wrong,” Live Action’s Murray Vasser writes of Ann Coulter’s latest column, in which the provocatively prolific conservative commentator criticizes Dr. Kent Brantly for an Ebola-treating mission trip to Liberia, when she would rather see him treat cultural decay here in the United States.
Well, I can only go along with one of those adjectives.
I agree with Murray that it’s distasteful to question the motives of anyone who goes out of their way to help those in need, particularly when they do so at great personal inconvenience and risk. Saving lives is always worthwhile for its own sake. But what he quickly dismisses as “angry, arrogant, and judgmental posturing” contains truths that deserve serious contemplation from pro-lifers.
Anyone who’s ever tried to get friends, neighbors, or classmates to join them in political activism knows that the “path of least resistance” mentality—lining up for politically correct, feel-good causes but hiding from anything someone might dislike them for tackling—is very real. And while Dr. Brantly may not suffer from it, Christian culture isn’t immune from it, either. There are more than a few Christians who seem to think that as long as they do something good for someone, it’s an excuse to not care about the legalized mass murder going on right in front of them. If we’re going to end abortion, we need to call out that thinking a lot more.
When I was in high school, I was part of a small local group of pro-life teenagers. We did what we could to spread the pro-life message at community events, raise money for our local crisis pregnancy center, etc., but the one area that consistently disappointed us was recruitment. Whenever we grew, it was usually because one of us roped in a new friend. But our outreach efforts at local churches and religious schools were almost entirely met with cricket chirps. Having personally encountered the very “Christian narcissism” she describes, I know something other than “enjoy[ing] being angry” drove Coulter’s column.
Nor is she wrong when she points out “that the first rule of life on a riverbank is that any good that one attempts downstream is quickly overtaken by what happens upstream”:
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.’”
Now, we obviously shouldn’t belittle treatment of any individual case of poverty or disease, but nor should we oversell it. Murray writes that “the cause of life is advanced whenever an individual stands up against the forces of darkness and displays love to another human being,” but with all due respect, that doesn’t refute Coulter’s point that there are differences in scale, severity, and urgency between the plights that will always afflict mankind and grave evils that are actively protected and promoted at the institutional level—especially when we’re talking numbers like 3,562 abortions a day. Add on top of that the related crises she identifies—“More than 40 percent of babies are born out of wedlock” while “our elite cultural institutions laugh at virginity and celebrate promiscuity”—and it’s clear much more needs to be done domestically.
Dr. Brantly’s work may “reflect a worldview which values the weak and the marginalized over personal comfort,” and “embod[y] the life-affirming culture which we are seeking to establish,” but how does that translate to chipping away at the cultural and intellectual forces that sustain abortionism?
I’m not saying Christians should stop taking mission trips, but is it really “ridiculous and just plain wrong” to suggest that some of our priorities are misplaced? That, as Walter Hudson puts it at PJ Media, “Sometimes — I think it fair to say most of the time — God has you where He wants you”? Just imagine how much closer we’d be to ending the abortion holocaust if churches made pro-life involvement anywhere near the priority they make missionary work—if more churches preached it as a duty of American Christians.
Ann Coulter’s core mistake is the (presumably unintentional) implication that helping the needy is an either-or proposition. But her critics err too in dismissing the reasoning beneath the rhetoric.
All good is not interchangeable. And all evil is not equal.
What an absurd, self centered, infantile and ignorant rant by this author. She stepped in so many piles that it’s hard to know where to start. Perhaps she’s a judgmental b_tch and that’s why no one joined her group. Yes, I’m being harsh to demonstrate how absurdly harsh she and Coulter were.
People are called by God for different service. Shame on anyone who thinks “their” specific cause is somehow superior. Now THATS what I call Christian narcissism.
Finding any pastor who condemns abortion at the pulpit is rare. Oh I’m sure there are some, but I have not heard Swaggart, Osteen, td jakes, or any of those other big wig preachers speak on the evils of it.
That may be true, but that's not exactly the issue here. The Pastoral calling is one I do not have, and I'd only comment to say that if I were a pastor, I would live in fear and trembling of stewarding a pulpit and a congregation.
Where coulter and this writer went all wrong is a failure to understand that people are called to different places and different issues. Salvation is not an issue of a border or national sovereignty.
She needs to meet a really accomplished STUD! Get her head on straight again.
wouldn’t hurt…..
Yesterday I was watching a YouTube of Prof. John Lennox, Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oxford and noted Christian apologist. His talk was not on abortion, per se, but toward the end he mentioned "the butchery that is abortion".
I wish ALL pastors would be so truthful.
Some are called to different places I agree. However more and more I get the feeling that people/churches are going on mission trips for the “feel good” aspect of it and maybe just to take a vacation out of the country.
Yes I quite agree there is mission work to be done out of the country but there is so much work to be done here at home.
Getting Christians to pray with me at local abortion clinics is like pulling teeth. Yet these same Christians want to raise all kinds of money and fly down to Haiti for two weeks of ______? That time and money could have done a world of good stopping abortion here in America. Maybe even saved a baby’s life. I hear excuse after excuse from Christians of why they can’t help in the pro life cause. They are just that excuses. Oh it feels good to help a poor woman in a third world? Well how about helping a poor woman in America from killing her baby in an abortion mill because she feels desperate? It’s the same work, trust me and you’d never leave the country.
yes. and no. You have hit on something: a lot of these organized "youth" trips are nothing but Christian narcissism and their literature even almost says as much. BUT BUT BUT that's not at ALL the same thing as long term life style missionaries. I mean, you could not be more off base to lump those together.
Brantley was a long time missionary. He's a doctor, he gave up a tremendous lifestyle opportunity - and I guarantee you his life was not, and is not, glamorous. As for the "resources" used to air lift him back….all I can say is I thought only liberals wanted to butt into what private people and private businesses and private charities spent their money on.
I'm sorry you have trouble getting people to join your group in prayer. But that's not a related issue either really.
2 X 6? Or do you think the standard 2 X 4 will suffice?
With Coulter it went beyond that. She was downright insulting to a man who felt compelled to use his healing arts to aid others even if they aren't in the United States . One can only wonder what she would have thought of someone like Dr David Livingstone.
EBOLA DOC'S CONDITION DOWNGRADED TO 'IDIOTIC'
Was that really necessary?
Next, you can just assign us our jobs, for instance why are some people drawn to being a lumberjack and another to working in a flower shop, it is all exactly the same.
It’s not a rant, and the points outlined are those I posited myself on of the original threads about Coulter’s article. It’s less about “bashing Christians” than it is about Christians doing some genuinely difficult questioning of their own motives. No one is a bad person for providing charitable work overseas, but it isn’t wrong to ask whether more could and should be done right here, but isn’t, because it doesn’t “sound” as good or would be met with more resistance.
Coulter is right and this author is right —we have TONS of problems here. Oodles of them.
And GOING TO AFRICA is just a fashionable and decadent form of PLAY and SNOBBISM.
It’s like those people who drive around in electric vehicles and won’t shut up about them, evar.
“I’m BETTER than you”.
Nah.
How about Ann Coulter’s narcissism? It’s all that has ever held her together.
A lot of churches are just phony. Doesn’t that jive with Revelation? Very few will see the truth for what it is in the last days.
Coulter belongs with the rats at the westboro baptist church
You’re right.
But it’s a mistake to take anything Coulter says seriously, because she certainly doesn’t.
She’s another rodeo clown taking conservatives for a ride; she’ll say the most outrageous thing she can think of to drive clicks, book sales, and attention. It’s all a scam to part us from our money by saying what they think we want to hear.
The best thing we can do with these phony “conservative” personalities is ignore them. The one thing they’re desperately hoping we don’t do.
What i find patently ridiculous, and I have more affection for Ann than many here, is her ignorant lack of noticing that physicians in the US who want to donate their services in the US are precluded by LAWYERS. Cheesy, stinking lawyers like herself.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.