Posted on 08/06/2014 1:07:12 PM PDT by Kaslin
I wonder how the Ebola doctor feels now that his humanitarian trip has cost a Christian charity much more than any services he rendered.
What was the point?
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 at the 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?
No -- because we're doing just fine. America, the most powerful, influential nation on Earth, is merely in a pitched battle for its soul.
About 15,000 people are murdered in the U.S. every year. More than 38,000 die of drug overdoses, half of them from prescription drugs. More than 40 percent of babies are born out of wedlock. Despite the runaway success of "midnight basketball," a healthy chunk of those children go on to murder other children, rape grandmothers, bury little girls alive -- and then eat a sandwich. A power-mad president has thrown approximately 10 percent of all Americans off their health insurance -- the rest of you to come! All our elite cultural institutions laugh at virginity and celebrate promiscuity.
So no, there's nothing for a Christian to do here.
If Dr. Brantly had practiced at Cedars-Sinai hospital in Los Angeles and turned one single Hollywood power-broker to Christ, he would have done more good for the entire world than anything he could accomplish in a century spent in Liberia. Ebola kills only the body; the virus of spiritual bankruptcy and moral decadence spread by so many Hollywood movies infects the world.
If he had provided health care for the uninsured editors, writers, videographers and pundits in Gotham and managed to open one set of eyes, he would have done more good than marinating himself in medieval diseases of the Third World.
Of course, if Brantly had evangelized in New York City or Los Angeles, The New York Times would get upset and accuse him of anti-Semitism, until he swore -- as the pope did -- that you don't have to be a Christian to go to heaven. Evangelize in Liberia, and the Times' Nicholas Kristof will be totally impressed.
Which explains why American Christians go on "mission trips" to disease-ridden cesspools. They're tired of fighting the culture war in the U.S., tired of being called homophobes, racists, sexists and bigots. So they slink off to Third World countries, away from American culture to do good works, forgetting 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.'"
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.
I completely agree with her.
Coulter and Pelosi belong in the same psychiatric ward.
Acts 1:8 But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto Me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth.
Christian missionaries have been going to the uttermost parts of the earth for centuries. Perhaps Ann would prefer that Islam or paganism or some such thing have total sway over the lost of the world. Jesus Christ has a different preference.
Touche!
Just amazing. What HAS she done, ever, for others, that involved sacrifice? I mean, has she ever even just shut up for two minutes as a sacrifice? This column is appalling.
Don’t bother telling us how wasteful it is. Tell God! And admonish Him for commanding Christians to spread the gospel to all nations while you are at it.
So if our top isolation/(currently)Ebola treatment center, which was built 12 years ago to treat CDC employees if they needed it, can safely treat these two missionaries without it escaping, then our ""natural barrier"" remains intact and we are forever safe again???
Also, Ebola has been in numerous labs in the U.S. and Canada already, how do you think they are infecting monkeys and such with it?
It was Christian missionaries that brought the word to the West.
And if donors disagree with the expensive measures taken to save the doctor and nurse they can stop donating to Samaritans Purse (which I doubt will happen).
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I heard figures for both plane trips was a combined cost of about $400,000 - $500,000 & I’m sure the serum was donated since Brantley & Writebol were going to take the risk of being human guinea pigs if it meant the possibility of surviving Ebola. That being said, knowing Franklin Graham takes excellent care of the people who work for Samaritan’s Purse, I’m sure if there was any issue of the money, he’d pay for it out of his own pocket, if need be.
That’s what happens when your system doesn’t get enough nutruients. She needs to eat a cheeseburger and supersize those fries. :-)
Intentionally bringing Ebola into the country is insanity.
Her point is, “Charity is fine, until you decide the wages of your charity is becoming infected with a highly contagious, pandemic-caliber, virus for which there is no cure.”
If you work for a NGO like this, and decide to deploy to a region with a pandemic like this, you should also agree that if you are infected, then you get help in situ and may God protect you from there.
She might not have said it well, I guess, but I get her point.
You don’t monkey with Ebola. Not at all. I can’t believe they were allowed to come home with it, unless they basically agreed to be human test subjects, which is apparently what happened.
Exactly. Ann is just trying to draw attention to herself by being outrageous. That’s her thing.
Going after Samaritan’s Purse on such flimsy logic ... right up her alley.
Some of what she says makes sense, her manner smacks of a lack of compassion.
Wow...what bug crawled up Ann’s butt... ?
Yes, Ann has lost it. Ok, if the doc saved 4 lives of patient’s that had Ebola, how much is each of those lives worth? Huh?
You cannot place a value on human life. If he saved one, it was worth the money.....
I can go either way on whether the Ebola should have come here (in human hosts - it’s already been here in primates), but I’m sure just being “home” and with family near is a great relief and comfort to both. As for the work they were doing in Africa ..... interesting that it looks like they may survive something so deadly .....
Psalm 41
1 Blessed are those who have regard for the weak;
the Lord delivers them in times of trouble.
2 The Lord protects and preserves them—
they are counted among the blessed in the land—
he does not give them over to the desire of their foes.
3 The Lord sustains them on their sickbed
and restores them from their bed of illness.
Menopause much, Miss Coulter?
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