Wait, There's a Problem with Christian Medical Missionaries?

National Review ^ | 10/3/2014 | David French

[markomalley]

Let me begin by confessing my biases right away. Kent Brantly — the American missionary who contracted Ebola while treating patients in Liberia — isn’t just one of my heroes, he’s also (distantly) family. He’s my uncle’s nephew. I’m not sure if that makes us some form of cousin, but it feels family-ish.

And let me confess more bias. That same uncle served for years as a medical missionary in Nigeria and Tanzania, and my brother-in-law (also a doctor) has taken multiple medical mission trips. Heck, as a lawyer I feel near-useless (completely useless?) by comparison.

So, given this background, I reacted with perhaps special revulsion upon reading this piece from Slate’s Brian Palmer, where an atheist asks, “Should we worry that so many of the doctors treating Ebola in Africa are missionaries?”

Now, why would someone possibly be concerned that a number of fellow citizens have decided to leave the prosperity of American medicine (for all its problems, it’s still pretty darn lucrative), travel to the developing world, and sometimes risk life and limb to provide medical care to the poorest of the poor?

Here’s why:

And yet, for secular Americans—or religious Americans who prefer their medicine to be focused more on science than faith—it may be difficult to shake a bit of discomfort with the situation. Our historic ambivalence toward missionary medicine has crystallized into suspicion over the past several decades. It’s great that these people are doing God’s work, but do they have to talk about Him so much?

Let’s translate. Dear missionaries who are sacrificing so much because of your love for Jesus, shut up about Jesus. Squelch the beliefs that guide your life, that give you meaning and purpose, so that other people — thousands of miles away — don’t have to think of you sharing the Gospel.

(And never mind the utterly insulting insinuation that faithful Christian doctors aren’t as focused on science.)

As the writer notes, this is an old critique — one that treats the Christian message as a kind of cultural cancer, something to be contained and ultimately excised (so long as it doesn’t kill the good deeds). One hears this critique in the states all the time, especially on campus, where the only “good” Christians are the ones who shut up and serve. Get thee to a soup kitchen! And don’t let me hear a word!

This message ignores the reality that a missionary is a human being, a whole person, not an antibiotic-dispensing robot. And as a whole person — made fully alive by their faith — they recognize that physical aid (as important as that is) is only part of the story. They understand that the most significant message of Christ isn’t “Get up and walk,” it’s instead, “Your sins are forgiven.” Why should a missionary ignore the most important message to deliver the lesser service?

Not content with the classical critique, Palmer continues:

There are serious questions about the quality of care provided by religious organizations in Africa. A 2008 report by the African Religious Heath Assets Programme concluded that faith-based facilities were “often severely understaffed and many health workers were under-qualified.” Drug shortages and the inability to transport patients who needed more intensive care also hampered the system.

There is also a troubling lack of oversight. Large religious health care facilities tend to be consistent in their care, but the hundreds, if not thousands, of smaller clinics in Africa are a mystery. We don’t know whether missionary doctors are following international standards of care. (I’ve heard murmurs among career international health specialists that missionaries may be less likely to wear appropriate protective equipment, which is especially troubling in the context of the Ebola outbreak.) We don’t know what happens to the patients who rely on missionary doctors if and when the caregivers return to their home countries. There are extremely weak medical malpractice laws (and even weaker court systems to enforce them) in much of sub-Saharan Africa, so we have no sense whatsoever of how many mistakes missionary doctors are making.

In other words, he has a problem with medical missionaries because they’re not operating in first-world hospitals with first-world reporting systems and first-world systems of legal accountability? If there weren’t staffing shortages, drug shortages, a lack of large health-care facilities, and all the other issues that dominate developing-world medicine, we wouldn’t need medical missionaries.

But in the end, Palmer — despite his biases — swallows his objections because, well, there’s just no choice. Let the filthy Christians serve:

We have a choice: Swallow our objections and support these facilities, spend vast sums of money to build up Africa’s secular health care capacity immediately, or watch the continent drown in Ebola, HIV, and countless other disease outbreaks.

As an atheist, I try to make choices based on evidence and reason. So until we’re finally ready to invest heavily in secular medicine for Africa, I suggest we stand aside and let God do His work.

The column is not redeemed by a closing non-aggression pledge.

I hope and pray that if presented evidence that people from another faith (or no faith at all) were doing good works at a rate that put my own church to shame, I’d have the integrity to unreservedly applaud them for their virtue and exhort my church to do better.

[Steve_Seattle]

Brian Palmer is an ape. He hasn’t a tenth of the humanity or compassion of those he dares criticize.

[doc1019]

If he were not a Christian Medical Missionary there would not be a problem.

[2banana]

Socialist can understand Jesus and those that follow him...

[Prospero]

It's long past time for self-proclaimed "secularists" to have their totally bogus fantasy of being free of religion just blasted away. A religion of no-religion is still a religion, and it needs to be recognized as reality statutorily.

If you choose not to decide you still have made a choice, and "religion," insofar as the U.S. Constitution is concerned, is nothing more or less than a worldview, a belief system.

As things stand today, in America, this nonsensical belief system has become an established religion, to the exclusion of all others, and that means a complete illusion of "neutrality" in our institutions is unconstitutional.

It's also a belly laugh.

[VanDeKoik]

Be whatever you want over there.

Just don’t contact Ebola and then bring it back to the U.S..

[left that other site]

How come we never read about Hindu Medical Missionaries, or Buddhist Medical Missionaries, or Muslim Medical Missionaries?

Do they exist?

Or are Medical Missionaries sort of a Christian thing?

[Chewbarkah]

There is nothing wrong with altruists serving as medical missionaries or whatever, as their private choice. The problem is the tendency for their private choices to become huge public costs and risks of importing the epidemic, or becoming hostages, once things go wrong. Whether it’s Ebola, being kidnapped by Muslims, or bumbling into Iran and North Korea, should people enter war zones and disease hotspots, then expect a “secular” bailout?

[HiTech RedNeck]

There’s something to be said about such situations. The biblical missionary ethos is to attempt to be as light a burden as possible on the non-Christian community. I wouldn’t object to having recovery camps on US soil but let them be pre-planned for that purpose, rather than ad-hoc centers of potential panic.

[ansel12]

Luckily you don’t have the power to condemn Americans to death because you are such a coward that you forbid them coming home for medical care.

[vbmoneyspender]

Why doesn’t Kent Brantly found the Church of Atheism, become an atheist missionary and travel to Africa to help the unfortunate - all the while preaching to Africans that there is no God and life is meaningless.

[ansel12]

The Christian ill have all gone directly to the special Ebola/sars/isolation units.

As far as we know they have paid their own way, and we can assume that their expertise and experience has been very valuable to our infectious disease clinics and our effort to fight Ebola.

[Smokin' Joe]

Ping…

A link to this thread has been posted on the Ebola Surveillance Thread

[null and void]

The game of Ebola Roulette continues...

*click* spin *click* spin *click* spin…BANG!

Eeeee-bolllll-aaaaaa ping!

Bring Out Your Dead

We’re gonna need

a bigger cart!

Post to me or FReep mail to be on/off the Bring Out Your Dead ping list.

The purpose of the “Bring Out Your Dead” ping list (formerly the “Ebola” ping list) is very early warning of emerging pandemics, as such it has a high false positive rate.

So far the false positive rate is 100%.

At some point we may well have a high mortality pandemic, and likely as not the “Bring Out Your Dead” threads will miss the beginning entirely.

*sigh* Such is life, and death...

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

So, given this background, I reacted with perhaps special revulsion upon reading this piece from Slate’s Brian Palmer, where an atheist asks, “Should we worry that so many of the doctors treating Ebola in Africa are missionaries?”

Those BASTARDS! How dare they do good work in the name of Jesus?

[Jemian]

I suggest we stand aside and let God do His work.

He writes with the arrogance of a human thinking his puny objection could thwart the plan of The Almighty.

As I have experienced, either it is a missionary doing the best he can under impossible conditions with very little support and equipment, or no medical care at all. This shrimp of a liberal has the audacity to complain about someone else's compassion and sacrifice. I hope he can sleep at night.

Full disclosure, I work in Indonesia alongside many Bible translators, jungle pilots, church planters, and, yes, three ex-pat doctors.

[Jemian]

should people enter war zones and disease hotspots, then expect a “secular” bailout?

I don't.

[JimSEA]

How anyone can criticize these Christan missionaries is totally beyond me. They would rather have millions die rather than be exposed to Christian morality? It’s beyond my understanding.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thanks for the ping!

[444Flyer]

How anyone can criticize these Christan missionaries is totally beyond me. They would rather have millions die rather than be exposed to Christian morality? It’s beyond my understanding.

Some people are just that sick... in their spirit...sad.