Trigger trigger warning: this is a warning to anyone who’s triggered to be offended by trigger warnings, the following trigger warning may be a trigger for you . . .
Trigger warning: the following groups are warned that this essay may offend them in some way: Ann Coulter fans, atheists, the French, Mitt Romney supporters, liberals. /end sarcasm
I wanted to start this essay off on a light note because for most of it I delve into some pretty deep and serious matters, so that was me pretending to be a salon.com or other liberal blog writer. On a more serious note though, this isn’t your typical diary entry, it’s more of an essay than a blog post, and it’s longer than most people are used to, so for people with short attention spans, you’ve been warned. . . .
Dear Ann,
I’m writing this diary entry in response to your article about Dr. Brantly, the doctor who went to Africa on a missionary trip and ended up contracting Ebola.
With all due respect, I found your analysis of the situation and opinion of Dr. Brantly both disgusting and shameful. You don’t even know the man, yet you felt it necessary to impugn his character and make him look like a fool just by going to help those in need in Africa.
Before any Ann Coulter fans attack me for being some loony liberal I should make it clear that I”m a practicing Catholic and as conservative as you can get on most issues, but I’m also an independent thinker who doesn’t neatly fit into an ideological box. Also, I need to give some context about why I’m writing this rebuttal to something Ann wrote. Years ago I was a big fan of Ann Coulter. I admired her fearlessness and willingness to speak her mind and say things that other people didnt have the guts to say, and I still do to some extent. But now I’m closer to the opinion that she says these things not out of some deeply held convictions but just to get attention and to hear herself speak. If you watch her interviews, she’s not a very good listener. In any case, I was a fan of hers because I agreed with her on just about everything- until the 2012 presidential election that is. That’s when she officially lost her mind and started claiming that Mitt Romney was the savior of the GOP and was by far the best candidate. She even went so far as to claim that Romneycare is a conservative idea. Let’s be clear about something, the government mandating citizens to buy something or sign up for something- ANYTHING, no matter how good it potentially is, is about as far from a conservative idea as you can get. But Ann twisted herself into knots to try to make that claim just because she personally liked Romney, he’s handsome and looked and sounded presidential, and thus was “electable” in her eyes and the eyes of the establishment.
So that’s when I realized she cared more about the political fight itself than the principles conservatives claim we’re fighting for. If all you care about is winning (I call this the Rove Doctrine), even if you elect candidates that are progressive-lite, then you don’t stand for conservative principles. So that’s when I lost respect for her. But this recent article she wrote stooped to a new low even for her .. . . http://www.anncoulter.com/columns/2014-08-06.html
So my goal in writing this is to rebut the points she made in that article and clear some things up about Christianity because if a significant number of conservatives agree with Ann on this, then there clearly is some confusion about what it means to be a Christian and the role of Christianity in the world today.
Let’s begin with Dr. Brantly’s decision to go to Liberia in the first place. He said he did so because he felt God calling him to go on a medical mission and help those in need in a third world country like Liberia. Who are we to question this? I’m sure atheists will, they’ll use it as evidence to claim he’s just another crazy Christian listening to imaginary voices in his head. But should Christians question his decision? Of course not, because part of being a Christian, in fact the essence of it, is listening to God’s call in your life and doing His will, no matter how radical or unplanned it might seem. Yet Coulter questions it. By doing this she’s placing her political/ideological beliefs before her Christianity.
She’s saying that the cause of helping the poor and improving our country as a whole is more important than any individual’s dream or desire to help people in other countries and subsequently improve conditions there. That sounds a lot more like communism than conservatism if you ask me. Ann didn’t say this directly, but this theme of winning at all costs and subjugating one’s own calling for “the greater good” of America was the subtext throughout her article.
Apparently Ann doesn’t understand that just like economics, the act of spreading Christianity to those in need of it isn’t a zero-sum game. Here she’s revealing herself to be more aligned with liberals than conservatives when it comes to political strategy. She seems to believe that good Christians like Dr. Brantly just can’t go to third world countries and help the poor there because we already have poor people here and by helping them we’re showing the rest of the country how good we conservatives are while also spreading our Christian values. I guess she didn’t get the memo from Jesus that helping the poor isn’t a means to an end, it should be done because by serving them we’re serving Him, since they represent Him. In Matthew 25:40- Jesus said, ” When did we see You sick, or in prison, and come to You?’ 40″The King will answer and say to them, ‘Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did it to one of these brothers of Mine, even the least of them, you did it to Me.” I don’t think Ann even realizes this is how she views helping the poor, but that’s what her article reveals.
Liberals have always believed that the ends justifies the means, and everything in politics and policy is seen through that lens for them. This is what Alinsky’s rules for radicals was all about. Apparently Ann also believes this, and just because her ends are conservative, it doesn’t make them any better or justified when the means are wrong, cause then we’re no better than the Alinsky progressives whose only morals revolve around winning elections and changing the culture into their progressive vision of what it should be, regardless of how many bad/illegal/immoral things they have to do to achieve that vision. Milton Friedman said that neither politics nor economics is a zero-sum game, but that’s what liberals have always believed. In their minds you can’t give something to someone in need or improve someone else’s life without taking from someone else or bringing other people down a couple notches. Conservatives have always known that’s not the case, and there’s tons of evidence to back that up, check out Friedman’s talks on youtube for that. I would assume Coulter agrees with this, yet she doesn’t see the connection between economics and Christianity, because like economics, the goal of spreading the Gospel isn’t a zero-sum game. . . . .http://personalwm.com/2012/02/10/personal-wealth-management-milton-friedman-on-capitalism/
Dr. Brantly and others can go to third world countries and help the people there, while other Christians can help the poor and spread the good news here in America, and they already are. Sure, we could use more people to do that and we can always do a better job of it, but that doesn’t mean we can’t spare some of our fellow Christians to spread the Gospel to third world countries, does it? Moreover, if courageous, compassionate, and gifted people like Dr. Brantly don’t go to those countries that are very risky to be in due to terrorism, civil wars, and infectious diseases, it’s pretty likely nobody else will. http://news.yahoo.com/fear-indifference-leave-west-africa-desperate-ebola-staff-164936004–finance.html. Not only in terms of helping them, but in terms of saving their souls. Should we forget about them and let them all be converted to Islam or persecuted for not being Muslim, which started happening in third world countries long ago and continues to this day? http://www.christianitytoday.com/gleanings/2013/january/african-nations-surge-up-ranks-of-worlds-worst-persecutors.html?paging=off
There’s another point that I think badly needs to be made regarding the role of Christianity in the modern world. Especially here in America we tend to think of success as being measured by how much money we have, a good career, our social status, or our material possessions. Both conservatives and liberals are guilty of this. But that’s not how Christians should view success because that’s not Jesus’ message in the gospels, in fact it was the exact opposite. He measured success by how close His disciples were with Him and God the Father in Heaven, and this necessarily meant giving up their possessions and following Him, as He called all of them to do. Nowadays we get too caught up in focusing on this life and the material things and pleasures of this world and we completely forget about the next life, which is what we should be focusing on, because in the end that’s all that matters. But Jesus, aware of this, said to them, “Why do you bother the woman? For she has done a good deed to Me. 11″For you always have the poor with you; but you do not always have Me”.
In other words, yes it’s important to help those less fortunate than us, in fact it’s a central part of being a Christian, but there’s one thing that’s even more important than that, which is spreading the Gospel of Jesus and saving souls. And since rich people need saving and to hear the message of Jesus as much as poor people, in fact usually even more, we can’t limit ourselves to only focusing on poor people. Furthermore, are the poor people in Liberia any less worthy of our efforts than the poor here? If anything they need to hear the message of the Gospel even more because they’re even less educated than our poor on average and may have never even been exposed to Christianity at all, which is common in undeveloped parts of the third world, which is why we sent Christian missionaries there in the first place, in addition to attending to their economic and medical/physical needs.
So yes, Ann, we should be helping the poor in America more than we are, and liberal policies have obviously made the situation worse, but as Christians we’re called to do more than just help people with their material needs, we’re called to introduce them to Jesus if they haven’t been already, and to be witnesses to the Truth, first by example, then by words if necessary as St. Francis said. Simply put, we’re called to help them get to heaven because that’s the desire and will of God, for all people to be with Him in heaven. The poor in America can go to local churches or christian organizations in their community, but in countries like Liberia or other undeveloped countries, those options don’t exist in many areas, unless it’s brought to them by missionary groups like the one Dr. Brantly was a part of. As Christians, our list of priorities comes down to saving souls before saving lives because as Jesus said, what does it matter if a man gains the world (in this case escapes out of poverty and succeeds economically) but loses his soul? Obviously we wanna help people both escape poverty and be saved, but the priority is on the latter first, otherwise we’re no different than atheists who believe their only goal should be to help people have better lives on this earth.
Coulter begins her article by talking about the cost of Dr. Brantly’s trip to Liberia since he ended up getting infected with Ebola and had to receive expensive treatment. Since when do we put a cost on human lives? I thought that’s what Dr. Ezekiel Emmanuel and his fellow liberals did with death panels and their view on the elderly . . . .http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-mh-why-zeke-emanuel-is-wrong-20141015-column.html#page=1 . “Emanuel’s chief target is the conviction of many Americans that they can lead a fulfilled life after 75 — and deserve to do so. Emanuel ascribes this notion to a group he calls “American immortals.” He implies that they’re hopelessly naive and, worse, that they impose insupportable costs on society in their quest to extend their lives.” As conservative Christians, being Christians first, conservatives second, we’re called to respect all human lives at all stages, whether it’s a 80 year old man in a nursing home, a doctor who requires expensive treatment because he went to Liberia and got Ebola, or the native people he worked with who might have given it to him. Sure, we have to think about the costs of things before we do them, but we can’t always plan for the incidental things that happen along the way, as I’m sure Dr. Brantly will tell you.
Coulter goes on: “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.”
Wrong.
I don’t think that’s how God sees it. God uses different people in different ways, and clearly He didnt’ call Dr. Brantly to convert Hollywood power brokers. Maybe He’s given that mission to someone else.
In the Bible Jesus says Heaven rejoices when just one sinner is saved. Yes, America is in moral decline and has been for decades, no conservative disputes that. But Jesus wants everyone on earth to be saved, not just morally bankrupt Americans. I would bet many of the people in Liberia whom Dr. Brantly interacted with had never even heard the message of the gospels, and therefore never even had the chance to accept Jesus as their savior. And guess what? After Dr. Brantly’s work is done in Africa, he can come back to America and use the experience he gained there to convert people to Christianity here. This goes back to what I said earlier about Christianity not being a zero-sum game.
I agree with Ann that the cultural and moral decay in America is a huge problem, in fact it is THE problem of our times. But there are people already fighting that fight here in America. We could certainly use one more warrior, but the truth is the battle for the soul of this country isn’t gonna be won or lost based on the actions of one individual. And again this completely ignores the problems of people in other countries around the world. What would Ann suggest we do about the Christians being persecuted in the Middle East and killed en masse by ISIS and other islamic radicals? What if Dr. Brantly went there instead to care for the wounded and sick? Would that be ignoring America’s problems too in Ann’s eyes? The culture war in America is a separate problem from the problems people in third world countries like Liberia face, and Ann seems to be conflating the two. Yes, the culture war is important, but it’s not going away anytime soon, and will be waiting for Dr. Brantly and other missionaries when they get back to America. But there are certain problems in other parts of the world that can’t wait, the situation with Ebola in Liberia being one of them, the persecution of Christians and other minorities in the middle east being another, and if Americans, particularly Christians, don’t go to their aid, who will? The French? Atheist missionary groups? Oh wait . .. . Somehow you never see certain groups of people or countries saving lives and souls in the most dangerous and poor parts of the world. That’s what makes America, and American Christians great, and sets us apart from the rest of the world.
Coulter’s right that America is the most exceptional nation in the world and what happens here affects and influences the rest of the world, but she uses that fact as an excuse to be nationalistic and to make an ideological point about political correctness. What she should’ve said is that Dr. Brantly was a great example of that exceptionalism by representing America and Christianity and doing the work the rest of the world wasn’t willing or able to do. He wasn’t being selfish by escaping the culture war here, as Ann claims, he was being selfless by giving up a satisfying and ready-made life here to go to an impoverished nation and risk his life for the people there who needed his skills and his compassion. Our motto should be: Americans- doing the work the rest of the world doesn’t wanna do. This is something we should be proud of, rather than be critical of.
Jesus told His disciples the following: “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. 19“Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, 20teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”
He didn’t say “stay where you are and make disciples of the people in your own country”. There were plenty of problems in Jerusalem at the time, and many people in need of saving, but Jesus knew that there were just as many people in other countries that needed to hear the gospel, and if His disciples didn’t go to spread it, nobody would. That remains as true today as it was back then, which is why it’s flat out wrong to criticize Dr. Brantly or any Christian who decides to help people in other countries.
This brings me to Coulter’s core argument, and the main reason I decided to write this essay. She says the following referring to Brantly: “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. “
When I heard the news that Brantly’s blood was being used as a treatment for the nurse who contracted Ebola from patient zero in America (Duncan) because it contained antibodies against the virus that might fight it in her body the same way they fought it in Brantly’s body, I had a eureka moment. I thought back to Ann’s article on Brantly and then it hit me, this is the irony of all ironies. If it turns out that the blood transfusion with Brantly’s antibodies given to the nurse saved her life, which it appears it did, then Brantly’s unselfish act of going to Liberia actually saved lives here in America. “Brantly flew to Dallas on Sunday, one day after Pham tested positive for the virus, sources said. He donated his blood, packed with antibodies that should fight the disease. Jeremy Blume, a spokesman for the nonprofit medical mission group Samaritan’s Purse, confirmed that the plasma donation came from Brantly. The missionary had received an experimental treatment and fought off the virus, and has donated blood for transfusions for three others, including Pham.”http://abcnews.go.com/Health/dallas-nurse-battling-ebola-shes/story?id=26178968 http://www.9news.com/story/news/health/2014/10/14/ebola-treatments-with-blood-transfusions-from-survivors/17284209/
By going there and accidentally contracting Ebola, and then being successfully treated for it here in America, Dr. Brantly was a test case for the medical community and showed us how to handle infected patients in the future. If Brantly didn’t go to Liberia, get infected, receive an experimental treatment, and make antibodies that successfully killed the virus which were then given to those patients via blood transfusion, those three infected patients could very easily have died, as Duncan did. Here’s an article explaining some of the science behind how antibodies and blood transfusions work . . .http://abcnews.go.com/Health/blood-transfusions-ebola-survivor-dr-kent-brantly-patients/story?id=26182136. ” Schaffner said even though the sick person’s body is trying to make antibodies, an infection can be so overwhelming that the sick person’s immune system might not be able to keep up with the invading virus. As a result, the sooner someone gets a plasma transfusion, the more likely it is to help that person recover, he said.” So tell me Ann, were their lives worth the cost?
It turns out Dr. Brantly helped save lives both in Africa and America, how about that? Ann Coulter called him out for doing the “politically correct” thing by working to spread the gospel and help sick people in Africa instead of America, but what she doesn’t realize is sometimes the pc thing is also the right thing because doing God’s will has nothing to do with politics, it just so happens that we’ve become so politicized in this country that we can’t see anything except through the lens of politics. Ann is the primary example of that.
As Christians we should strive to do what’s right regardless of whether or not it’s the pc thing to do. If it’s not pc, that’s great, we’re rebelling against the pc police and pushing back against the liberal culture, but if it’s pc, that’s ok too. Of course I believe that we have a pc problem in this country that’s out of control, and more and more people are doing things out of fear and just to be pc. I get that. But at the same time, we can’t just be reactionary and do things that aren’t pc just for the sake of doing something that’s not pc, because then we’re making everything political, which is the realm of liberals, not conservatives. To them politics is everything because it replaces family, community, and God, but to us it’s secondary, just a means to make the country a better place, but will never replace the things that should be priorities in our life as I just mentioned above.
Whenever we make a decision we should ask the following questions: is this what God wants me to do, is it His will? Is it right or is it wrong? If we can answer those questions with certainty, then we can worry about the political consequences of the decision afterwards, because in the big picture, in the long run, politics doesn’t matter relative to eternity. Even if we lose the political battles here and now, there are still souls that need saving, including our own, and we can still save em, even if we can’t save the country as a whole by putting in place the conservative policies that we know will save it from ruin, both economically and morally. We have to always have perspective and keep in mind the bigger picture. The battle we’re fighting is a supernatural one between good and evil, angels and demons. It’s a battle for each and every soul, because Satan’s goal is to bring every soul to hell to be tormented by him for eternity, while Jesus’ mission, and therefore our mission, is to bring every soul to heaven to be with Jesus for all eternity.
If the supernatural battle aligns with our political/cultural battle, that’s great, and even ideal, because it’ll bring more people to the conservative movement and subsequently to God. But that won’t always happen, in fact we have to expect that it’ll rarely if ever happen because as technology advances, social isolation increases, and more kids grow up without two parents, especially dads, to teach them the right values, we’re not gonna have the culture on our side. Plus, from what we know in the book of revelation in the bible, the end times will be full of trials for those who profess and practice belief in God. Now, I’m not saying these are the end times, but at some point they’ll be here, and Christians will be fighting an uphill battle like never before during those times.
But I don’t expect the political and moral outcomes to always be aligned, and I’m ok with that because throughout history Christians have always shined brightest during the darkest moments. The more evil and godless the times are, the more of an opportunity it is for Christians to be witnesses to their faith, cause the darker the darkness is, the brighter a light will shine in it.
My message to Ann and those on both sides of the political spectrum who think like her is this- you can gain the political world, but in the end still lose your soul. We should all follow the example of Dr. Brantly: forget about the politics of our decisions and just do the right thing, leaving it in God’s hands. That doesn’t mean abandon the political fight, some people are called to be a part of that fight and some aren’t. It just means we need to put politics in the proper perspective, because if we do the right thing, God will reward us for it both in this life and the next, and we’ll make our country and the world a better place, even if our actions don’t translate into victories in the political and culture wars that are endlessly raging all around us.
The bottom line is this: when we do good things, even things that most people question because they can’t see the big picture or the future the way God does, there are always unintended consequences, but often good ones. Dr. Brantly went to Liberia to do good deeds and never intended on getting sick, but by doing so, he ended up saving the lives of people back here in America.
I guess Ann failed to see the irony in that she called out Dr. Brantly for his decision, which she deemed wrong, but by doing what he did so unselfishly, he became known to the entire nation in a way he never would’ve been if he stayed home in his own community. Likewise, by his sacrifices, grace in the face of death, courage, and compassion, he showed those Hollywood executives what it means to be a Christian just as much as he could’ve if he was back in Los Angeles.
It seems like Ann’s version of Christianity and the gospel message is more similar to Islam than she’d be comfortable admitting. In Muslim countries we now have political Islam, where the religion of Islam is used to control the state, and then to turn around and use the power of the state to spread the influence of that brand of Islam to as many other countries as possible. It seems to me that Ann is in favor of political Christianity, whereby we subjugate our religion to our politics in order to win political battles and thus gain more power and influence for our religion, but by doing so we lose the purity and essence of the dogmas and beliefs of our religion in the process.
I think some conservatives view Christianity as a means to advance the ends of the conservative agenda, and that’s wrong. Christianity is an end in and of itself because it is THE ULTIMATE ENDS, namely our eternal destiny and whether or not we’ll be with God, who is both the beginning and the end of everything since He is the Creator and the source of all matter, living and non-living.
Coulter claims Christians like Brantly go to the worst third world countries in the world to escape from the pc cultural pressures Christians in America face every day. But that’s demeaning to the very important and necessary work they’re doing of spreading the gospel to people around the world and improving their lives. If she talked to Dr. Brantly I’m sure he would tell her the conditions he lived in in Liberia and the hard and thankless work he did was anything but an escape from the affluent life he could’ve been living in LA, and to some extent we all live in America relative to most of the world. When Christians take the message of Jesus to far away lands, they aren’t escaping from the problems of America, they’re escaping to the greater reality of doing God’s work here on Earth and re-creating His Kingdom here.
Finally, Ann attempts to use passages in the New Testament to bolster her argument that we have to help our own citizens before we help the citizens of other countries. But like all passages in the Bible, context is everything, and anyone can twist a passage to try and make it mean what they want it to mean by taking it out of context and not attempting to understand it’s true meaning. Coulter claims the following: “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.'”
There’s so much wrong with this paragraph I don’t even know where to start. She completely misuses and misinterprets those gospel passages, basically trying to force them into her philosophical puzzle like odd shaped pieces that are supposed to fit, when they really don’t. She should’ve looked at them objectively and seen the truth in them instead, and that would’ve taken her in a different direction and helped her reach a very different conclusion. She says, “We’re supposed to take care of our own first.” But who are “our own”? Our own are our fellow Christian brothers and sisters, wherever they are, not just in America. It’s a very slippery slope when you start comparing your nation’s citizens to other nations’ citizens and saying we have to take care of our own, because that leads to an “us vs them” mentality that is prevalent in many countries around the world, particularly muslim ones. I’m sure the Nazi’s in 1930s Germany had similar thoughts. I’m not comparing the two situations, just saying it’s a nationalistic line of thinking that doesn’t end well if followed to its logical conclusion. One can be very patriotic and sacrificing for one’s own country while still caring about the people in other countries who are much worse off than us and often have no one to help them.
Furthermore, if you wanna talk about priorities, I think it’s safe to say our poor are doing much better than the poor in Liberia and other African countries. Poverty in America is a problem, but it’s not a problem to the degree that liberals would have us believe, as plenty of research such as this points out . . . .http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2011/07/what-is-poverty. Plus, last time I checked, our poor are getting food stamps, disability and unemployment payments, free housing, and other forms of government assistance. The poor in Africa aren’t getting any of that stuff, in fact, they’re lucky if they can find a way to eat more than once a day and have a roof over their heads. Even despite the liberal policies that have hurt our economy and lowered the quality of life for the average American, we’re still light-years ahead of most countries when it comes to having our needs met, especially countries like Liberia. Many of our poor are obese, have diabetes, and other diseases known as diseases of affluence because of the abundance of food (mostly junk food) we have combined with the lack of exercise or hard work needed to burn off the calories from that food. Our poor have bloated stomachs from overeating or eating too much of the wrong foods, their poor have bloated stomachs from starvation and severe malnutrition (by the way, even though our abundance of cheap food and easy lives are a problem cause the rest of us have to pay for the massive healthcare costs for those people later in life, it’s a problem most starving countries would love to have. “What do we do with all this abundance of food, material goods, technology, and spare time?” That’s the question they’d have to ask themselves, and right now they’re looking at us like we’re crazy because we as a nation haven’t figured out how to live our lives in such a way as to logically and properly answer that question. If we did we wouldn’t have these problems).
I’m sure Ann’s aware of all this, and ironically has spoken out about how extensive our welfare state is, yet for some reason in her article she claims our poor need Dr. Brantly’s help more than the destitute and sickly people he helped in Liberia. She even admits in the very same sentence that one part of the gospel urges us to go and make disciples of all nations, but then disregards that in favor of the passage that she thinks helps her argument. She uses the quote about helping the poor in your land right after that, but nowhere in the Bible does it say that has to come before going to other countries to evangelize. Rather, the bible shows us that some people are called to go to those foreign lands, and some are called to help the poor in our land.
Think about it Ann, if the first Christians had your attitude about whether we should help those in our lands first, they would’ve just stayed in their own country and never spread the message of Jesus to the rest of the world, and the world as we know it would be a very different place without the spread of Christianity that took place from the initial countries it started in. By it’s very nature Christianity is meant to be spread, it can’t be kept in one spot because the love, truth, and joy it brings to those who receive it can’t be contained, and it’s goal is to bring all people to heaven, which can only be done if you meet as many people as possible, which means going to foreign lands where people haven’t received it. In fact, the word “evangelist” comes from the Koine Greek word εὐαγγέλιον (transliterated as “euangelion”) via Latinised Evangelium, as used in the canonical titles of the four Gospels, authored by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John (also known as the Four Evangelists). The Greek word εὐαγγέλιον originally meant a reward given to the messenger for good news (εὔ = “good”, ἀγγέλλω = “I bring a message”; the word “angel” comes from the same root) and later “good news” itself.
I think the world would be a better place if there were more Dr. Brantlys, who are evangelists in the true sense of the word, despite what “evangelical Christians” like Ann Coulter might think.
Update- the first nurse that contracted Ebola in America is now free of the virus and has made a full recovery. Guess who she thanked . . .
Surrounded by her loved ones and the doctors who treated her, Pham thanked American missionary Dr. Kent Brantly “for his selfless act” of donating plasma during treatment.
While it’s not entirely clear to the hospital staff which of Pham’s treatments cured her, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Dr. Anthony Fauci, says that the nurse tested negative in all five tests. Many of Pham’s treatments were experimental, including plasma donated to her by Brantly, who beat the virus himself in September. Brantly has donated his plasma to several other Ebola patients in hopes of boosting their defenses with his antibodies.
