For three years when I was a Christian I went to Southside Church of Christ, a church of around 400 or so people. I was fairly good friends with the preacher there, Steve Cloer — there are several memories of basketball and lunch that are stored in my mind. I also developed an acquaintance with several people at the church, and when I visit, on occasion, it is a pleasure to see them.
When I left Christianity, I was, for the first few weeks, trying to build bridges. At the time, however, I was going through a lot of trauma and was very frustrated with Christianity. Some people keep their disagreements to themselves; I’m not one of those people. I voice them, and engage in discourse with them. Arguably, that attitude is what made me an atheist — if I had not sought out opinions different from my own or had been afraid to challenge the opinions of authority, the likelihood is high that I would probably still be a Christian. But for whatever reason, I’m not built to follow the crowd; I tend to have a hankering for what seems to be the truth, whatever it is, and I tend to seek places in which I’ll be challenged and where I can challenge others. So that makes me rather vocal in many arenas.
After a few weeks following my coming out as an ex-Christian, I noticed that my penchant for honest discourse was getting me in trouble with many Christians, and that I was getting frustrated by Christians who frequently made personal attacks. I started pulling punches less and less. Eventually, I started fighting back, fairly hard. All the opinions about Christianity that I had, against my nature, held back for years came gushing out, and a lot of people didn’t like it and tried, in various ways, to shut me down. Some people were hurt. And at times I tried to be calm. But when someone defended the Old Testament genocides while asking “where do you get your morality?”, or complimented the “kill the gays” law in Uganda, or talked about how I was in rebellion towards God, or said they were worried about me going to hell, and several other “triggers” — I let them know my reaction. Since then I’ve simply gotten thicker skin, or maybe calluses, but at the time the wounds were fresh.
A couple months into this fight, Kent Brantly said something in a comment string I’ll never forget — he said that he didn’t understand all the reasons I left the church, but he would still be my friend. And that was what I needed to hear right now, because, in sharing my honest views and trying to distance myself from the harmful boundaries of Christian thought, I had been losing some friends and having other relationships fundamentally changed. This attitude hasn’t changed, although I have, on occasion, said things that Kent thinks are a bit disrespectful; he recently sent me a private message saying he occasionally reads my blog here, gave me permission to write whatever I wanted about our friendship, and says that I should keep asking “the hard questions that most people avoid.”
Which, as far as Christians go, and considering all I’ve said about Christianity, is striking. It’s the kind of person Kent is.
It’s not the image of Kent, though, I have heard from many of my fellow anti-theists, and it’s probably not the image I would have had if I had never met Kent, to tell you the truth, because my impression is that Kent is very different from the stereotypes that both Christians and Atheists frequently make of him. Although I’m not able to ask him directly about many of the concerns anti-theists have in a format I could put into this blog post (Kent is currently working on a book and, although he gave me permission to write this, needs to hold off on direct questions to fulfill publisher obligations until the book is finished), what I’ve seen of him paints picture that is much different than his reputation.
For example — one of the few times I went back to Southside Church of Christ was when Kent Brantly had Ebola. The church was having a prayer meeting for him. I drove over to make the last 15 minutes, because…well, Kent was a friend, and he had Ebola, and I wanted to be there to support people who wanted him to get better. In the parking lot, I met an acquaintance who had left the prayer service, saying it was all too much — remember, we didn’t know whether Kent would live or die. After talking with him, I went in the prayer service and could feel the pleading in the prayers from Kent’s friends in the crowd of around 200 people — they wanted him to get better. Afterwards I hung around, talked to the people I went to church with once, and left. During the service, I may have teared up once or twice…
Now, most of my anti-theistic friends said, according to my Facebook feed, that Kent Brantly was selfish — there were all these people dying of Ebola, and people didn’t care until Kent had it — almost as if God supposedly didn’t care unless a white American caught the disease. After watching Kent Brantly on YouTube, talking with him, and seeing him speak about his experience at church, I don’t think Kent has the same view — he almost always seems to urge that people not take that view, and that people take the view off him and focus on those in Africa struggling with Ebola. I thought it was a real shame that his own voice got drowned out due to a far right Christian vs. Atheist war that used him as a pawn to say either that God answers prayer or that God is selective in his prayer and is a symbol of American Christian prejudice (which is often true, it seems, but Kent seems an exception). Kent Brantly never just said, as far as I can remember, that God saved him without emphasizing that many were dying in Africa and, in addition, mentioning that the medicine that helped him recover from Ebola needed to get to others, as well.
A few months after Kent Brantly recovered from Ebola — and after I saw him meeting with Obama, testifying before Congress, and getting on the cover of Time magazine — I received a private message from him on Facebook inviting me to come to Southside Church of Christ for his account of what he did in Africa. I had been wanting to hear this story for awhile, so I came.
What I heard blew me away. Kent Brantly worked regular 19 hour days to cure patients from Ebola, sometimes staying up multiple days without sleep. He had a laundry list of administrative and one-on-one responsibilities in overwhelmed facilities. He wore full gear at all times when working long hours with Ebola victims in 90 degree+ heat.
I listened to this realizing the scare that swept the United States when, under the best precautions available, Kent Brantly was transported to the United States. We were terrified with TWO victims of Ebola (Kent and another victim) being transported to a country of over 300 million people. Kent had to deal with hundreds, and he was there all day, and sometimes for multiple days at a time. And he he didn’t have to be — he was a physician with excellent credentials. He could have worked at a nice hospital here in the states. He could have been making good money here. He was doing it because he cared about the people and because he loved who he thought was (and thinks is) God.
He also is not as much of an idealist as some of the christians and atheists talking about him might think he is. In his speech at the church, he talked about how his first patient overseas died — not because they didn’t pray hard enough, but because he did not have the necessary medical equipment to save him. He said that several other patients died, as well. He has, as a result of these experiences, no illusion that simple prayer saves people, but faith in God seems to keep him driving forward; that much is difficult to deny. I have to admit that Kent Brantly’s belief in God does, indeed, motivate him. Even as the rabid anti-theist I am — I know that’s probably an unpopular opinion, but I think it’s true.
Some of my anti-theist friends have said that Kent Brantly gives people false hope. I think thr truth is more nuanced. Although Kent does say some things in Christianeze when speaking to Samaritan’s Purse, the Christian organization that sent him to Liberia, he is capable of engaging in purely secular discussion, as when he testified before Congress and didn’t mention God once. To say that Kent is not aware of the secular landscape, does not care about those who have Ebola, does not realize the role medicine probably played in curing him, and thinks he is somehow more “special” than those under his charge is to take the attitudes of Christian towards Kent (or the kind of person they want to turn Kent into) instead of trying to see Kent for Kent.
So, someone might ask…in light of my continued friendship and respect of Kent Brantly and others like him, has my anti-theist stance softened?
No.
In fact, if anything, it’s strengthened. The most harmful thing I think one can do with the story of Kent Brantly is use it to empower the concept of God as found in the church Kent attends. Now the church itself works hard for the community, but it is based on a Bible that seems fundamentally flawed. The fact that a faith in a concept of God kept Kent going does not mean that Kent’s God is right or should be seen as an authority in our lives. It is completely possible, I think, to respect the work that Kent did and his passion for those in Liberia without respecting Kent’s God.
In other words, the reason this experiencd strengthens my anti-theist stance is because I see Christians making the, “Kent did XYZ — therefore the God who thinks gay marriage is a sin and that nonbelievers go to hell is in charge” argument. That’s my primary reason why I don’t think it’s healthy to allow Kent’s actions, as laudable as they may be, be seen as an endorsement for Kent’s concept of God, who has, in several ways, very damaging aspects. When you have faith in something good, just because God said so, that leaves you open to just accept some bad ideas that are immune to rational criticism and examination, just because God said so — which can have some disastrous results. The thing I was afraid of in Kent’s story was that people would look at that and think, “Well, that means I need to have faith in Kent’s God,” which can make them, it seems, blind to the very real problems of Kent’s God.
Also, in talking after the speech to Kent Brantly’s preacher, my friend Steve Cloer (although, like Kent Brantly, we don’t see much of each other these days), although Steve ascribed Kent’s passion to God and said that that passion could only come from God, I disagreed — I’ve seen a similar passion in people of other faiths and people with no faith. I think there is beauty in human beings, and that ascribing it to one particular God can overshadow that in potentially tyrannical or harmful ways. It seems far healthier to work for human beings instead of for a God who can dictate the way human beings should act, regardless of human experience – in fact, the very thing that made Kent’s acts admirable in my view was that it helped human beings, not that it helped a God who was beyond and yet over human beings (who, in several conceptions of Christianity, had the power to dictate laws to these human beings that often went against their experience).
My objections to Kent Brantly’s God are examples of why I think it is so important not to sign off on all the opinions of someone you admire — why I try to take opinions on a case-by-case basis. The fact you agree with someone in one arena does not mean you are obligated to agree with them in another — in fact, it should probably make you more vigilant in insuring that you are being rational in your agreement with that person. That’s because agreements with wrong opinions can actually hurt other people and yourself. I think that it is possible to agree with someone on one subject while disagreeing with them on another and still be friends — without compromising that disagreement. I don’t think anyone should be obligated to respect views that they think are dangerously wrong. I also don’t think that respect in one arena should shut down challenge or imply that respect needs to be given in regards to another opinion.
And it’s on that basis that I continue to be friends with Kent Brantly, in spite of our disagreements. And, by extension, it’s on that basis that I’m friends with several Christians who can tolerate the expression of my honest opinion, in spite of our differences. It seems important to realize, in such friendships, that even the best among us can be dangerously wrong.