Don’t Hate on Haiti

My last post dealt with how you can help the people of Haiti.  Today I want to look at some ramifications of the disaster itself.  Fisrt let me say how awesome you all are.  I gave out a text # that allowed you to instantly donate $10 to the Red Cross.  According to the Huffington Post we have donated over $8 million dollars.  This is “real” people money.  People like you and me working our butts off to scrape by.  Not the Bill Gates and Oprah’s of the world who can afford to give twice that.  If after having read last weeks post you donated I would like to say thank you.

I am pissed off.  Yes, I said pissed off.  I try not to swear on this blog but sometimes there just isn’t another word for it.  I am pissed off at Christians that attempt to decide what was/is God’s judgement.  Who am I referring to?  Pat Robertson.  Please do not think he speaks for all Christ-Followers because I can assure you he does not speak for this one.  Was this the judgement of God on a nation of Satan worshipers?  Beats me.  I doubt it though.  Why do I doubt it?  In the Old Testament we read about two cities, Sodom and Gomorrah.  Cities of sin and evil.  It got so bad that God decided to destroy them because of the evil they contained.  But Abraham asked God if He would spare the cities if 50 righteous people could be found.  God agrees.  Abraham knows that 50 righteous people can’t be found there so he continues to haggle with God and gets God all the way down to 10 people.  If 10 righteous people can be found God will spare the city.  But 10 could not be found and the cities were destroyed.  What am I trying to say here?  I’m saying that God does not bring judgement lightly nor should we attribute disaster to Him lightly.

Here’s what I do know.  I do know that there is faith in Haiti.  There are Christ-Followers in Haiti.  The love of God was there before the disaster and is growing day by day after it.  Please take a moment and read the following news article on MSNBC, Many faiths unite in facing horror in Haiti.  Author Manuel Roig-Franzia does a great job of letting us know about the faith of a large portion of the Haitian people.

A few quotes from the article I really liked were,

Seekers stream into the parking lot of the ruined Sacre Coeur Catholic church, a 105-year-old brick gem that was turned into a grim, hollowed-out shell, its stunning stained-glass windows tossed to the ground in shards. There, the Catholics and the Protestants and others seek solace from Father Hans Alexander, a Haitian priest who took his decidedly un-Haitian first name from his German father. He doesn’t ask them about their religion; he asks them about their pain.

and,

“This is not the will of the Lord,” Alexander tells the two women, sisters who lost their mother and one of their children, a 1 1/2 -year-old, in the quake. “Don’t put this blame on the back of anyone. Don’t put it on yourself.“

also,

Alexander, 40, grew up in this church, first as a vicar and for the past seven months as its principal priest. He is himself pondering basic questions. He has spoken so many times of “original sin,” but the quake has led him to what he calls “a discovery,” reinforcing his belief that “God created us to be good.” The neighbors he sees helping one another — carting debris, digging for survivors, patching wounds both physical and psychological — confirmed it for him.

I like that a lot!  God created us to be good, to help each other, to love one another.  He created us to be good, but along the way we have forgotten that our original purpose was to take care of and help each other all while loving and worshiping God.  Sin destroyed that, but as Christ-Followers we have the Holy Spirit to mend that rift that was created and restore the ability and desire to love God and love each other.  We have no excuse.  Just as this Priest in Haiti is learning and seeing first hand, we can love, we can help, we can do great things.

So let’s not hate on Haiti.  Let’s not decide who is being punished by God and who isn’t.  That’s not our place.  Our place is to help, love and reach out.

And to Pat Robertson and all the other people out there that decide to proclaim what they believe to be God’s will or actions and ascribe disasters whether natural or man-made as proof of God’s judgement, be careful, because 1 Peter 4:17 says

The time has come for God to judge people. God’s people will be judged first.

When God’s judgement does come, we’re first in line for that judgement.

It’s all about Him,

Shawn

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I’m not Einstein!