By J. Pearson
January 2010
A few days after the earthquake in Haiti, one of my sisters emailed me with the title of her email as “Why Haiti?” “I want to get your thoughts!”
I might just be the only one in my family who would be asked this question, perhaps because it is thought that I will always have, for the lack of a better word, “thoughts”.
But then, what if the question, issue, or event at hand is so immense and tragic that we feel ill prepared to even begin to contemplate or to offer an opinion. There are some things in life that make us humble; things which we feel are beyond any kind of explanation. Our opinions can never measure up to the tragedy that has happened. Sometimes, all we can do is offer our hands, our love, and our support; and we can do so completely, even without a complete understanding.
I think that my sister, being a Pastor herself, was seeking to ascertain some reasoning for such an epic disaster. Unlike that quack of a Minister, Pat Robertson, she could never blame such a tragedy to both the “young” and the “old” on some kind of “pact” with the Devil. She is too much of a true Christian to do that.
There are millions of people who skillfully use religion only as a cloak to hide the paucity of their own dubitable morality. Some, like Pat Robertson, have the unabashed audacity to even profess to have immediate access to both God and the Devil. If he genuinely believes that the Haitian people made a “pact” with the Devil to gain their freedom from the French Colonialists, isn’t he then also implying that the Devil is more powerful than the God he believes in? Wouldn’t this also mean that he believes in a God that has no way of freeing his people without the Devil’s approval?
Wouldn’t a “just” God want all his creations to be free? Also, why does Pat Robertson feel that he, himself, can be free without a “pact” with the Devil, but the Haitians could not? It seems that he is insidiously implying that the Haitians would be better off as slaves, as if that’s what his God would have also desired.
Some people are still trying to reconcile and justify the previous existence of slavery, hinting that it was not all that bad, particularly since they, themselves, were not enslaved. Or, in the case of Katrina, the reason for the storm and its subsequent destruction had to do with the deviant sexual behaviors of the city’s residents, so much so, that God had to single them out for punishment; a punishment that was also inflicted with no regards as to who was found in its path, to include babies, the sick, and elders. Helpless old ladies and old men dying on the floor of the Superdome was God’s way of teaching them a lesson, according to people like Pat Robertson. I suspect that they have all now been forgiven for those so-called deviant behaviors, as evidenced by the fact that God has recently allowed them to host the NFC Football Championship game in the very same building in which old ladies and old men, during a suffocating heat, drew their last breaths nearly five years ago.
Some people duplicitously propose that the causes of natural disasters, such as earthquakes and hurricanes, are due to the victims having strayed from God’s wishes, and that they, therefore, deserve the wrath that is now imposed on them. The implication is that we should do nothing to help them since they are merely being punished for the crimes they have committed. Such a diabolical twisting of events can only come from hearts that are so frozen – particularly in midst of a tragedy- that even the supposed ovens of Hell could never sufficiently thaw. They can now bask in the glory and illusion that “it didn’t happen to “me”, so God loves “me”, and because it happened to “them” then they must have made a pact with the Devil.”
Such thinking also implies that “bad” things never happen to “good” people and “good” things never happen to “bad” people. But history is infinite, and throughout history both good and bad things have always happened and will probably always happen, oftentimes without distinction.
As an example, does he really believe that all the people who were unfortunate enough to have boarded those planes on 911 and those whose only choice was to jump to their deaths from the top floors of the twin-towers were bad people? Are we to seriously believe that those cute little kids we see being removed from the rubbles in Haiti made a “pact” with a so called “Devil”?
In the Western World, one of the first attempts at slavery during colonialism involved Native Americans. When the Colonists were trying to enslave them, one of their first tasks was to try to convert the Indians to Christianity with promises of an ever-lasting life in Heaven. The Indians did not want to be converted because they were thinking that the enslavers might be there too.
I am not sure that I will ever want to go to a heaven if it contains the likes of Pat Robertson. I don’t think I would find that too “heavenly”. I cannot fathom living a great life on earth, only to be rewarded with the company of Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson in Heaven. If such were ever the case, then I’d know that I must have truly made a pact with the so called, “Devil”. I cannot indulge one minute of listening to Pat Robertson; therefore, if I were required to do so ever after, then I would know that I had truly gone to “Hell”.
Sometimes there is no known reason for why things happen. Sometimes there is no answer to the question “why”. Sometimes things happen with no cause, at least none that is known. Sometimes even the word “cause” has no real meaning, other than “what came before”. We may not always know what came before, but we can sometimes affect what comes afterwards, because, within each of us there is always that possibility of making things better, for both ourselves and for others, and perhaps the true meaning of Christianity is not just merely saying that you are a “Christian” but to become “Christ like”.
This is true of other religions as well. “Believing” is the easy part; it is how we behave that is most important. People are affected in both good and bad ways by how we behave, regardless of what we believe.
I am inspired and encouraged by the much-needed help and support I see going into Haiti after the earthquake. Those with good intentions are willing to put their lives at risk to help others. They realize that this is not the time to assign blame or causes, but the time to find solutions. In a sense these people are the true believers, regardless of their faiths, sects, or creeds.
Our beliefs mean nothing if they do not inspire us to do good things! And, while in the process of doing “good things”, we may one day even find the reasons “why?”
Jerome