|
"Did God Cause the Earthquake in Haiti?
Did God cause the earthquake in Haiti? (four slides of the devastation in Haiti) In the land of Uz there lived a man whose name was Job. This man was blameless and upright; he feared God and shunned evil. He had seven sons and three daughters, and he owned seven thousand sheep, three thousand camels, five hundred yoke of oxen and five hundred donkeys, and had a large number of servants. He was the greatest man among all the people of the East. (Job 1:1-3) Thus begins the parable of Job. Job had it made. Family, health, wealth, respect. Soon Job’s donkeys and oxen were stolen by the Sabeans, then fire from the sky burned up the sheep and servants, the Chaldeans formed three raiding parties and swept down on his camels and carried them off, and then a mighty wind swept in from the desert and killed all of Job’s children. Finally, Job’s very body was afflicted with painful sores from the soles of his feet to the top of his head. Then Job took a piece of broken pottery and scraped himself with it as he sat among the ashes. Job went from king of the world to a thing of pity. When Job’s three friends…heard about all the troubles that had come upon him, they set out from their homes and met together by agreement to go and sympathize with him and comfort him. When they saw him from a distance, they could hardly recognize him; they began to weep aloud, and they tore their robes and sprinkled dust on their heads. Then they sat on the ground with him for seven days and seven nights. No one said a word to him, because they saw how great his suffering was. (Job 2:11-13) Job’s friends responded so beautifully to his tragedy. First, they came to his side. Then they sat with him in silence. A wonderful example for us. They got off to a great start. But then they started telling Job their opinions as to why these bad things happened to him. Did God cause the earthquake in Haiti? Two slides of Pat Robertson, who asserted: And you know, Kristi, something happened a long time ago in Haiti, and people might not want to talk about it. They were under the heel of the French, you know Napoleon the 3rd and whatever, and they got together and swore a pact to the Devil. And, uh, they kicked the French out, you know, Haitians revolted and got themselves free. But ever since they have been cursed by, by one thing after another, desperately poor. That island of Hispaniola is one island. It’s cut down the middle. On the one side is Haiti on the other side is the Dominican Republican. Dominican Republic is, is prosperous, healthy, full of resorts, etcetera. Haiti is in desperate poverty. Same island. They need to have and we need to pray for them a great turning to God and out of this tragedy I’m optimistic something good may come. But right now we’re helping the suffering people and the suffering is unimaginable. Did God cause the earthquake? (long pause) Yes. In one sense. Perhaps the best theological treatment I have found on the subject of suffering and God’s will is in a little book by Leslie Weatherhead, (slide) entitled The Will of God. A copy is in our church library. Weatherhead was the pastor of City Temple in London during World War II. During the blitz he performed as many as ten funerals a day, so he was well-acquainted with evil and suffering. In 1944 he preached a series of five sermons, which were then published as a book. In the sermons he divides the “will of God” into three categories: the intentional will of God, the circumstantial will of God and the ultimate will of God. He uses the example of Jesus going to the cross to illustrate the differences among them. 1. Was it God’s intention from the beginning that Jesus should go to the Cross? I think the answer to that question must be No. I don’t think Jesus thought that at the beginning of his ministry. He came with the intention that (people) should follow him, not kill him. The discipleship of (people) not the death of Christ, was the intentional will of God, or, if you like, God’s ideal purpose—and I sometimes wish that in common language we could keep the phrase “the will of God” for the intentional will of God. 2.
But when circumstances wrought by (human) evil set up such a dilemma that Christ was compelled either to die or to run away, then in those circumstances the Cross was the will of God, but only in those circumstances which were themselves the fruit of evil. In those circumstances any other way was unworthy and impossible, and it was in this sense that our Lord said, “Nevertheless not what I will, but what thou wilt.”… 3. Then there is a third sense in which we use the phrase “the will of God,” when we mean God’s ultimate goal—the purposefulness of God which, in spite of evil and, as we shall see, even through evil, arrives, with nothing of value lost, at the same goal as would have been reached if the intentional will of God could have been carried through without frustration. (p. 12) Between services Carol Dykstra told me how helpful she has found Weatherhead’s book to be in her own life and how she remembers the three aspects of the will of God through their initials, which form ICU, like Intensive Care Unit, when you need some clear thinking about God’s will. So, did God cause the earthquake because of the sins of the people of Haiti? The First Testament is filled with that idea: Act righteously and you will be blessed; ignore God, mistreat your neighbor and God will punish you. This idea is behind the exchange between Jesus and some questioners in Luke chapter 13: Now there were some present at that time who told Jesus about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mixed with their sacrifices. (That is, while they were in the Temple offering their sacrifices Pilate had them cut down by his soldiers and their blood joined the blood of the sacrificial animals.) 2Jesus answered, "Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered this way? 3I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish. 4Or those eighteen who died when the tower in Siloam fell on them—do you think they were more guilty than all the others living in Jerusalem? I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish.” Luke 13:1-5 We all are sinners. Did God cause the earthquake in Haiti because of some pact with the devil or because of the practice of voodoo? Then what about the Christians, are they merely “collateral damage”? (Haiti slides of damaged churches, with crosses still standing). Well, could God have stopped the earthquake? Most of us would say, Yes. But God didn’t. And we are driven back to silence. There is no good answer. My faith and my hope is that God is with the suffering people of Haiti. The important questions are not “Why?” questions. The important question is “What do we do now?” 1. We can help with our money. There are many great organizations, but none better than Presbyterian Disaster Assistance as far as making sure as much money as possible gets to the people and is used effectively. 2. We can help by volunteering with Feed My Starving Children. 3. Perhaps in a few months we can volunteer in person in Haiti itself. There is a marvelous organization which grew out of St. Luke Presbyterian and is headquartered in Minnetonka, called Haiti Outreach. They work in villages about 80 miles from Port-au-Prince. Unlike so many other well-intentioned organizations, Haiti Outreach does a wonderful job of letting the Haitians themselves plan and direct the projects. I have been to Haiti with them twice and it’s very well run. 4. The numbers of killed and injured are staggering. Unimaginable. As someone phrased it the other day, Haiti has become a country of amputees. Perhaps 200,000 deaths. Too big to comprehend. Quite soon after the quake I heard that my friends with Haiti Outreach were safe but on Thursday of last week while at the Convocation at Luther Seminary it was announced there that a group of students from Wartburg Lutheran Seminary in Iowa, was in Haiti for a mission trip. One of the young men, Ben Larson, had perished. His parents are both Lutheran pastors in Duluth and many of the people at the Convocation knew this family. People began to weep. The nameless multitudes now had a name. Yes, let us give money and time. But let us also do the much harder work of grieving the dead. Let us remember that these are not numbers, these are individual people, with families and with hopes and dreams, responsibilities. These are grandfathers and young brides and babies, and six year-olds and teenagers. Let us try to mourn individual people, to name them and not number them. (Idea thanks to a blog by Roderick Dwayne Belin.) Here are some names: Shirley Legagneur, Rene Morancy, Jean Gaelle Dersmorne, Monsignor Charles Benoit, Kelly Milsoit. At this pace to name all the names of the dead would take 300 hours. On my second trip to Haiti we took along about a half dozen of our high school students from St. Luke. We had a blast learning about the country, working on building a house and digging trench for a water line, and mostly making friends. On our last afternoon, after a heated game of soccer with local kids, about twenty of us—our six kids from the Twin Cities and the rest kids from town and I—decided to hike up to the top of the hill overlooking the little town of Pignon. By now it was late afternoon and we were already tired from soccer and it is a high hill. Around here we would be tempted to term it a small mountain. We made our way up the switchbacks as darkness was falling and a gorgeous sunset lit the lush green countryside with an orange glow. Finally, after a couple hours, we reached the top. By now the sun had long set and we sat and looked over the valley, almost completely dark. Most people didn’t run generators after dark. There was the occasional lantern or backyard fire. We didn’t share a common language, but we had shared the common experiences of soccer and then the hard climb. We also shared water bottles and granola bars. The moon and the stars were spectacular. Finally we started down. Someone began to sing a song in Creole and we all sort of started dancing to the music. Then another song. And a third. This time we recognized the tune. Kum ba yah. And we joined in, English and Creole, all of us singing a song from Africa asking for the presence of the Lord. The light who shines in the darkness. Kum ba yah. (Congregation sings together) Someone’s crying, Lord. Someone’s praying, Lord. Someone’s singing, Lord. Come by here, my Lord, come by here. |
