A child wanders the lonely streets, looking for her parents. She does not know that she will never find them; blindly, she scampers along a street littered with greyish rubble, broken shards of glass and permeated by the acrid scent of putrid flesh. This is Port-Au-Prince, more than two weeks after the horrific earthquake that struck Haiti with such devastating effects. The worst thing is that this little girl – let’s call her Anna – will never know the sweet embrace of her mother’s arms again. She will never feel the strong assurance of her father behind her, and will most likely go through life an orphan, scarred by the trauma she is too young to comprehend. This, not structural damage, not the collapse of the governmental palace, is the real tragedy.
Humans need a scapegoat whenever something goes wrong. It’s ingrained in our DNA; we seem to be incapable of accepting the fact that sometimes, things just happen. No reason, no planning, nothing; no one to blame, no one to fault. It is a fact of life: bad things will happen. How we deal with such occurrences determines the course of our lives.
I do not pretend to understand the merest fraction of the hurt which the Haitian people have undergone in the past month; it is without doubt one of the most horrific human tragedies of the past two centuries. Many people have lost their limbs, livelihood and loved ones, and for that I offer my deepest condolences. The magnitude of the earthquake, even in an area directly above a geographic fault-line, was unprecedented and thus it no one could have predicted it in time to issue an effective evacuation warning. This is another one of “Mother Nature’s” furious outbursts, a calamity of the highest and most destructive order; let us not take this lightly or reduce the casualties to mere statistics. Each person dead or alive, wounded or homeless, is a living, breathing entity, with hopes, dreams and a soul. The developed world cannot afford to hide behind the mask of callous disregard that has served it so well since the advent of modern capitalism. Give of your time, money and most importantly your prayers.
The philosophical “problem of suffering” will inevitably be raised by sceptics around the globe in the aftermath of this disaster; queries such as “Where is God in the midst of this?”, “Why didn’t God save those 200,000 from their deaths?” and the like will bombard forums, coffee shops, and even the cold, dark ashes of Port-Au-Prince, as Haitians tussle with each other for basic necessities amidst the slow descent of chaos. The country’s infrastructure has been comprehensively annihilated; food is scarce, medical supplies even more so. Hospitals are struggling to treat the wounded, and children sleep on the streets. Atheistic advocates will lick their lips at the prospect of yet another chunk of evidence by which they are able to “disprove” God’s existence; if his love for humanity is everlasting and his compassion is never-ending, how could he turn a blind eye to all this suffering?
Neither I nor any biblically-grounded Christian purports to completely understand God. Not one of us could even begin to fathom the depths of His mind, or define what He wants to do. What I can say is that the response of Christian aid workers in the country shows a complete and utter trust in God; they have no plan, aid is trickling in very slowly, and still they work, in complete abandonment of their own will and a surrender to God’s. This is without mentioning the many Haitian Christians remaining in Port-Au-Prince, gathering to sing hymns of praise to a God whom many discard as a fictional entity. To them, God is all that is left; they have, literally nothing but the few rags which cover their frail bodies. Why would they continually worship a God with whom they, by logic, have every right to be angry, frustrated and even hateful? They have experienced something that most of us have undergone or will experience in some capacity during our lifetime; a complete and utter sense of helplessness, in which we have no influence at all over our fate or the situations around us. It is then that we have to question our beliefs and origins; clearly, the notion of a God who is there in the midst of calamity, anarchy, chaos and destruction is much more comforting than the feeling of isolation and hopelessness that pervades the streets of Port-Au-Prince.
Many will brush God off after this tragedy; they will be unable to reconcile the immeasurable suffering with the image of a deity who allows such occurrences to happen. There is, however, a markedly similar instance in the Bible, whereby God allows the Devil to remove everything from a rich and prosperous man named Job; his wealth, his flocks and even his children are decimated by plagues, disease and the like. His body is covered with sores, he is in immense physical pain, and he has no hope for survival of any sort. Yet in everything, he does not “curse God and die” as his wife exhorts him to; he constantly clings on to God in the knowledge that God will never forsake him. You may or may not choose to believe in God. You may simply disregard Him as an antiquated ideal that cannot exist in the modern world. You may believe that Haiti is the final nail in His coffin. Yet amongst the ruins, God is working. The survival of a man who was alive underneath a destroyed house for eleven days, subsisting mainly on Coca-Cola, is a miracle. That the country has not descended into anarchy is a miracle. He is waiting to see if the people will really rise from the ashes and continue to stand with Him, in spite of pain, suffering and the removal of everything artificial. Christians who make outlandish claims about God’s wrathful vengeance on the Haitians because of deals with the Devil misinterpret God as a completely callous Lord, a destroyer without compassion; yet Jesus came to take the punishment for our sins. God is a loving God, desiring nothing more than to be close to us. We do not know the purpose of the Haitian earthquake; we do not know what the response will be, how the country will rebuild, how the citizens will survive. Humanitarian efforts will continue. The U.N. will endlessly debate the issue in its bureaucratic fashion. Politicians will seize the opportunity to advance their portfolios by donating millions towards Haiti.
Yet amidst all this uncertainty, one verse from the Bible is apt: “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me” – Psalm 23:4. Human efforts are proving to be futile; our man-made constructs are no match for the force of nature that swept through Haiti so devastatingly. Is it not good, then, to trust in a God who is so much more equipped to handle this than we are? Job was blessed abundantly after his ordeal because he trusted in God and never stopped holding on to Him and His promises. Will you do the same?
By Josh Y
We urge you to give generously in order to support the work of COMPASSION in Haiti.
The Hip Hop video above is from Lecrae's track "Far Away"! Written specifically to raise awareness and money for relief work in the earthquake shattered region, the video features footage from the ground in Haiti and of the recent concert in the US where $20,000 was raised to help those in Haiti.
We urge you to give generously in order to support the work of COMPASSION in Haiti.