Haiti: A Follow-up Response

As to be expected, now that Pat Robertson has taken the lead many others are venturing to add their two cents worth and provide an innocuous account of what has happened.

The Pastor of the First Baptist Church of Dallas tries his hand at an answer, but fails to answer why God allows such extensive suffering? He Says:

“It is similarly irresponsible for anyone to second-guess God’s redemptive purpose or explain what He is doing through an individual disaster, such as the Haitian earthquake. To try and do so would be to twist the dagger in the backs of people who are hurting.”

“Where was God during this tragedy? The same place He was 2,000 years ago when His Son died. Was God in control? Of course He was. Why did He allow it? I don’t have a clue. He has not revealed His purpose.”

Well, if he doesn’t know I would suggest he find another line of work because the passage he quotes gives the answer, “Repent, or you shall likewise perish.”

“God is ultimately responsible for the earthquake in Haiti and has a reason that is beyond our ability, trapped in time, to understand or comprehend. But it would be theological ignorance coupled with absolute arrogance to try and interpret God’s actions as a judgment against a particular person or nation.”

Thank you Dr. Robert Jeffress, for keeping us in the dark. At least Pat Robertson was honest. It appears to me that Dr. Jeffress is trying hard to be religious by preaching a nice five point sermonette and never getting to the point of sin; but of course that may offend someone.

Elizabeth McAlister, Associate Professor of Religion, Wesleyan University says:

“Vodouists in the Haitian diaspora are praying on their knees today, just as Catholics and Protestants are. Why did this devastating earthquake have to happen in Haiti. . . ?  In Vodou most ritual is about finding balance, putting yourself into equilibrium with the spirits, with your family, and with yourself. In Haiti things are way out of balance. We might say that spirits of death have launched a coup d’état.”

My friend and colleague, the artist, educator, and priest of the spirits, Erol Josué, has been praying and crying in Brooklyn. Through Twitter, Facebook, and his cell phone he has learned of at least twenty dead friends in several Port-au-Prince congregations. He told me today that for him, as a spirit-worker, this event is both scientific and symbolic. This is indeed a natural disaster for Josué. But the land in Haiti is a person, he said. We consider it a woman, our mother. “Haïti Chérie,” as the well-known ballad goes. She wants to know, ‘who will make me beautiful, put clothes on me, and take care of my children?’ When you mistreat her, and uproot her trees, when you give her too much responsibility, she is like a woman with cancer. The tumor metastasizes, and explodes.

For Erol Josué, the earthquake was mother nature, the land of Haiti, rising up to defend herself against the erosion, deforestation, and environmental devastation that have been ongoing for the last few decades. Said the famous painter and Vodou priest André Pierre, “The first magician is God who created people with his own hands from the dust of the earth. No one lives of the flesh. Everyone lives of the spirit.” We humans live in the material world, and other spirits–called lwa, or mystères, “mysteries”–dwell in the unseen realm. God created the spirits to help govern humanity and the natural world.

Others, who may read this and disagree with great force, will not necessarily share it. But Vodou works through spiritual revelation, and this is the revelation Erol gives me today. Vodou has no single spokesperson and no inerrant text. It has God, the angels, and the spirits in the unseen realm.

O.K., now were getting somewhere, NOT! Obviously Ms McAlister belongs in the Emerging New Age camp of Post Modern Christianity. Can you believe these words coming out of the mouth of a “Christian”? These are those who condemn the straight talk of judgment on sin and sinners. Jeremiah would no doubt be left in the well to die, if he had to depend on Ms McAlister.; no, Ms McAlister would have been among those who put Jeremiah into the well (see Jeremiah 38).

It may be prudent to look at the writing of another person, one Silvianus c424, known for his “plain dealing” with sinners, during the time of the collapse of the Roman Empire, when the collapse was being blamed on the Christians.

THE EIGHTH BOOK

1. I think, nay, I am certain, that the great length of my argument will arouse distaste in many, especially since it upbraids our vicious lives. For most men wish praise, and no one enjoys censure. Worse than this, however evil a man is, however profligate, he would rather be falsely praised than rightly reproved, and prefers to be deceived by the mockery of false praise than healed by the most salutary admonitions. Since this is true, what are we to do? Must we accede to the will of wicked men? Or if they wish even empty praise conferred on them, is it fitting to proffer silly and meaningless eulogies? Surely we must consider that, as men of honor should not mock even those who wish to make themselves ridiculous, so they should not laud in lying phrases those who yearn to be adorned by praise, however false.  We must not take into account the preferences of individuals, but rather what is fitting for us to say, especially since the prophet said: “Woe unto them that put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.”

We must by every means hold fast to the truth, so that what a thing is in fact, it may also be in words, and those that contain sweetness be called sweet, and those that contain bitterness, bitter.

You say, however, that he does not bid, but merely permits us to endure them. Suppose we grant this point, still I ask how far he is from ordering what he permits? For he who knows we endure such woes and can prevent our suffering them, proves beyond a doubt that we ought to endure whatever he permits. From this it is manifest that his acquiescence is part of his judgment, and that we are enduring a sentence from heaven. As all things, are subject to sacred authority and the will of God rules everything, whatever evils and whatever punishments we bear daily are the censure of his divine hand, which censure, indeed, we constantly arouse and kindle by our sins. We kindle the fire of the celestial wrath and arouse the flames by which we are burned, so that the words of the prophet may rightly be used against us as often as we endure such ills: “Make your way into the flames of the fire that you have kindled.” From this we see that according to the sacred sentence each sinner is preparing for himself the suffering that he endures.  From this we see that according to the sacred sentence each sinner is preparing for himself the suffering that he endures. None of our misfortunes can be imputed to God; we are the authors of our own misery. For God is gracious and merciful and, as the Scripture says, he wishes no one to perish or be injured. So whatever is done against us is done by our own actions; there is nothing more cruel to us than ourselves; we, I say, are torturing ourselves even against God’s will.

2. Since I have already spoken at length of the unchastity of Africa, let me now briefly discuss its blasphemies, for the paganism of the majority has had no interruption. They have indeed confined within their own walls their native crime, by which of course I mean that “Celestial” demon of the Africans, to which I suppose the pagans of old gave so fair-sounding a title in order that having no divinity it should at least have a name, and lacking any virtue derived from actual power should gain honor from its designation. Who among them has not been initiated into the worship of that idol? Who has not been dedicated to it by his very family and birth? I am not speaking now of men who are pagans as much by profession and name as in their way of life, and whose name indicates their heathen error. Paganism is certainly more tolerable and less evil in men avowedly pagan; the more deadly peril lies in the fact that many who have made their vows to Christ continue to give their real devotion to idols. For did not those who were called Christians turn from the worship of Christ to that of the “Celestial deity,” or—which is far worse—worship her even before they paid their devotions to him? Who among them did not cross the Lord’s threshold redolent of the odor of demoniacal sacrifices and go up to the altar of Christ reeking with the foulness of very demons, so that it would be less monstrous not to come at all to the Lord’s temple than to come in such a fashion? For a Christian who does not come to church is guilty of neglect, but one who comes in such a way is guilty of sacrilege. It is less difficult to atone for failure to honor God than for direct insult to him. So we see that any who have acted thus have not given honor to God, but have taken it away from him. They have even in a way given the attention due to the church of God to an idol, because that to which priority is accorded gains in honor from that which is relegated to second place. See then the faith of the Africans, and especially of the noblest among them! See what their religion and their Christianity have been! It was in scorn of Christ that men called them Christians. Though the apostle cries: “Ye cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of devils; ye cannot be partakers of the Lord’s table and of the table of devils,” it was not enough for them to drink the cup of the Lord with the cup of devils, but they must take the latter first. It was not enough for them to match the table of devils with the Lord’s table, unless they came to the temple of God fresh from the worship of infamous superstitions and breathed on the holy altars of Christ the foul miasma of the diabolical spirit itself.

_____________________________

It is blatantly well-defined by now that the Haitian Nation exist in great sin and that a call to repentance should be the clear and plain message, a message delivered with bread in hand, but a message Plain, and Clear, that their repentance is a prerequisite to their healing.

Steve Blackwell

For an interesting article on the history of Haiti and their problems read Government Of The Devil, By The Devil, And For The Devil by Tom Barrett.

For follow-up research see the following sites:

US Department of State Report of Religious Freedom

http://www.cesnur.org/testi/irf/irf_haiti99.html

Haiti – God’s country after a ‘holy invasion’

http://www.jesus.org.uk/dawn/1998/dawn9802.html

Victory Over Voodoo in Haiti

http://www.christian-connection.org/print.php?sid=299

Religious Persecution Intensifies In Haiti

http://www.andyfigueroa.net/haiti.htm

Haiti; Satan’s Stronghold

http://www.raptureme.com/rap16.html

Breaking the Blood Pact

http://www.newdirections.org/index.php/pressroom

Aristide Approves Voodoo as an Official Religion

http://www.religionnewsblog.com/archives/00002966.html

Voodoo  It’s Official in Haiti

http://www.ccgm.org.au/articles/ARTICLE-0070.htm

Aristide Defends Record

http://www.montereyherald.com/mld/montereyherald/5060184.htm

ARISTIDE MANSION

http://www.salon.com/news/1999/03/12news.html

Media Research Center http://www.mediaresearch.org/printer/cyberalerts/2004/cyb20040302pf.asp

Pearl of the Antille

http://www.rminet.org/retreat_center.htm

Aristide Must Go The Weekly Standard

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/003/795ywram.asp

Aristide Claims He Was Kidnapped from Haiti

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20040306/wl_nm/haiti_aristide_dc_1

Islamic Influences on Haitian Voodoo

http://www.webster.edu/~corbetre/haiti/voodoo/islam.htm

The Challenges Facing Haiti

http://www.webster.edu/~corbetre/haiti/bookreviews/arisfarmplum.htm