5.5.13
I have a good friend who is a school nurse at one of the
schools I serve as a school psychologist.
Aside from being the best school nurse with whom I have ever worked, she
devotes a great deal of her free time and resources to ongoing mission work in
Haiti. She takes two trips per year
serving at a health care clinic and leading teams of volunteers to experience
Christian compassion in action. When she
is home, she spends quite a bit of time raising funds to support the
clinic.
Recently, my friend had dinner with some former co-workers
from a hospital where she worked in the past.
At dinner, my friend spent some time talking about and promoting the
work in Haiti. She talked about the
devastation of the January, 2010 earthquake and the ongoing need for outreach
to the destitute people there. After
listening for a bit, one of her friends, who attends a significant evangelical
church, mentioned her understanding that the earthquake and desperate poverty
in Haiti were evidence of a curse that began when the people of Haiti made a
deal with the devil more than 200 years ago to enlist the devil’s assistance in
freeing the people of Haiti from slavery.
It was clear to my friend that her dinner mate and the others who nodded
in agreement were using this argument to challenge her involvement in
contributing so much time and money to Haiti.
They certainly were not sharing this perspective out of support for her
work!
I am not going to go into detail regarding my friend’s
reaction to her friends which she shared with me the next day at school. Suffice it to say that I would need to use
the word “enraged” more than once! This
“Haiti Curse” story relative to the earthquake in 2010 appears to have started
with Pat Robertson, but some Christians apparently continue to hold onto it,
revealing what seems to be a very shallow understanding of curses and dealings
with the devil, but affording them a self-righteous way to excuse themselves
from action. There is so much wrong with
my friend’s co-workers’ attitude that it is hard to know where to start. I’ll suggest five things. You can pick your favorite.
1) It can’t be a good thing to make a deal with the devil
and any self-respecting follower of Jesus would recognize the danger and
possible consequences of such a thing – unless that follower understood that
people have been making deals with the devil ever since the serpent said, “You
will not surely die.” and Adam and Eve took the first bite of that forbidden
fruit. It doesn’t matter if you consider
this a literal story or not, it speaks about human nature. We all make deals with the devil every
day. We are in a continual tug of war
with God for who is going to be in charge of our lives. And our pride and selfish desires lead us to
compromise what we say we believe for the sake of what we want to believe. So when Paul writes about this in Romans 3,
saying things like “There is no one righteous, not even one.” (vs. 10) and “For
all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” (vs. 23), he is talking
about the people of Haiti, me, my school nurse friend and every one of the
ladies at that dinner table. There is no
difference. I wonder if those ladies
thought about their own deals with the devil - maybe even the one that allowed
them to sit in judgment on the entire population of a country they have never
visited (see James 4:11,12 as an
example).
2) We live in a fallen world. I don’t dispute that the present world is not
the paradise that God created it to be.
Who would? I also don’t dispute
that there is a link between human sin - “deals with the devil” beginning with
the one in Eden - and the brokenness we experience in creation. There really are earthquakes and volcanos and
hurricanes and tornados and myriad other natural and man-made disasters. But I
wonder if those ladies at dinner would apply the same “curse” standard to victims
of every natural disaster or man-made one for that matter. What would those ladies say to those who went
to and continue to go to Joplin, MO to serve those recovering from the tornado
in May, 2011? What about Hurricane
Katrina? Or the tsunami in Japan? Or my friend whose daughter was killed by a
drunk driver? Are these all the fault of
the victims because of their deals with the devil? Did they deserve the curse?
3) A great way to avoid responsibility for helping those in
need is to blame them for their circumstances.
The most common way I see this applied by the white, middle class folks
who are my peers is in the area of helping the poor. “Poor people are lazy.” “How can I be sure that they won’t use my
money for alcohol or drugs?” “They are just using the system.” Since they (people in poverty) have the
problem, they are responsible for their situation. Therefore, I am not responsible for improving
their situation. It might not be stated
as directly as this, but this kind of thinking is basically saying, “They
deserve this.” similar to point #2 above.
The further development of this line of thinking is that I am free from
having to take any action to make things better. In its worst form, this becomes guilt-free
selfish living! And it is far too
common.
4) According to the story the ladies shared with my friend,
the Haitians made a deal with the devil.
For what? To get out of
slavery. Who were they enslaved by? My ancestors and the ancestors of those nice
white ladies having dinner with my friend!
We did this to them, culturally if not literally. We were the curse! The God in whose name many of my ancestors
and those of the ladies came to this “New World” probably didn’t seem like a
very good option to the enslaved Haitians at the time! This is not revisionist history or an attempt
to make white people feel guilty. If we
are going to blame 200+ year old Haitians for the present day earthquakes their
ancestors are suffering, we better be ready to also take responsibility for our
200+ year old ancestors and the actions that led those 200+ year old Haitians
to make that deal. Anything else is
disingenuous at best and blatant racism at worst.
5) Let’s assume the worst for a minute. The Haitians really did make that deal and
the curse of the earthquake really was related to that deal with the devil. As a person who believes in biblical
explanations for the current mess of a world in which we find ourselves living,
I’m not even completely opposed to that, at least in principal. But if I am a follower of Jesus, as these
ladies also claimed to be, I have to start with the curse on my own life
(“Cursed is everyone who does not do everything written in the Book of the Law”
Paul writing in Galatians 3:10 and referencing Deuteronomy 27:26). The curse on my life was broken by Jesus - a
curse that was very much my fault. I
sinned. I made the deal with the
devil. The curse was broken through
sacrifice. (“Christ redeemed us from the
curse of the law by becoming a curse for us.” Galatians 3:13) I am
thankful every day that Jesus did not look at me and say, “Not my problem – he
made a deal with the devil and he deserves it!”
He broke my curse. More than that,
he invited me to join him in advancing the kingdom of God on earth (“As you go,
preach this message: ‘The kingdom of heaven is near.’ Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those
having leprosy, drive out demons. Freely
you have received, freely give.”- Matthew 10:7, 8. “Therefore go and make disciples of all
nations” – Matthew 28:19. “Dear friends,
let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth.” – 1John 4:18
). He invited me to join him in the
privilege of breaking curses. What
better work is there to do? Find those
who are under a curse and be a part of setting them free. I don’t think that an honest examination of
faith in Jesus allows one the luxury of accepting the sacrifice of Jesus and
the freedom from the curse of one’s own sin while simultaneously blaming others
for the curse of their sin as an excuse for doing nothing to help break that
curse.
I wasn’t at the dinner and can only use the ladies as
examples based on what my friend told me about their comments. But I find this shallow approach to curses
and brokenness far too often in my encounters with Christians. To be honest, I find it too often in my own
thoughts and justifications for doing nothing in the face of needs both
physical and spiritual. That is why I am
so grateful for my school nurse friend and others like her who reflect the
sacrifice of Christ in their service to the most needy. It is
an easy thing to identify curses and the effects of curses on people’s
lives. It is another thing entirely to
get involved in the work of God to break those curses. People like my friend inspire me to do
better. I hope she does the same for
you!
For information about her work, please visit www.serveHAITI.org
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