When I was a child we lived in south Florida. At the time there was a crude joke making its way around the playground. It went something like this:
“Hey, do you have HBO? Yeah? That’s gross! You have Haitian Body Odor!”
Even at age 7 I knew that this was more than just a little wrong.
At the time, Haitians were in the news a lot in south Florida. Their country was the poorest nation on our side of the planet (it still is) and every other day there were reports about a group of Haitians who washed up on shore in some ragtag home made raft – starving, bedraggled, barely alive, but thrilled to have made it the 700 miles to the U.S. of A.
The refugees would have harrowing tales of the boat capsizing, of people falling into the water and drowning, of sharks circling. Just as often there were reports of boatloads of Haitians being discovered and turned back by the coast guard, or simply of bodies washing on shore, bloated and decayed.
It was a huge problem for the area and depending on where you fell on the humanitarian / political spectrum there were all kinds of different proposed solutions, none of which ever worked, because when someone is living in the poorest most devastated country around, there is no penalty you can impose that will stop them from trying to achieve a better life for their families. When our jails are nicer than their homes, there is not much disincentive we can create.
More or less, that’s where my knowledge of Haiti stopped. Sure, I’ve read the occasional article about the country over the years and know a little bit about its twisted political history and our country’s involvement in and occasional occupation of its land. My father in law has visited Haiti several times on mission trips in the past few years and, each time, comes back with stories of unbelievable poverty and need.
But in general I haven’t thought much about Haiti over the years. I’ve mainly just mentally filed it away as one more wretched and abandoned corner of our complicated planet.
Until last week.
When the first reports of the earthquake came in, I didn’t think much of it. Our 24 hour news seems happy to report whatever potential tragedy pops up with equal ferocity, so I always find it near impossible to know how significant something is when it first crawls across my computer screen. The week before, there had been a significant earthquake in California but it was hardly anything more than a curiosity the next day. Last night the local news had a 5 minute segment about a horse that had fallen into a sink hole and the 30 firemen who came to rescue it.
So, initially, I didn’t think much about this natural disaster. But it soon became clear that the earthquake in Haiti was more than just another tectonic aberration. It became horribly apparent that this was one of those disasters that does more than inconvenience people by losing electricity, but rather one that devastates an entire nation for decades to come.
As I listened to the radio, I heard about thousands of people who were left homeless, about adoptive parents who didn’t know whether their child was alive or dead, about husbands searching warehouses full of corpses in desperate hopes of finding their wife so that she wouldn’t become just another nameless body bulldozed over with thousands of others in unmarked pits.
It was horrifying.
I heard about the chaos of people digging through the rubble of buildings by hand in order to rescue a trapped infant and the anger of Haitians who were piling up their dead in human roadblocks as a protest at their sense of abandonment by the world.
But of course, the world did come to help…..
Now.
Now, that there was horror and devastation. But not last month when the horror and devastation was more commonplace - merely the starvation and poverty of a nation where life expectancy tops out at 44.
I watched as facebook and email began to light up with people calling for prayers for Haiti. I listened to Christian radio and church sermons asking for offerings of prayer for hope and I heard rambling comments from those who were compassionate (and those who were not) trying to justify how God could be real and loving and yet could allow this to happen.
And all I could think was…. Haiti?
It had to be Haiti?
Of all of the God forsaken areas on this wretched planet for an earthquake to hit, it seems so ludicrously unfair for it to hit a country that was devastated before the devastation arrived.
For the last couple of months I have been struggling with some of the same theological questions that have plagued people for millennia.
If God is all loving, why does he let horrible things happen?
If God is all powerful why does he not stop mass murders and ravaging floods and diseases that steal loved ones away from us?
How am I supposed to believe that praying for a dying family member will do any good while the lady in the hospital room next door’s prayers go unanswered?
These are not unique questions. I think everyone, even people who don’t believe in God must spend some time considering such things, but for me, the holocaust of Haiti managed to land right in the midst of my own spiritual crisis.
For several days last week, I was driving around in my “nicely equipped” minivan running from store to store making purchase after purchase in preparation for a surprise party for my wife. I spent time choosing between a $10 pack of disposable plates and a $15 dollar pack – trying to decide which item would look the nicest for the 20 minutes it was used before it wound up in the garbage.
All the while I am driving around listening to the radio describe the destruction of millions of lives that will never be the same. And then I would hop out of the van again, run into a store and decide whether $25 was too much to spend on a rack to display appetizers.
What kind of world did I live in? A world of petty decadence for myself and of unending misery and heartache for others. And I couldn’t get past the fact that there was nothing I could do about it.
Of course, my wife and I sent money, a fair amount of it. But in the end, that costs so little – a quick click of the mouse, perhaps a small delay in a future purchase.
But what else could I do? People kept telling me to pray. People in church and on facebook and on twitter and on the radio kept saying, “we need to pray for the people of Haiti.”
I know this sounds blasphemous. And clearly it is, but….. all I could think when asked to pray was: Why should I?
What good, exactly, are our distant, safe, middle class prayers likely to enact on the suffering masses of Haiti?
Are we so arrogant as to think that our appeal to God will move him to action when he was so clearly blind to action last week as the crust of the earth was shifting, causing tens of thousands to die a horrifying death?
Let me be clear. I do believe in God. I believe in a loving, gracious God who cares deeply about the lives of the people on this planet.
I pray daily and ask God to guide my decisions and to give me wisdom in the choices I make, and joy and peace in the actions I take toward my children and family.
I believe God hears me, and I believe he answers me. I believe he cares for me and I believe he forgives me.
But let me tell you, I was pissed at him last week.
I cursed his apathy and his negligence. I cursed his willingness to always let natural disasters strike the poorest in this world - the Asian Tsunami that killed hundreds of thousands, Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans and now this.
It seems like these horrors of nature never seem to hit the French Riviera or wipe out Orange County.
Of course, I understand why this is. World economics play into it far more than any kind of unlucky geographic coincidence. In New Orleans, housing prices are cheaper in the flood zone and those who had money could afford to get out of the city in advance of the crushing waters. In Haiti, there is no money to build structures up to earthquake resistant code in the same way they do in California. Someone told me that if the same earthquake had hit Los Angeles, the fatalities would have been in the dozens, because the buildings are built to withstand such horrors. It is only in Haiti, where there is hardly money to build any structure at all, much less build it to earthquake standards, where a disaster like this could cause so many tens of thousands to die.
So, in the end, I can be angry at God all I want, but the truth is that God has abandoned Haiti no less than the rest of us. We all knew of its poverty and horrible standard of living and yet we chose to ignore it, so that we can drive merrily around tending to our own parties and stuff-filled lives.
I mean, what else can we do, here, so far away in America?
Well, I suppose we can always pray.
I don’t claim to have all this figured out. And I don’t doubt that most of my guesses are completely wrong, but let me tell you what I do know. What I do see with my own eyes. What I do feel with my own heart.
I’m not so sure God answers prayer. Well, not in the way we think.
I don’t know that God sits around waiting for us to come before him and appeal for “a swift recovery to this ravaging cancer,” or a “safe journey on this trip home,” or a “comforting hand on the people of Haiti.”
I know this seems horrible to even suggest. But I just don’t see it. I don’t see why God would choose, randomly, to spare one person from cancer but not another. Both prayers were earnest. Both were heartfelt.
We casually offer up prayers for safe travel and thanks for a safe arrival. But what of that horrible tractor trailer accident that killed an entire family? Were their prayers not good enough?
And what of Haiti? What of Haiti?
How many prayers are shooting toward Haiti right this second? And yet I see very little peace and very little comfort there.
So, what does this mean? Is God impotent instead of omnipotent? Is praying merely an exercise in futility? Is His loving grace capricious in its choice of who to bless?
I don’t know, but I do know this. When I pray to God, I don’t ask him to change others. I ask him to change me. And I know, without question, that he has.
The Bible says that we are the hands and the feet of God. And while I don’t believe that God chooses which people to heal from cancer, I do believe that he has endowed man with the brain to research cures and has endowed physicians with the knowledge and skills to operate.
And while I don’t think God caused the earthquake in Haiti and I’m not so sure that our prayers will erase it’s devastation; I do know that He has given each of us talents and more importantly a desire to help our Haitian brothers and sisters.
This may be blasphemous to suggest, but I don’t believe that relief in Haiti will come through magical prayer of followers sitting in their living rooms. But I do believe that relief will come through the prayers of thousands who said, “Lord, what can I do to help?” and heard, in response, that they should send money, or board a plane, or send troops, or start a fund raiser, or gather needed supplies.
We, you and I, are the hands and feet of God. We’re all he’s got. We, simple, flawed, sinful people are what God has to offer to a world corrupt with inequality and suffering.
We are the answers that so many prayers are calling for.
So what does that mean? What do we do?
I don’t know exactly. As I said, I haven’t gotten this all figured out.
It is a mighty responsibility being the hands and feet of God. It is an overwhelming burden at times to be the answers to our own prayers.
But it is a responsibility we must take up nonetheless.
Prayers sent to God can sometimes be a crutch. If you believe that your responsibilities in this world start and end with asking God to take care of things, then you are letting yourself off to easy. If you look at the television screen and see the human suffering in Haiti and believe that your prayers are all that are required, plus maybe a few bucks sent from your cellphone, then I fear that much of that suffering in the streets of Port-au-Prince will not change.
I do not know what God is asking of others. I hardly ever know what God is asking of me. But I do know that in this past week of driving around, pursuing my own selfish goals, crying while listening to the radio and yelling at God and the church in my head – I know that I have spent more time in dialogue with God than in any recent period I can remember.
In my anger at God, I have ended up becoming closer to Him.
I don’t know what my responsibility to Haiti is, maybe nothing more than writing that check, but I DO know that I HAVE responsibilities.
And while I may or may not be the answer to the prayers of those in Haiti, perhaps I am called to be the answer to some other prayer. Maybe it is the prayer of someone who needs extra help in a soup kitchen. Maybe it is the prayer of a homeless man who needs somewhere to sleep. Maybe it is the prayer of an unloved child who needs someone to adopt her.
I don’t know yet, what I am supposed to be doing.
But I do know that God DOES answer prayers. He answers them not through some cosmic magic, but through the real actions and efforts of those people who seek to make this world a better place and who call to God, asking how they can help make that happen.
I don’t understand the nature of God. I don’t understand why things happen or why the world is the way it is. All I know is that, for some reason, I am one of the fortunate ones. I have a home and a family and more money than most people in this world could dream of.
We all do.
Our obligations do not stop with praying for someone.
They begin in praying for ourselves to be an answer to the prayer of others.
I want to be an answer to prayer.
I want to be the hands and feet of God.
I fail every day. And I get angry and bitter. And I am often resentful of this holy burden.
But I try, to continue to try:
To be the miracle that someone is praying for.