Haiti on the way to recovery. Let it be so, Lord.

I hope hope hope this is what it purports to be , a real move of God in Haiti. Three days of fasting and prayer by a million people in Haiti, crying out to God to forgive them and heal their country. How wonderful. This is what is needed. President Preval called for these days of fasting and repentance to replace the Mardi Gras celebration.

I'm sure those who organized it and those reporting it believe it is genuine and I want to also. Scriptures were read, prayers were prayed, songs of worship were sung. Praise God for it if it is genuine. Three thousand conversions are claimed, 101 of them confirmed to have been voodoo priests. Heart-wrenchingly wonderful if genuine.

So why do I have any reservations at all?

Because the name of Jesus Christ was not spoken even once in this video.

Because nothing was said about how people in Haiti think they can be both Christian and voodoo practitioners to assure us this confusion is overcome in this event.

Because "Christianity" is too often equated with Catholicism and ritual instead of genuine relationship with Christ.

Because in such an atmosphere there is some question how complete a conversion is going to be.

I hope hope hope it is genuine. I hope that at least a huge proportion of it is genuine. I wish it hadn't been presented in such a sloppy emotional way so that it's impossible to judge whether it is genuine or not.

But we will know them by their fruit.

Lord, I pray that You will bless Haiti mightily with a new allegiance to You and a complete healing of their unhappy land.

Us too, Lord, us too.

Mealy mouthed "Christians" who keep the world in bondage to Satan

I've been unable to find the quote on the internet but I heard it on Christian radio yesterday and hope I got it right: Richard Stearns of World Vision announcing that "God didn't do this to Haiti," because God is merciful etc. etc. etc. It was quoted along with a report that even in the midst of the disaster people are praising God, worshiping and singing hymns.

Sure sounds nice and Christian, but what a sentimentalized bogus Christianity it is if it rests on a denial of God's sovereignty in judgment as well as blessing. What God is REALLY being worshipped here? What a bunch of carnal pollyannas so many Christians are.

Where's the salt and light in this mealymouthed sweet-talking devilish doctrine?

What sort of God wouldn't punish sin I want to know? What kind of "mercy" is it if there is no deserved punishment to be merciful ABOUT? What sort of God wouldn't finally have to punish a land as full of satanic voodooism as Haiti? A country where it's been said they are 80% Catholic but 100% voodoo or something like that. You can't mix voodoo and Christianity. Any percentage of voodoo whatever cancels out any Christian element (but let's face it, there's hardly anything Christian left in Roman Catholicism anyway, which is made only too clear where they endorse and tolerate such native devil religions as voodoo as they do in Haiti). And the evil in voodoo is so rotten and so deep that you can even see it in the young voodooists who are stealing the food given as aid to the suffering right out of the mouths of their own fellow Haitians. DISGUSTING. There's NOTHING Christian about that. That is worse than animal behavior.

Those Christians who are denying that God is sovereign over earthquakes and all other natural events, and that nothing happens that does not express something of His governance over this world -- absolutely nothing -- are some day going to have to answer for a weakened, even utterly useless, gospel message and a powerless church.

If there is no judgment from which we are to be saved, then there is no salvation worth the name. And what happens to "fear of God" which scripture so strongly declares to be the beginning of wisdom? We've lost any true Biblical wisdom. God help His people.

The Haitians need to be told in no uncertain terms that God IS judging Haiti for their witchcraft (at the top of what is no doubt a long list of other offenses) and that until that is denounced and given up they will never emerge as a viable society at all. Not to mention that individually their voodoo is taking them all to Hell. It is NOT mercy to tell them otherwise, to coddle them about how God wouldn't do such a thing to them. That in fact is to despise and condemn them to much more suffering, just as God tells us in the Book of Proverbs that to spare the rod is to hate your child. Satan himself tells them it's not their fault and keeps them in bondage to voodoo.

===

Here's a good discussion of the situation with emphasis on how AMERICA is already under judgment.

God certainly DOES judge nations, as well as individuals.

Here's a particularly venomous post from another site denouncing the very idea that God judges nations:

Militant radical Muslims arrogantly declare that the disemboweling and slaughtering of men, women, and children in the marketplace by a bomb blast is God’s will since they are the wrong kind of Muslim.

Overzealous fundamentalist Christian ministers and freelance evangelicals arrogantly declare God willed that hapless men, women, and children be killed, crippled, and made homeless in the hundreds of thousands in Haiti since they must be a misguided species of Christian.

As it does with al Qaeda, it gives God a bad name.

It is not what Jesus had in mind when he said, “Love your neighbor”---of that one can be certain.

The aggressive ignorance and confusion as well as blasphemy of such an assertion fairly takes the breath away. It is hardly worth answering the person who thinks this way, but if it sways believers at all that is very sad. Unfortunately there may be many Christians who reject the biblical witness of a God who judges sin, because of the tendency toward an "easy believism" sort of diluted gospel message over the last few decades. Easy believism makes God out to be a kindly old grandfather sort of God and encourages an aversion to the very idea of judgment and sin itself. This despite the fact that the whole gospel message is that God Himself came to die in our stead, to pay our sin debt for us because we are incapable of it, which should foster a sense of the dreadful offense of sin. Instead, the watered-down gospel we get these days tends to minimize sin, making God into a nice guy who indulges us in our "mistakes," rather than offering us a costly salvation for our heinous offenses against Him, and reducing our Lord's death on the cross to, well, to meaninglessness -- there was hardly any cause for His suffering so, if there is hardly any offense in our sins. ANY sort of judgment for sin, of individuals or nations both, is now oddly dismissed as some sort of invention by zealots, despite the testimony to it in scripture.

And strange confusions abound. Of course, a lot of it is calculated confusion, not genuine confusion at all, as in the above quotation. The mere statement that God Himself judges unrepentant sinners in horrific ways, which is given as a kind warning or a kind helping hand to repentance, is equated to the Muslim command for human beings to slaughter innocents -- innocents, not sinners. The fact that God commands us to be good to our enemies and to take care of those suffering from God's judgments is studiously ignored by those who want to tar Christians with whatever accusation the devil can invent. The fact that it is God dispensing judgment and not human beings is likewise studiously ignored, as is the fact that God is judging unrepentant sin and not innocent human beings. Clearly there is no point in answering such charges by anyone who so clearly wants to believe them. But there may be a point in trying to show believers just how twisted such reasoning is, and especially to try to instil a sense of the deep offense of sin in the place of the easygoing trivialization of it.

Here's another false assessment of the situation in Haiti:

Haiti is surely a Job among nations….Today, nearly all Haitians are Christians. About half also practice voodoo, an adaptation of their African ancestors’ native religion.

Obviously someone who has no clue what Christianity actually is. Sure, no problem, call yourself a Christian AND practice voodoo and that's all it takes and abracadabra you're a Christian and the whole benighted witchcraft-practicing nation of Haiti is "nearly all" Christian. And also, of course, anyone who suggests a biblical view of witchcraft is vilified. Whatever else you think of Pat Robertson, he's right about God's being behind the disaster in Haiti. But of course the anti-Christians are on his case.

In his narrow, malicious way, Robertson is making a First Commandment argument; when the God of Israel thunders from his mountaintop that “you shall have no other gods before me,” he means it. This God rains down disaster---floods and so forth---on those who disobey.

But Robertson’s is a fundamentalist view. It’s so unkind and self-righteous---and deaf, dumb, and blind to centuries of theological discourse on suffering by thinkers from Augustine to Elie Wiesel---that one might easily call it backward.

Call it "fundamentalist" and you're certain to engender nothing but scorn and derision like this, imputing to Robertson a "narrow" and "malicious" attitude. That really ought to tell Christians that he's on the right track, as Jesus makes clear in the New Testament that those who are following Him WILL be treated this way. Good for Pat Robertson and woe to those who disdain him. Of course it IS fundamentalist, that is, it is in keeping with the biblical revelation, it's what God Himself tells us in His word. If Augustine disagreed, too bad for Augustine -- he didn't always get it right despite many things he DID get right. And what does Elie Wiesel have to do with Christian revelation anyway?

Every Western religious tradition teaches that mortals have no way of counting or weighing another’s sin.

Um, we aren't talking about the sins of individuals, which are none of our business unless made our business, we're talking about the sins of nations here, and that is clearly shown us in the Old Testament. You don't have to be a prophet to understand what the Bible teaches about God's absolute sovereignty over all things (although it may help to be a Calvinist), it's revealed to us in scripture, and in the case of nations we can often infer many things about a particular act of God, just knowing something about that nation's history -- not everything, but the main issues. In the case of Haiti, voodoo fairly hits you in the face as the explanation for not only this particular disaster, but their hundreds of years of deterioration into poverty, their incompetent and exploitative government and the like.

“If that happened to the Haitians because they’re so sinful, then why hasn’t it happened to him?” retorts Bart Ehrman, a Bible scholar at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Your time is no doubt coming. Why would anyone ask such a question?

[Some mortals who fancy themselves mind-0f-God readers cite “fullness of time” here, explaining that if your sinful homeland hasn’t been hit, it’s only because it hasn’t been hit yet; therefore, let us repent all together, in locksquat with prayer mats unrolled!]

It doesn't take the prophetic gift to understand God's mind THROUGH HIS OWN REVELATION TO US, merely a faithful adherence to that revelation, but of course those who hate God don't mind misconstruing it all in the service of their agenda.

“I think,” adds Rabbi Harold Kushner, author of Why Bad Things Happen to Good People, “that it’s supreme hubris to think you can read God’s mind.”
-- Lisa Miller, religion editor, Newsweek, January 25, 2010, p. 14

Well, the poor Jews, but they are unfortunately deluding themselves.

Again, it's not "reading God's mind" to infer God's doings from His own revelation in scripture. It's exactly what He gave us that revelation FOR, so we could understand His operations in this world and be warned.

===========================
So many have been disputing what Pat Robertson said about Haiti's "pact with the devil" I had to see if there's anything to it. It appears that there most likely is. It is at least the stuff of legend, and of Christian attempts to exorcise it as well, showing that it is generally believed to be historically true.

Here's one source: Government Of The Devil, By The Devil, And For The Devil By Tom Barrett (03/11/04) From that page:

It is a matter of well-documented historical fact that the nation of Haiti was dedicated to Satan 200 years ago. On August 14, 1791, a group of houngans (voodoo priests), led by a former slave houngan named Boukman, made a pact with the Devil at a place called Bois-Caiman. All present vowed to exterminate all of the white Frenchmen on the island. They sacrificed a black pig in a voodoo ritual at which hundreds of slaves drank the pig’s blood. In this ritual, Boukman asked Satan for his help in liberating Haiti from the French. In exchange, the voodoo priests offered to give the country to Satan for 200 years and swore to serve him. On January 1, 1804, the nation of Haiti was born and thus began a new demonic tyranny.

Many of the links on the above page are now defunct, most of them being pretty old (remember, this was written in 2004, well before the recent earthquake in Haiti). But there are still some live ones that back up the claim of such a pact, and show that it is recognized by Haitians themselves as a turning point in their history.

Some more references:

Reported in 1998, an effort was made by Christians to exorcise the evil influence of the pact at the site where it was originally made in 1791. It doesn't seem to have had much if any effect, as the practice of voodoo has continued just as strong as ever since then.

Here's a U.S. government document that treats this pact as historically recognized if nothing else, and reports on the efforts of the Christians to undo it: U.S. Department of State Annual Report on International Religious Freedom for 1999. From the report:

While society is generally tolerant of the variety of religious practices that flourish in the country, Christian attitudes towards voodoo vary. While many Christians accept voodoo as part of the country's cultural patrimony, others regard it as incompatible with Christianity, and this has led to isolated instances of conflict in the recent past.

In early August 1998, three evangelical pastors were arrested near Cap Haitien after they had proceeded with plans to hold a religious revival at Bois Caiman. Bois Caiman has a strong patriotic significance for Haitians, since it is the site of a legendary 1791 voodoo ceremony at which slaves swore to rise up against their masters and risk death rather than continue to live in bondage. The resulting slave rebellion was a precursor to the Haitian Revolution (1791-1804). The pastors, who had been prohibited by the authorities from holding the revival on the actual anniversary of the ceremony, proceeded instead with plans to hold the event several days before the anniversary, hoping to rid the area of malevolent influences. This offended much of the local populace and local authorities, who arrested pastors Joel Jeune, Jean Berthony Paul, and Gregor Joseph on August 4. They were released on the orders of a judge on August 6.

The story has some holes in it. It may in fact be the truth that they did this, but in 1998 the supposed pact with Satan would have expired anyway since it was made in 1791 for 200 years. Not that Satan honors his commitments of course, but since God is in charge of everything ultimately anyway, he may have to. In any case, the practice of voodoo has not stopped as a result either of the expiration of the pact or the efforts of the Christians, and until this practice is given up by a majority there is little reason to think Haitian society is going to improve any time soon.

There is this other factor that they are nominally "Christians." Well, in the US we are also considered a Christian society despite the fact that there can't really be a very high proportion of true believers in the country, certainly no where near as high as is often claimed. BUT I think we can safely claim to be a Christian SOCIETY in the sense that Haiti is not. I'm thinking of recent reports from Haiti about young men taking food away from women and children and the weak. Such action in most western societies would be denounced, because we ARE a Christian society in that sense. The protection of the weak by the strong is a strong tenet of our societies that has come down through centuries. We may of course be losing it now as we're overtaken by pagan values -- or really, subpagan values, animalistic values -- but we can still see it in operation now and then.

Analyzing the situation in Haiti

Voodoo faith 'could hinder Haiti's recovery from quake'
Ruth Gledhill, Religion Correspondent

Haiti is facing a spiritual as well as a physical crisis with the collapse of many of its most potent religious symbols in the earthquake, according to a leading Labour peer and Methodist minister.

Even those who have retained their faith in the face of the overwhelming crisis will struggle to find somewhere to worship on Sunday, with so many churches including both the Catholic and Anglican cathedrals destroyed, and many others severely damaged.

Actually, that kind of sounds like judgment to me, but then I think those churches deserve to be judged.

Lord Griffiths of Fforestfach, superintendent minister of Wesley’s chapel in the City of London, who was ordained in Haiti and wrote a biography of Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the country’s first democratically-elected President, said he feared the fatalism inspired by the voodoo religion would militate against recovery.

That's interesting. Attitude does make a big difference. One thing about the effect of faith in Christ in a person is that it inspires doing things to improve situations.

The death of the Catholic archbishop along with the destruction of the cathedrals will be seen as potent symbols of the failure of those religions to withstand an act of God, he warned.

Well, that's not a bad thing. Those religions don't bring people to a saving faith in the living Jesus Christ and He is the refuge they need.

Voodoo is fundamentally a home-based cult where each family has their own collection of household gods, many of them Catholic saints. In many households, it sits comfortably alongside a family’s Catholic observance.

No surprise there since Catholic prayers to Mary and saints and other superstitions are the same kind of pagan religion.

The Catholic church officially backs the right of families to practise voodoo.

Sure, what do they care HOW they go to hell, whether it's through their own rituals and superstitions or voodoo's.

Protestant missionaries have been less sympathetic, classifying family spirits as demons.

May their tribe increase and their faith and spiritual power spring up in the wake of this disaster to save many souls.

More than eight in ten Haitians are officially Catholic, with about one in ten Protestants. But an unknown number also practise some voodoo rituals as well.

The dictator François “Papa Doc” Duvalier exploited voodoo as a method of social control, using sorcery and superstition as covers for his corrupt destruction of the nation.

Easy to see how that could happen.

Lord Griffiths, who wrote a history of Protestantism in Haiti and has had a 40-year love affair with the country, including living and working there for ten years and setting up the Haiti support group in the UK, said: “The interesting thing for sociologists and anthropologists is the considerable overlap between voodoo and Catholicism.”

Not hard to grasp if you understand what's really at the core of Catholicism, which came out in Vatican II.

Voodoo grew out of the animist religions brought to the country by slaves, and was then overlaid by the Catholicism of the plantation owners. This led in many places to syncretism, or fusing, of the two belief systems.

Not hard between two such similar paganisms.

Lord Griffiths told The Times: “I would say that 90 per cent of the time, the voodoo is non-malign. It is not just sticking pins into dolls, although there is a bit of that.”

It may be non-malign in a worldly sense but it takes people to hell so it's pretty malign in a spiritual sense.

The tragic religious “fault line” which could now impact recovery from the earthquake was the “fatalism” of the voodoo belief system.

Lord Griffiths said: “The Haiti people have had so many batterings that when something terrible happens, they just say, “Bon dieu bon", or “God is good”, whatever happens. In other words, it is God’s will, we must accept it, there is nothing we can do about it.

“The task for Christian evangelism is not to make voodoo worshippers into Christians but to help deal with the fatalism that does not allow voodoo worshippers to see themselves as agents of their own improvement.

But this can't happen UNLESS they are made into Christians and come to understand the malignity of their false religion.

"The problem is the competition between these two mindsets, the fatalism that says they can do nothing and the right perception that they can do a lot. That is the spiritual struggle.”

Ah gee, optimism that flies in the face of reality is SO inspiring.

He said the Catholic Archbishop’s death would confirm in the minds of many Haitians that the Church could not withstand the raw force of nature and the loss of the Catholic cathedral was an even more potent symbol of the same thing.

Well, the Protestants, if there are any with a real grasp of the situation, should be pointing out that God was judging those superstitious religions and that they need to come to know the living God in Christ and give up their superstitions.

“It will certainly feed into the minds of some. But it is the cathedral that is the thing. It is knocked down, that great high place of religion.

"If an Archbishop goes under a pile of rubble, you can regret it. But if you see the ruin of the cathedral where all the Archbishops since 1860 have officiated, it is a more powerful image.

"They will see this every day for years to come. Haitians will say, this is the state-approved religion and look what has happened to it.”

Nothing could be better if there's hope for their recovery than to fully grasp that the state-approved religion was a big part of their calamity and that God has judged it. May God raise up preachers who know how to teach them the truth.

Tyler Cowen, a commentator in the US, said in his blog Marginal Revolution that religion might explain why Haiti is so poor. He cited the philosopher Hegel who argued that “voodoo, with its intransitive power relations among the gods, was prone to producing political intransitivity as well.”

Sounds likely.

Albert Mohler, a baptist in the US, wrote: “In truth, it is hard not to describe the earthquake as a disaster of biblical proportions. It certainly looks as if the wrath of God has fallen upon the Caribbean nation.

"Add to this the fact that Haiti is well known for its history of religious syncretism — mixing elements of various faiths, including occult practices. The nation is known for voodoo, sorcery, and a Catholic tradition that has been greatly influenced by the occult.”

Mr Mohler refuted the suggestion from Pat Robertson, the American preacher, that Haiti was cursed by the devil.

“Why did no earthquake shake Nazi Germany? Why did no tsunami swallow up the killing fields of Cambodia? Why did Hurricane Katrina destroy far more evangelical churches than casinos? Why do so many murderous dictators live to old age while many missionaries die young?”

I was strongly disappointed in what Dr. Mohler said as I usually very much appreciate his point of view. God couldn't have stopped the earthquake? God is that weak? Or God is that preoccupied He doesn't even pay attention to such things? What picture of God is being conveyed when people deny that He had anything to do with a disaster such as Haiti is suffering?

I'd answer the "whys" being asked above: There is such a thing as the "fullness of time" for God's wrath. Nazi Germany only existed for a few decades. Haiti has been around for centuries practicing its voodoo all that time. Perhaps the killing fields too have not ripened for judgment yet. As for churches, "judgment begins at the house of God" comes to mind, but we just don't have any information about those churches. It's more reasonable to focus on the larger New Orleans as the target rather than specific individuals and institutions, unless we happened to know something about them, and we don't. New Orleans as a whole has a reputation for sin that's hard to ignore though. Mardi Gras, voodoo etc. It's also an old city, not anywhere near as old as Haiti but still, much ripened toward the "fullness of time" when Katrina came along.

Amos 3:6 ... shall there be evil in a city, and the LORD hath not done it?

And besides, Nazi Germany certainly was ultimately punished after the war.

There are different ways God's wrath comes upon nations, there's not one method that applies to all. Political insanity is one method, for instance; it's not all tsunamis, hurricanes and earthquakes.

There is probably more truth to Pat Robertson's claim than is being acknowledged. Voodoo is certainly a satanic religion and apparently some sort of pact was once made, but its practice by a majority of the population is enough of a reason for God's judgment on the nation.

But this article is interesting in its pointing to a fatalistic attitude in voodoo as a source of the Haitian problems too.