Tuesday, January 19, 2010

To The Matter of Pat Robertson

Pat Robertson said, "...since then (the pact with the Devil) the Haitian people have been cursed with one thing after another; desperately poor."

Pat Robertson did not say this earthquake was a divine retribution. He did imply however, the economic state of Haiti was a result of past decisions. I am not a big Robertson fan, but the press has stuffed a lot of extra words into Robertson’s mouth, and that is not right.

Here is my take on curses and blessings. God has given us much wisdom in which to rule our affairs, personally and as a nation. Through out the Bible many blessings and curses are described. If you do this, good things will happen, if you do that, bad things will happen. However I do not think God is up there with his Scepter sending down curses and blessings via invisible ray. The laws of God are like the laws of nature; they can't be broken and an attempt to do so results in calamity...simple cause and effect. Our Nation was founded upon the Laws of God and we have been "blessed" because of it, yet the further we stray from those principals the more tribulation we experience. Haiti won its "freedom" based not upon the Laws of God but an agreement with the Enemy of God. Whether the Devil actually showed up to shake hands with them is irrespective; their departure from the known Laws of God and intentional separation from him brought their society a natural cause and effect reaction, or "curse" if you please.

Now, consider this. If Haiti was a nation that was founded upon the same principal as ours, would the poverty and corruption be the same as it is today? Would the damage to the infrastructure be as great had the nation managed its wealth better over the past 100 years? Would the internal governmental response to the suffering be quicker and more compassionate if they were under a 1787 US Constitution? Blessings and Curses are cause and effect. God did not create us to destroy us, but as an object of His love. His expression of the principals to a blessed life and nation are a perfect example of that Love. As witnessed not just in Haiti but in almost every culture the result of ignoring this Loving advice is chaos and corruption.

1 comment:

  1. If Haiti was a nation that was founded upon the same principles as ours, would the poverty and corruption be the same as it is today?

    This question is so disingenuous that it deserves and answer. You seem to presuppose that if the slave owners in what is now the United States had left the country to the former slaves who were deliberately kept uneducated, they would have adopted the same form of government.

    The terms of "freedom" for Haiti included onerous payments to France that continued into the 20th Century, draining the economy with no return on the investment. In addition, the island is not a continent full of unexploited riches that America was in 1776. Haiti did not offer economic opportunities beyond farming on limited land, and since you can't walk off the island, there was never the freedom to move to greener pastures.

    You should bhe ashamed of yourself for joining the already certifiable Reverend Robertson in slandering a poor and exploited country whose residents are born, live and die in poverty through nothing more than an accident of birth.

    Inasmuch as ye have done it to the least of these...

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