Category | Op Ed

Haiti needs more than your prayers

Published on January 26, 2010 by Gage Thompson

In the span of about a week, two powerful earthquakes devastated the island nation of Haiti. Death toll estimates have reached into the hundreds of thousands. This event is a tragedy, magnified by the intense poverty and squalid living conditions that Haiti has endured for so long. Haitians deserve our pity, empathy and support. Well wishes alone, however, will not improve the situation.

The religious response to this event has been the most baffling part of the affair, ranging from the mundane and harmless requests for “prayers and thoughts” to the most blatantly stupid (Pat Robertson’s insipid ramblings about Haiti making a pact with the Devil sometime in the early 19th century.) These religious sentiments, while they might be comforting, are at best useless and at worst, directly harmful.

Nor are religious events and thoughts completely to blame. On campus here, flyers have been sprouting up for a “Candle Light Vigil for Haitian Earthquake Victims” located in the University rooms. What purpose does and event such as this serve? The flyer itself provides a clue: “Please come join us while we honor those lost in the recent Haiti earthquake.” An admirable sentiment, yes, but the dead will be dead for eternity and can be honored months from now while those who cling to life require our help immediately.

Most of the people in question are Christians, and in the Christian worldview, God is an omnipotent, omnibenevolent and omnipresent being. God is love personified, can do no wrong and can do anything imaginable. The question that should follow is why there is evil in the world. If God is all good, knows everything and can do anything, why hasn’t He seen fit to do away with evil and tragedy altogether? As Epicurus put it, “Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then He is not omnipotent. Is He able, but not willing? Then He is malevolent. Is He both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is He neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?”

If God exists, He is at best absentee or incompetent and at worst, malevolent. Why would anyone pray to an ineffective, absent or evil God? One explanation is that they simply want to make themselves feel better. It certainly is far easier than actually providing help to thousands of illiterate and impoverished people on an island in the Caribbean. The more likely explanation is vanity; there exists here in America this completely fabricated cosmopolitanism, this veneer of worldliness that people adopt in order to appear sophisticated and cultured.

A typical response to an international tragedy for the cosmopolitan snob includes changing their Facebook profile picture to the flag of the country affected and proceeding to post exclusively about the event for the next week. No further action is taken. Other actions that fall into this category include wearing a wrist or armband and dressing in a predetermined color on a particular day in solidarity with someone whom the snob will never meet.

If your desire to help Haiti is genuine, then help Haiti. There are plenty of organizations on the ground that would gladly accept your money or donations of clothes and other supplies. If, after you have offered what support you can, you wish to organize or attend “prayer vigils,” by all means do. What you shouldn’t do is only pray or only attend one of these vigils and then feel that you have done any real good for Haiti. Haitians have been praying for generations to be lifted out of their inconceivable poverty, and if God didn’t see fit to aid them then, instead sending or allowing an earthquake to devastate their country, why do you think He would listen now?