Thoughts about Haiti and Pat Robertson
By Greg Sager
I don’t claim to be an expert on the nation of Haiti, but unlike a lot of people who’ve chimed in with their two cents on the country in the wake of this week’s earthquake I’ve actually been there. I went to Haiti on a missions project as a college student about a quarter-century ago, and I was so moved by what I saw and experienced there that I’ve done a lot of reading and thinking about that benighted nation ever since. A few thoughts:
1. Pat Robertson is wrong in terms of the facts. Dutty Boukman’s ceremony in the Bois Caiman forest in the north of Haiti did take place in 1791, and it was the catalyst for the successful slave revolt led by Toussaint L’Ouverture (there had been several large-scale slave revolts that had failed prior to 1791). And Boukman was, indeed, a houngan (vodoun priest), and the ceremony was a vodoun rite. However, there was no “pact with the devil” that left Haiti’s black population forever locked in a Faustian bargain that’s left them vulnerable to divine retribution. Boukman’s “pact with the devil” is a myth concocted by Catholic missionaries who were fighting the influence of vodoun at the time and subsequent to Haitian independence, a myth later seized upon by Protestant missionaries for similar reasons.
2. Vodoun is not devil worship, nor is it demonic. It’s a religion based upon ancestor worship and spiritism, directly related to the animistic religions of West Africa from which it sprang. It thus bears resemblances to the ancient pagan religions of Europe suppressed by the spread of monotheism (religions which tenets such as Wicca have since tried to revive), but it is *not* based upon worship of an all-powerful figure of evil who seeks to break the culture’s moral code and grant temporal power and hedonistic gratification to his followers. It’s nature-based, recognizes both good magic and bad magic, and has a moral code similar to the Hindu belief in karma (good acts will eventually be rewarded, bad acts will eventually catch up to the actor). Vodoun is, like a lot of so-called primitive religions, contractually based in terms of its appeasement economy (pay the houngan to cast spells for you, and the good loas — ancestral spirits — will act in your favor or the bad loas will attack your enemies). It’s also, like other animistic faiths, packed with taboos, and it resembles what we deem “superstitions” in that it’s loaded with don’t-cross-the-path-of-a-black-cat, don’t-break-a-mirror sorts of beliefs.
Does vodoun hold back the people of Haiti? Well, as a Christian I obviously believe it does. Is vodoun demonic? No more so than are Christianity, Islam, or Judaism, religions that *do* recognize demonic influences.
3. According to Robertson’s metric, God should’ve punished the French far more than the Haitians. I don’t know how many of you have ever read anything about 18th and 19th century slavery, but even by those standards what the French did to their Haitian slaves was absolutely ghastly. They made slaveholders in the American South look like Mother Teresa by comparison. The French colonialists in Haiti could hold their own with the Nazis, the Stalinists, the Khmer Rouge, the Rwandan Hutus, and any other bad guys throughout history you care to name.
4. Both Danny Glover and Pat Robertson are goofballs, and I’m surprised that anyone takes either one seriously. But Robertson’s gaffes are more dangerous, because: a) he has a televised forum for them; b) as a minister he is responsible for the spiritual influence he has over his followers; and c) he badly distorts and misrepresents Scripture.
Not only is Robertson’s biblical exegesis poor, his theology is ill-reasoned as well because, ironically, it’s more akin to *Islamic* theology than to Christian theology in terms of reward/punishment dialectic and its insistence upon the transparency of God’s actions to the initiate. In the Koran, surah 7, it is said that Allah sent Salih to the Thamud people to warn them to worship God alone. The people “insolently defied the order of the Lord . . . so the earthquake took them unawares, and they lay prostrate in their homes in the morning!”
Like Robertson, Muhammad demonstrated a certitude that God’s will was made obvious to those with “inside information” with regard to punishing the wicked. But if these two earthquakes 1,400 years apart are legitimate evidence of God’s wrath, what are we supposed to think about the infinitely more numerous instances in history in which sinful nations weren’t punished at all? Europe is a post-Christian continent that has abandoned God completely. Why hasn’t God sent a 7.0 temblor to level London or Paris or Brussels or Stockholm rather than Port-au-Prince? The prophet Jeremiah asked, “Why does the way of the guilty prosper? Why do all who are treacherous thrive?” (12:1) and the psalmist lamented “the prosperity of the wicked” (73:3). If you use the logic invoked by Robertson and Islam, the prosperity of wicked peoples can be taken as legitimate evidence that God either: a) does not exist; or b) is wicked himself, because he favors the evil over the good.
It’s clearly not a position taken by Jesus, who said in response to a similar calamity, “Those eighteen who were killed when the tower of Siloam fell on them — do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others living in Jerusalem? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did.” (Luke 13:4-5) One of the central tenets of Christianity is that no human being is above reproach; *everyone* deserves to have a building toppled upon him or her, because every human being on the planet has willfully defied the God who gave her or him life.
Peter Wehner, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, said it very well in responding to Robertson:
“Pat Robertson’s argument is as neat and clean as a mathematical equation: God grants blessings and curses on nations and people based on their allegiance and obedience to Him. If things are going well, you’re living right; if things are going badly, you’re living wrong. And it is Robertson himself who can divine the hierarchy of sins that most trouble God.
“But this view simply does not correspond with any serious understanding of Christianity. After all, the most important symbol in Christianity is the Cross, which represents suffering, agony, and death. When Jesus spoke to Ananias, who was instrumental in the conversion of the Apostle Paul, Ananias was told, ‘I will show [Paul] how much he must suffer for my name.’ Christ Himself warned His disciples that they would suffer for His sake; most of them were martyred for their faith. The Apostle Peter speaks about the suffering that Christians will endure for doing good. And in the book of Romans we read that we are to rejoice in our suffering because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance produces character; and character produces hope. On and on it goes.
“Malcolm Muggeridge was once asked what he thought was going on at Calvary. Muggeridge answered this way:
“I think that men had to be shown that the way to revelation was through suffering, not, as they may have been inclined to think, that the way was through happiness. A great image revelatory of this was absolutely essential. They had also to be shown that what they must worship is, in earthly terms, defeat, not, as they thought, victory; that they must worship what in earthly terms is weak, not what has hitherto been thought of as strength; that this image of a man dying because of the truth that he embodied, established forever what truth is — something you die for. . . .
“All we can say is that [suffering] is part of the experience of living, and, like all other parts, it can shed light or it can shed darkness. Suffering is an essential element in the Christian religion, as it is in life. After all, the Cross itself is the supreme example.
“Compare these wise and penetrating words with Robertson’s offensive and ignorant ones.
“I fully realize that Robertson long ago ceased being a serious figure in the eyes of many people. Still, he remains a person of some influence, an individual who ran for president, whose words still garner attention, and whose views reflect a strand of thought within Christendom. So when he speaks out like he did yesterday, his words and theology need to be challenged.
“Unlike Pat Robertson, I don’t pretend to understand how and why God acts in this world. Christians must reconcile their belief in the incarnation and their conviction that Jesus cares deeply for us and is involved in the affairs of man with suffering and tragedy writ small and writ large. It isn’t an easy thing to come to grips with; sloganeering and nice, tidy explanations melt when confronted with the pain of life. Even C. S. Lewis, a monumental figure in 20th-century Christianity, saw his faith buckle for a time after the death of his wife Joy (Lewis eventually recovered his faith, though he was clearly a different man).
“What the Christian faith teaches us is that even in suffering there can be redemption; that this world, for all of its joys and sorrows, is not our home; and that at the end of our pilgrimage, beyond the sufferings of this world, there are streams of mercy, never ceasing. This may not be the gospel according to Robertson; it is, though, the story of faith according to Jesus.”
Christianity gets enough of a bad rap from those of its detractors who either don’t understand its beliefs or don’t want to. Why does someone who is an ordained minister seem to work so hard to make things worse?
