People making pronouncements about the reasons an earthquake devastated the Caribbean island country of Haiti last week apparently never learned anything from the biblical book of Job, a North Georgia Baptist minister said.
“Why in Haiti?” said Dr. John Wyatt, pastor of First Baptist Church of Fort Oglethorpe. “Why anywhere? If we can answer that, we’re God. It’s too vast, too great for me.”
In Job, he said, God asks Job who would dare to use words about why something occurs without the knowledge to make such statements.
“We’re so smart,” said Dr. Wyatt, whose sermon Sunday is “Why Haiti, God?” “We think we know so much, but we’re making fools of ourselves and making villains of God.”
The faith community, he said, struggles with its own questions of why such destruction — perhaps 200,000 dead and many structures in ruins — occurs in the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, and then hears people such as televangelist Pat Robertson say Haiti is reaping the effects of a 200-year-old pact it made with the devil to be free from France.
“Those things create a problem,” Dr. Wyatt said.
As horrific and heart-rending as such disasters are, they are part of the natural order of things in this life and this world, according to the Rev. Dr. Donald Fishburne, rector of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church.
“The terror of it for human beings,” he said, “is the pain and suffering that can be a part of earthquakes, floods and other events in nature.”
Because of that natural order, Dr. Fishburne said, bad things inevitably do happen to good people.
“I know as a person of faith that our pain is felt in the heart of our loving God,” he said. “And I know that God’s heart is gladdened when we as human beings and as people of faith reach out — across national borders and across denominational lines — to help those in need.”
People wondering where God is in the midst of tragedy, said Dr. Wyatt, will find him in the first responders, in the medical community as it dispense first aid, in lives that are saved and even in the cries of the dying.
If Christ is in fact in us, said Steve Lusk, minister at Red Bank Church of Christ, then “his response (to tragedies) is our response.”
He said “The Hole in Our Gospel,” a recent book by World Vision president Richard E. Stearns, describes such a concept. In it, he said, he says Christians need to be about not just the hereafter but about the here and now.
Many times, those in the church — in Christendom — have talked about the high, lofty things, which are important and foundational, said Mr. Lusk, whose congregation will give all its offering on Jan. 31 to two agencies assisting in Haiti relief. But they may have neglected the weak and the poor and the needy, and people in situations where they can’t help themselves.
“If he is in us,” he said, “if we don’t respond, what does that say about our faith in God?”
Although people going through tough times in the United State generally won’t be able to understand the tough times people in Haiti are enduring, people in both places would do well to examine the example of Jesus, according to Dr. Perry McCallen, pastor of Second Presbyterian Church.
“The Lord literally walked the earth and worked diligently to make a difference,” he said. “Although he is not walking the earth today, in a sense, he (is). He, through the Holy Spirit, literally works through us today. We are the hands and feet and heart trying to make a difference.”
In the United States and in Haiti, Dr. McCallen said, good people generally stop worrying about why bad things happen and get to work.
“The call to action is right there in front of us,” he said. “We just have to ditch the pontificating and take the call to action.”