president’s blog – January 14, 2010 “The Earth Shook and the People Asked Why?”

The Earth Shook and the People Asked Why?

by Evan Drake

 I have gone to Haiti to teach pastors for the past six years.  I have joked a few times because of the dire circumstances that I have witnessed in Haiti, saying, “I’m going down to squirt my gospel water gun on the antichrist’s bonfire.” I told someone in December, “I don’t really believe we can turn this generation around.  I am working on the next one.”  I haven’t had the opportunity to do or see much in Haiti on these trips since I spend about 8 hours a day in teaching sessions and church services for six of the seven days that I am usually in Haiti.  I know Port-au-Prince by the route I take from the airport to the Double Harvest mission project on the east side of the city.  In my mind’s eye I can see very clearly the mountainsides that surround the city.  My wife has seen a little more of the country and has actually been to the area that is being called the epicenter of this earthquake.

 On Tuesday night, I kept saying, “I can’t believe it!”  I left Haiti fewer than 10 days before the earthquake.  This year’s pastors’ conference was held a week earlier than usual.  I came very close to being there for the earthquake.  I thought of the many mission workers who came in to do a pleasant, well planned mission trip and find themselves dealing with death and destruction.  You don’t prepare for something like this.  Accidents and natural disasters don’t usually give much warning.  The news service was debating on Tuesday night whether the world should have been prepared for this disaster in Haiti since some geologist in Cuba in 2007 apparently predicted a 7.2 earthquake in Haiti within 2 years.  Besides being a moot point, I kept wondering, how does an impoverished people prepare for a disaster when they can’t even avoid daily hunger and find a regular supply of fresh water?

 I kept watching the images that got more and more graphic.  I didn’t really get insensitive to them, but seeing dead bodies in the street as people stand wailing over them makes you cry the first 20 times, but after that . . . Even when the TV was off, and I was lying in bed, the images kept playing out before my eyes.  I saw streets that looked familiar, faces that seemed recognizable and heard names that sounded like people I knew.  I wanted to get information about the people I know but no news was coming through.  This is one time where no news is not usually good news. I tried to call my friends and no calls were going through.  I went to the Salvation Army and Red Cross websites to see if they were calling for relief workers who spoke French to go in as first responders.  I had a terrible burden to want to do something and couldn’t find anything to do.  I just sat there and cried.

 After the initial shock and the terrible fear and dread and waves of compassion that flooded over me for my Haitian brothers and sisters, I began to sense an anger creeping over me.  I was angry that Haiti had been for most of its history an exploited people.  From living as slaves to colonizers to being subjects of multiple dictators to hearing the promises of governments and UN officials to buying the rhetoric of their own corrupt political liberators of the past two decades, the people of Haiti had stopped believing that anything can change their gloom into hope.  It seemed to me that the current two year old government had turned a very small corner in planting the very first and very small seeds of hope.  Some people had begun to believe again.  And then October 2008 hits and 4 successive hurricanes pass over the island in the space of 1 month.  Many die, entire towns are destroyed by floods and mudslides.  It took every ounce of courage and fortitude that the people could muster to dig out and try to start over.  Relief groups did what they could.  Someone said, “At least the major population center of Port-au-Prince was spared the worst of the storm.”  And then, January 12, 2010.

 I was angry that it took an hour for the US president to be told that a disaster like this had happened. I was angry that the networks continued to broadcast their regular news of sinkholes and political sniping over what one politician said about another politician while only CNN was saying much of anything about Haiti.  If Bill Gates had died, that would have made the news or if Brad and Angelina had been adopting a baby in Haiti at the time, it would have gotten coverage.  I was angry at the guy I knew who responded to the mention of the Haiti earthquake by saying, “That’s funny, I heard there was an earthquake in California, too.”  I’m sorry that somebody’s dish broke in California, but it’s just not the same.  I had felt the same way when 200,000 people died in the Asian Tsanami a few years ago and we acted like it wasn’t as bad as Hurricane Katrina.  I was angry that CNN could get multiple news crews and camera crews into Haiti over 24 hours before we could get any relief workers or emergency supplies into Haiti.  Thanks for the pictures but it bothered me that Anderson Cooper was there on the streets of Port-au-Prince while the emergency search and rescue team was still in Virginia.  I was angry that the Haitian government was lost in the disaster.  There wasn’t anything they could do and that’s exactly what they were doing.  I don’t know at what point in my rather busy afternoon I realized that, underneath it all, I was angry at God.  I was in denial, but, when I tried to pray, I found myself wanting to say, “God, why did you let this happen? Where were you?  Why didn’t you do something?”  I thought these were the questions of an agnostic, the debatable issues of a college philosophy class, beneath my “advanced” level of theological understanding.  I am not trying to say that the Haitian people are innocent and don’t deserve some kind of judgment for centuries of voodoo practices, but I know many people there.  I love them like family.  In a spiritual sense, I have some Haitian blood in my veins and I needed to know why God didn’t do something to prevent this disaster.  Why didn’t the earthquake hit Las Vegas and knock down a few casinos and brothels instead of crushing poor, helpless, anonymous masses who didn’t have much to start with and lost everything in one fell swoop.  I reached down and looked for answers in my beliefs.  Why does suffering happen?  Why do the innocent fall while the corrupt continue on their merry way?

Here are some thoughts about suffering from the Evan Drake theological gristmill:

1. (Sovereignty) God is in charge.  At 4:00 pm Tuesday, God was still on the throne.  He didn’t get surprised and He doesn’t make mistakes.  There is a distinction that is more than semantic between what God causes, what God permits and what God allows.  It may make us feel better to say that God allowed the earthquake, but that cannot imply that God wasn’t in charge at the moment the ground shook.

1. 2. (Omniscience) Only God knows the reasons for the things that happen in our world.  Don’t make the mistake Job made by trying to teach God.  He knows what He is doing.  In comparison, we don’t know much at all.

3. (the Fall) Evil has affected every part of creation.  The entire universe groans under the weight of the curse.  The earth groaned on Tuesday because everything has not been made right since Adam screwed up our world.  The rain falls and the earth shakes on the just and the unjust.  And sometimes the house falls on the just and misses the unjust.  One day, justice will reign.  But, until the trumpet sounds and the angel shouts, we will continue to have earthquakes and hurricanes and good people will suffer and bad people will get away with murder.

4. (Judgment) Sin has consequences.  Judgment comes in ways that we don’t expect or like.  Haiti has been an island dedicated to the power of the enemy of Christ for centuries.  Sometimes liberation comes out of desolation.  Everyone in Haiti is crying out to someone right now.  Only God can make a difference.  The voodoo gods have no answers and can give no comfort.

5.  (Glory) Suffering is the precursor to glory.  A blind man was born blind (John 9) so that he could become a reflection for God’s glory.  Even tragedy can point people to God.  When asked by His disciples why the man had been born blind, Jesus responded,

“Neither this man nor his parents sinned, but that the works of God should be revealed in him.” (John 9:3)

Paul pointed toward God’s glory as the end result of our suffering,

“For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory.”  2 Corinthians 4:17

Peter put the purifying effect of trials in the perspective of removing the dross from gold so we can be 100% honoring to God and His glory when it is all said and done,

“that the genuineness of your faith, being much more precious than gold that perishes, though it is tested by fire, may be found to praise, honor, and glory at the revelation of Jesus Christ.”   1 Peter 1:7   

6. (Growth) God puts believers through suffering and trials so that they may grow stronger and deeper in their Christian life and in their dependence on God.  James says that the testing of our faith will produce endurance and the ongoing process will develop maturity in us.

7.  (Grace) Paul apparently faced a physical trial that limited him in some way.  He wanted to be rid of the “thorn in the flesh” and God told Paul that he must continue to suffer in order to encourage his dependence upon God. 

“And He said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore most gladly I will rather boast in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me.  ¹⁰ Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in needs, in persecutions, in distresses, for Christ’s sake. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”  2 Corinthians 12:9-10   

Without the “thorn/infirmity,” Paul wouldn’t have to lean on God’s grace to get him through.  God said He would prove to Paul that His strength was complete, in other words, all Paul needed.  Paul’s conclusion because of the “thorn/infirmity” was that he would only be strong for the Lord when he was weak in himself.  Those dreaded testing times are the only things that can bring about the kind of deep and lasting growth that God wants to develop in us.

8.  (Gospel) The greatest periods of evangelism in Church History have been at the times when the church went through severe testing and persecution.  Paul and Silas reached the Philippian jailer and his family after being unjustly beaten and put in prison.  Someone said, “the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.”  I assume this means that the gospel has gone forward in direct proportion to the suffering of the church and its evangelists.  The church may wish for comfort, security, prosperity and recognition, but God may see to it that the church gets stripped of everything that gets in the way of the power of the gospel.

9.   (Goodness) There are times when we struggle with the goodness of God.  That is what launched this discussion.  “How can a good God. . .?”  Wouldn’t God’s goodness be more visible in the garden with no sin, no death, and no selfishness?  Would it have been possible to understand the love of God without the fall of man?  Would it be possible to comprehend God’s goodness if evil did not exist?  “Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound.”  God doesn’t need to kill 100,000 people in order to prove that He is good.  That sounds a little twisted.  But, it is amazing how much we can sense the goodness of God against the background of the darkness of evil and/or calamity.  I know a lot of Haitian Christians.  I am convinced that many of them will come through this ordeal with the declaration, “God is good all the time, all the time God is good.”

10.  (Jesus) As hard as a trial may seem, a Christian can never say, “Jesus doesn’t know what I am going through.”  Hebrews says, “He was in all points tempted like we are, yet without sin.” The truth is, I can’t really say that I know what He went through.  Suffering can do that.  He is touched by our trouble because He knows what we are feeling. I can be touched by the feeling of his infirmities when I am walking in the shadow of His cross.  He lived my life with its pain, suffering, rejection and death.  He did it as an atoning sacrifice and my substitute.  But, He also did it as my example.  God wants me to learn to live like Jesus.  That can’t happen if only good things come into our lives.  He taught us how to die, but He showed us how to live, even when your friends forsake you, your family makes fun of you, your enemies revile you, beat you and take your life from you.

 “For to this you were called, because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that you should follow His steps.” 1 Peter 2:21   

 We aren’t the first to deal with these very troubling questions.  The disciples of Jesus debated often why stuff happens.  One day, they came to Jesus, holding the “local newspaper” and asked about some Galileans who had been slaughtered by Pilate and offered as sacrifices with lambs and goats.  The second article was about a tower that fell with no warning on some bystanders.  The disciples decide that they must have deserved it somehow or else the tower would have fallen on some criminals instead. Their theological viewpoint was that they must have been really bad people for something so despicable or so disastrous to happen to them.

 There were present at that season some who told Him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices.  ² And Jesus answered and said to them, “Do you suppose that these Galileans were worse sinners than all other Galileans, because they suffered such things?  ³ “I tell you, no; but unless you repent you will all likewise perish.  ⁴ “Or those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them, do you think that they were worse sinners than all other men who dwelt in Jerusalem?  ⁵ “I tell you, no; but unless you repent you will all likewise perish.” Luke 13:1-5

 Jesus dodges the theological debate over why stuff happens to give an invitation.  If you are still standing because a tower didn’t fall on you or some crazy fanatic hasn’t snatched your last breath away, or an earthquake didn’t bring your house down on your head, God is giving you one last chance to repent of your sin, cry out for his mercy and to receive His grace offered through His only Son who died for you.  I can’t answer why a 7.0 earthquake hit Haiti this week instead of Las Vegas or Tehran where I would have sent it.  All I know is, God is giving those of us who survive one more day to get right with Him, repent of our own sins, and call as many people to faith in Christ.  When our earthquake hits, it will be too late to change what has been done.  It doesn’t matter if they are voodoo worshippers in Haiti, Islamic radicals in Pakistan, pagan atheists in Russia, or Bible belt professing hypocritical, nominal Christians in the US, we have a more important job than trying to decide if people deserve what happens to them.  Jude says,

“And on some have compassion, making a distinction; ²³ but others save with fear, pulling them out of the fire, hating even the garment defiled by the flesh.”   Jude 1:22-23  

I really hope they can pull thousands of people out of the rubble in Haiti.  I am praying non-stop for that.  My heart is broken to hear of dying people calling out with no one to help as they slip out into a Christless eternity.  However, I hope even more that this tragedy can give the opportunity to snatch a multitude of Haitians and many others out of the fires of eternal condemnation. 

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