It’s been quite a week, hasn’t it? So devastating seeing the destruction and the suffering in Haiti, and yet heartening to see the response and compassion of people all around the world, in our communities, in our church. All in all, in the face of this tragedy, it’s been pretty amazing to see people respond. It’s actually given my faith in human nature a bit of a boost, with one exception, and that, sadly, is a response that came from someone identified as a Christian. I don’t know how many of you saw or heard Pat Robertson’s comments earlier this week? This is what he said:
[S]omething happened a long time ago in Haiti, and people might not want to talk about it. They were under the heel of the French. You know, Napoleon the third, or whatever. And they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said, we will serve you if you will get us free from the French. True story. And so, the devil said, okay it’s a deal. And they kicked the French out. You know, the Haitians revolted and got themselves free. But ever since they have been cursed by one thing after the other. Desperately poor. That island of Hispaniola is one island. It is cut down the middle on the one side is Haiti the other is the Dominican Republic. Dominican Republic is prosperous, healthy, full of resorts, etc. Haiti is in desperate poverty. Same island. They need to have and we need to pray for them a great turning to God and out of this tragedy I’m optimistic something good may come. (YouTube, CBN, 1-12-10)
He actually said these things on his show on Tuesday, and to my knowledge he hasn’t apologized - hopefully he will. Now if this were just some guy spouting off in a bar, I could ignore it and walk away. But I can’t. This is a member of the clergy, one who has a significant audience, and a following that considers him and themselves followers of Christ.
It’s Bad Faith… Bad Faith. And Bad Faith is worse than no faith at all. I’m not talking about weak faith, struggling faith, a faith that wrestles with doubt. And I don’t mean Bad Faith in the existential sense; the way Soren Kierkegaard used it to describe a lack of authenticity. This is faith that is wrong, unethical, even heretical. If it sounds like I’m angry, I am!
Frankly, I hold more in common with my Buddhist friends, with humanists who question the existence of God, at least they demonstrate more compassion and empathy. I’ve said this before, when those of us who are in the ministry put on this robe and wear this stole, it comes with considerable responsibility, real accountability, and how about some compassion. To me this is blasphemy, worse than cursing or swearing; this is truly using the Lord’s name in vain. And for that reason, I can’t just let it go; especially of the eve of the day we remember and honor Martin Luther King. This kind of talk and the thinking behind the words is anything but Christian. It violates the great commandment, the core of Christ’s teaching and the significance of his sacrifice. You shall love the Lord your God with all of your heart, your soul, and your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.
Let’s start with the latter; loving our neighbor, if anyone made a deal with the devil, it was not the Haitian people. Slaves did not choose to be enslaved, and it was the colonial masters who benefitted from their suffering. If we’ve paid any attention to the lessons of history; if we’ve learned anything from the civil rights movement, we should begin to fathom the devilish relationship of the oppressor to the oppressed. And when those Haitian slaves fought and gained their freedom, they did so with the same fervor and patriotism as our revolutionary forbearers. Would Robertson accuse our founding fathers of making the same deal with the devil? Over the years our country and others have enjoyed prosperity while this neighbor, in our own hemispherical back yard has suffered in abject poverty. That’s the politics of oppression. Yes, it is complicated and there have been efforts, but it is certainly not been the choice of the Haitian people to suffer as they have. Once again, if it were just that, I could let Robertson’s comments go as that of one ignorant of history and devoid of political science, but it goes beyond denigration of the Haitian people; his comments obfuscate the true nature of God in much the same way that the Scribes and Pharisees did in Jesus’ day. And, you know, if you love someone with all of your heart, and all of your soul, and all of your mind, and someone comes along and says something about that one you love, something that is not true, something that is cruel; wouldn’t you want to speak up? Wouldn’t you want the truth be known? Jesus even had to explain this to his disciples when they asked about the blind man; superficially their question appears to be about the blind man. Why is he blind? Did he sin or was it something terrible his parents had done?(Perhaps he or his parents had made a pact with the devil.) But it’s not about the blind man, just as Robertson’s comments, offensive as they are, are really not about the Haitian people - the question is really about God.Who is this God, this Father of yours that punishes people by making them blind? Or, we might ask, by causing an earthquake? Jesus’ answer is telling, but just in case they didn’t quite get it, his actions spoke even louder. He heals the man using spit and clay; nothing heavenly there, just what we have within us and around us. And why? Jesus says “to reveal God’s works”. And we might ask what are God’s works? In a word – love, compassion, empathy. That was Christ’s response; Jesus gave his life to change those misperceptions, to bring us out of that Old Testament kind of thinking, where everything that happens is either a curse or a blessing from God. Jesus brought us out of the old covenant and into the new. That’s why teachings like those of Robertson and others who pretend to speak for Christ are Bad Faith. Statements like these are worse than no faith at all. They twist and turn and distort the message, ultimately disobeying the one and only commandment given by Christ; in doing so, they dishonor God and fail to love their neighbor.
This was the reason that Paul wrote all those letters like 1 Corinthians. The Corinthian Christians were distracted from developing their own faith, and instead chose leaders to follow and special spiritual “gifts” or practices to pursue. They were losing sight of the One who gives all gifts, the One welcomes all kinds of service, the Spirit that leads each one toward the common good, i.e. loving our neighbor. Paul was writing in the years just after Jesus had been crucified; he had never met Jesus, yet he had conflicts with Peter and James and some of the other disciples about the true nature of Christ about what it means to really follow him. And, my dear friends, that’s what it ultimately comes down to: knowing the Spirit of Christ and truly following him. No leader can give that to us; not Pat Robertson, not Mike Duda. We have to find that for ourselves.
There are hundreds of thousands; I’m afraid maybe millions who follow people like Pat Robinson, and when he’s wrong, they’re wrong. When his faith is bad, their faith is bad. In the 60’s it took the incredible sacrifice of Dr. King and so many others in the civil rights movement to show Christians in this country that they were wrong about race. I don’t understand why a tragedy like this would happen to people who have already suffered so much, but I can tell you this – it’s not God’s will; not the God that I know and love. I wouldn’t want to confuse my inability to understand how God can be all-powerful and all-loving at the same time by presuming to judge the One who is so far beyond my limited intellect, or the people that God cares so much about.
But I do know this - God’s will for us is to love, to pray for those who suffer, to help them in whatever ways we can, even when all we seem to have is spit and clay. We use what we have, and that’s faith, good faith; that’s what it means to obey Christ’s great commandment, that’s what it means to truly follow the One who loves ALL of us.Amen
