Haiti and Pat Robertson

[revwayne]

Please Dr. Robertson - don't go down that road again...the Haitian people have misery enough with their corrupt leaders...assigning them to Satan does no one any good.

[milimama]

I'm so used to FB now that I'm looking for a "like" button. ; ) Agreed & Amen. All Christians that I know disavow this kind of nonsense. But it drives me crazy that my atheist friends/family members use it as ammo to reinforce their negative opinions about Christianity.

[archangel]

Hi milimama.

Is it really nonsense? What about all the voodoo stuff? Is it fairly common? Does Christianity flourish there? I honestly don't know. Just food for thought.

The thing Pat forgets is that no one is really safe from satan's wiles. Even righteous Job lost everything. However, it sure can't help when you're doing things that are unGodly.

[milimama]

According to wikipedia (I know, I know) the 80% of the population is Catholic & 16% Protestant . . . but it does also say that 50% practices something called Haitian Vodou.

As you point out, however bad things (sometimes REALLY bad things) happen to the best of people. I personally don't think any human is qualified to make such judgements.

[revwayne]

Remember what Moses did when he came down from Horeb (yet again) and found the people making golden calves? The calves were smashed and 16,000 of the people were killed. He didn't kill them all. Now having said that fast forward to Isaiah's prophetic cautions that there will only be a remnant of a faithless nation...that means that go on to eternal life. We don't know the hearts and souls of the people who died in Haiti in this tragedy - only God does. It is our duty as faithful Christians to be a non-anxious presence in the midst of their suffering and to help where we can. Judgment is God's province. When we put ourselves in God's place of judgment we have committed blasphemy. And that is trouble. It is in our earnest prayers and extending mercy to those who suffer in Haiti that we can serve Christ best. Leave judgment to God.

[milimama]

Uh-oh. I just read the following & watched the video of what Robertson actually said & I am ashamed to admit that I was misled by the reporting. Robertson's statements weren't nearly as inflammatory as the reports say. I really should know better by now.


bigjournalism.com/mfrazier/2010/01/18/what-did-pat-robertson-really-mean-by-his-pact-with-the-devil-remark/#more-7426

[cc]

What Rev Robertson said was one of the biggest pieces of dumbassery I've ever heard on such a situation, but the left, not to be outdone, immediately produced one of its own, the seriously insane Danny Glover, to top it:

“What happened in Haiti could happen to anywhere in the Caribbean because all these island nations are in peril because of global warming.”

“When we see what we did at the climate summit in Copenhagen, this is the response, this is what happens, you know what I’m saying? We have to act now!”

[wolfknight]

Milli:

Maybe not as inflammatory, but he still made a horse's ass of himself. There's no contextual escape in his words, which were suggesting that in it's founding, Haiti made a pact with the devil, and that such a pact has "cursed" the nation with one tragedy after another.

I'm with cc on this. There's virtually no difference between the stupidity of Robertson's statements and the stupidity of Danny Glover's statements about Haiti.

[earlk]

so now what about the grand caymans and guatemala and the surrounding islands that are feeling the same effects? voodoo here or a pact with the devil?

[Godot showed up]

I have actually heard people in the office where I work say this, cc (about climate change and earthquakes ---There's no point in pointing out to them that the relationship of the atmosphere to the earth's core (the ultimate driver of earthquakes) is all one way, planet to atmosphere. And these people think they have clue number 1 about science, and that those of us who have always known that man-caused global warming via CO2 is utter nonsense are the know-nothings. It's truly astonishing how scientifically ignorant the left can be.


Milli, hah, now you know how I feel about those freaks at the ACLU and how the festivus, Newdow, God-out-of-everything, anti-Christmas crowd make me scream (when I see a news story about the latest intolerant anti-faith effort) "you don't speak for me you jerks, shut up shut up shut up!!" I always can't help but feel many people of faith (not youse guys, natch) think most atheists are like this lot!

I watched the video itself online, 3 times over, and you can’t make any mistake: Robertson IS suggesting the earthquake and other misfortunes of Haiti are due to a specific pact with the devil. He also goes on to emphasize, just as strongly, that all they have to do is turn back to God and their fortunes will change. He also emphasizes, just as strongly, that all good Christians need to give to Haiti now, period.

All this is consistent with his worldview, and with Old Testament Biblical interpretation. Kudos to you, Arch, for causing me to think along these lines. Plenty of precedent—Sodom, of course. But in the case of Sodom, it wasn’t just a handful who deserved a serious smiting; the whole city was debauched, idolatrous, and all-around smiting material. So Robertson is assuming most adults at that time were practicing a religion that could possibly reach the abomination level by his long-held and long-public-knowledge standards, at least when voodoo is strictly practiced. He could be factually right. He could also be wrong—maybe more people were just concerned with the vicissitudes of daily living. Anyone who knows more about Haitian practice of voodoo please opin.

Thing is, once you see some pictures of some Haitian schoolgirls with their skulls smashed in, lying dead in the streets, you just want to smack him anyway. If Robertson thinks those innocents were punished for some long-ago pact made with His Satanic Majesty, his concept of a deity’s justice is too merciless to fit a kindly world or a world we would see conducted with kindness, even when tempered by his bvious sincerely felt sadness for, and desire to help, the Haitians. But people with a few neurons to call their own know that he speaks for himself, naturally. I hope those atheist friends of yours aren't so stupid that they really think it's logical to extrapolate remark s by one man to every Christian, or even one more Christian than Pat Robertson—although I have to say that what he said is fully consistent with what he believes, and that he emphasized a Christian duty to help Haiti very strongly. If these atheist buds of yours do make that extrapolation, then that lot also make me cringe on with embarrassment. I’ve long since given up thinking of most other atheists as my fellows. You could say I run from them as fast as a Democrat running from Obama.

As some others have pointed out in one way or another in the thread, the Haitians still do that voodoo that they do so well, but hybridized with Roman Catholicism. And it’s worth noting that Roman Catholicism is actually their official state religion (whatever we may think of the idea of having an official state religion, at least it’s Christian). Here's this pic I found, though, of a church in Haiti, and you know what they say, a picture's worth a 1000 words, 10,000 if you're me:
www.worldoutreachministries.ca/images/Haitian_church.png

The cross has pride of place on the exterior. I’d found a good interior shot of another Haitian church last night, but can’t seem to find it now; the cross and altar were the center of everything.

And, of course, there’s the fairly obvious answer that in every way that matters, organized Christian groups have done tremendous work in the aftermath of the earthquake. A few words by one man are a piffle compared to that.


**I heavily changed the above post after actually watching Robertson on Youtube. He wasn't venomous at all. He was, in fact, being consistent with his belief system and a possible Old Testament interpretation of events. Shame on me for not just watching him first.