On theodicy and Haiti

I’m sure he’s not the only one to have done so, but New Yorker staff writer James Wood has composed a piece about the classic piece of theodicy that was Pat Robertson’s stupifying condemnation of Haitians. As Wood notes, theodicy is the acknowledgment of God’s kingship in the world in the wake of suffering or pain, and it turns up about this time after most major catastrophes. The most recent of such occurrence was probably Hurricane Katrina in 2005, although it’s not inconceivable that similar thoughts weren’t uttered, at least privately, in the aftermath of the 2008 cyclone in Myanmar or the 1990s quake in godless San Francisco.

As Wood writes:

This repellent cruelty manages the extraordinary trick of combining hellfire evangelism with neo-colonialist complacency, in which the Haitians are blamed not only for their sinfulness but also for the hubris of their political rebellion. Eighteenth-century preachers at least tended to include themselves in the charge of general sinfulness and God’s inevitable reckoning; Mr. Robertson sounds rather pleased with his own outwitting of such reckoning, as if the convenient blessing of being a God-fearing American has saved him from such pestilence. He is presumably on the other side of the sin-line, safe in some Dominican resort.

As I was intrigued (perplexed?) by messages I saw in passing on Facebook and in news stories calling for folks to pray for the folks in Haiti, this topic brings some, OK many, questions to mind:

Where were the prayers prior to the quake? Haiti isn’t exactly a thriving nation. The people of that country could have used some spiritual cheerleading way, way before the catastrophe in Port-au-Prince centuries before now. I’m more impressed with people who have actually sent food, resources or who have personally traveled to the country. Why should we wait for something terrible to happen, and then, and only then, pray for the affected people? Do the prayers do any good? We have no way of knowing, but why not ask God to prevent any and all natural disasters, mass murders, acts of terror, rapes and murders?

Why do folks pray about natural disaster victims to a God who, in his omnipotence, and there is no getting around this, either allowed the disaster to happen or simply did not prevent it. To what extent does it matter that we are supposedly “fallen?” Does the fact that we are “fallen” make it OK for an all-powerful god to allow the wide scale death of his creation?

Of course, we must concede that we have no way of knowing which disasters or deaths he might be preventing because obviously they never happened if he prevented them. For all we know, he could be preventing 1,000 huge disasters per year, and only one or two slip through. But if that’s the case, those one or two become interesting occurrences indeed. How do one or two slip the past omniscient eye of God out of 1,000s? Again, if he allows one or two to slip through, what does that say about God?

Would he seriously consider any such requests or questions to slow down or stop the natural disasters and personal tragedies that wreck humankind? If not, why not? Does it all boil down to his divine governance, thus reverting us back to theodicy?

Again, Wood:

The only people who would seem to have the right to invoke God at the moment are the Haitians themselves, who beseech his help amidst dreadful pain. They, too, alas, appear to wander the wasteland of theodicy. News reports have described some Haitians giving voice to a worldview uncomfortably close to Pat Robertson’s, in which a vengeful God has been meting out justified retribution: “I blame man. God gave us nature, and we Haitians, and our governments, abused the land. You cannot get away without consequences,” one man told The Times last week.

Others sound like a more frankly theological President Obama: a 27-year-old survivor, Mondésir Raymone, was quoted thus: “We have survived by the grace of God.”

Too bad that same grace didn’t extend to and smile on some 150,000 other Haitians, a grace that seems selective, to say the least.

8 thoughts on “On theodicy and Haiti

  1. I’m glad you are exploring the theological issues surrounding this and exposing some bad theology. I do wish there were some discussion here about a proper theology of the existence of evil in the world (which is of course a difficult question). Surely there is someone out there who isn’t pushing the extremes of deism or an evil God. Please tell me someone is demonstrating a truly biblical worldview…that God is good, that we live in a fallen world, that some good people suffer and some evil people prosper, and that there will be final justice in the end. This can be a painful place but there is hope in redemption.

  2. There are, Joshua, and I used to go to church with many of them, and at least one or two of them read this blog. I just happen to not agree anymore and can’t in my mind rectify the notion of an omniscient god creator who knew before creating us that we would disobey, that we would come to live in a fallen world, whose hands are seemingly tied to undo a fallen world all by himself. Why, for instance, is there an unrelenting need for blood sacrifice, in the form of animals (OT) or his son (NT)? Why does an all-powerful god need any mechanism at all to redeem people? If he needs such a mechanism to forgive sins, he’s hindered by some force outside of himself. And if you can rectify that, I’ll give you a cookie … OK, a virtual cookie.

    To add something: Forgiveness isn’t a magical thing. We humans forgive others all the time for grievances (some of which could be among the actual sins listed in the Bible. Stealing, for instance) without requiring anything other than a good heart.

  3. Do you realize how many Christian missionaries serve full-time in Haiti and how many groups travel to Haiti yearly to provide for these people and share the love and hope that Jesus Christ can bring. First, they meet their physical needs. Then, they deal with the spiritual. You imply that people have been sitting on their “blessed assurance” doing nothing for the people of Haiti, when in reality, the Christian church, that you no longer believe in, has been praying for and serving these people for years. I have numerous friends who have served there, who had trips planned before this tragedy occurred, and who are there right now. What have the aetheists and agnostics done???

  4. I do realize how many Christians serve in Haiti and all over the world. I wrote a story last week about a group from a local church that sent a group there. But without attempting to spread the message of Jesus, they would have no reason for being there. The Red Cross, Doctors without Borders and many others with no particular religious affiliation serve and raise money because it’s the right thing to do with no secondary (or primary) motive to proselytize to folks. The question, what have atheists or agnostics done, isn’t something I can answer because atheists and agnostics don’t travel to other lands attempting to sway others toward non-theism. But here is a large list of charities currently helping in Haiti, almost all of them secular.

  5. I disagree. Even if Christians could not tell others about Christ, they would still be there helping these people because that’s what Jesus himself would do and we are to live like him. They would go for the same reason so many others go…they have compassionate hearts. And, I can’t back up my theory with any real proof, but I would feel pretty certain in saying that most of the people working for these secular charities you mention are still probably Christians. I didn’t mean to get in some big debate with you. I just wanted to point out that people in this country were helping the people of Haiti before this horrible tragedy.

  6. No, that’s more than fine. That’s one reason I started blogging … to spark debate on important topics. As for charitable organizations, if they are based in America, they more than likely have a larger majority of people who say thay are Christians, but that’s only by virtue that most people in this country say they are Christian, so that would make sense. Of course, the word Christian entails countless actual meanings, from the evangelicals to those who are only casual believers. To say that secular organizations are mostly filled with Christians of the kind with whom I used to go to church, that would be a stretch.

  7. Good blog, Jeremy.

    Christians have hobbled themselves somewhat by choosing one invisible friend with omnipotent, benevolent attributes. Ever since then they’ve been struggling to justify this faux pas – they should have stuck with Marcionism.

    With such a set-up there is only one conclusion they can arrive at; that there is a good reason for suffering. IOW, evil is necessary, for some inscrutable greater good. This evil is further confirmed for Christians by the blood sacrifice of their saviour to atone for human sin.

    Many Christians skirt over this conclusion, thank goodness, because they are humans first, and religious second, so they wouldn’t be as crass as Robertson. But if anything is central to their world view, it’s the necessity of evil, and I find that repellent.

  8. Thanks for reading, Mark. Yes it is the paradox to end all paradoxes, isn’t it? Evil must exist in the world because you can’t have good without evil, they say. But why not? He could have made it happen. Is God omnipotent or isn’t he? Or does some evil/good counterbalance law predate God? That would be doctrinally impossible. This leaves us with only two possibilities: he foreknew the whole shabang, with all benevolence, still watches and allows evil to take place (with all the power in the universe to stop all of it) and under the cloak of “benevolent love,” or two, he’s not omnipotent or omnibenevolent and hindered by some force outside himself. And, of course, there’s a third option: he wasn’t there to begin with.

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