What is God’s Will for Haiti?
Social Justice — By Erin Perry on March 10, 2010 at 12:00 amTonight at church the age old questions of “Why do bad things happen?” came up in regard to Haiti.
It’s a tough one to answer. Our group of very sharp, philosophical, theological 
college students struggled with it for over an hour, and after I left some were still planning on continuing the discussion over some beers.
We go through our lives thinking that God is in control. We can pray and ask and God will help us. And while we know we have our free will, we also seem to have a sense of predestination in our beliefs. ”God’s will be done.” But in tragedy it is so hard to say that God’s will is being done. I don’t think that anyone who believes in a loving God would think for moment that God planned for this to happen or that God willed it to happen or that God wanted it to happen. If we thought that, our very belief system is turned upside down. But to say that this is not God’s will removes God from being actively involved in our lives.
If God does not will for these bad things to happen, then it seems only out of convenience that we say God wills for good things to happen. But in another way it is so easy to say that God’s will is being done. God’s will is being done in the people who have traveled there to help. God’s will is being done in the enormous amount of financial contributions that are being given both religiously and secularly. God’s will is being done in the sense of compassion that so many people around the world have for the people of Haiti. When we ask why bad things happen and whether or not it was God’s will, we have to examine what we mean by God’s will.
Does God treat us as puppets moving through a play in order to carry out God’s will?
Or is God’s will to love?
I believe in a God of compassion and redemption and hope and love. And while the question as to why God allows things like the devastation in Haiti to happen is not a simple one to answer, even with the answer of love, it is at least a place to start. God’s will may not be what God does, but rather what we do because of God’s love.
As my good friend Kyle pointed out tonight, so much of the suffering in this world is caused by human action or a lack thereof. In this case, perhaps if we as a wealthy people had taken the time and donated our money and manpower to Haiti, the infrastructure would have been better and the damage would not have been as horrific. God’s will is for us to love others. In this case, God’s will is for us to take action to help the people of Haiti. And in some cases God’s will may be for us to take preventative action towards destruction. We can not know exactly why this happened. We can not know exactly what God was thinking when the earthquake struck, but I would imagine that God was crying and feeling a broken heart, while at the same time feeling hopeful that maybe this time we would understand what God’s will is.
2 Comments
The truth I’ve come to realize is that we equate safety and physical comfort with God’s will and God’s promise. However, if you read the Old Testament, or the path Jesus took, you will hardly find safety and physical comfort. We pray for God to protect us, to make us safe—to make life easy. I have begun to question that prayer in my own life.
This mindset is what leads us to question WHY in regards to Haiti. We think, if God loves them, this would not have happened. “Jesus, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”
After Haiti, I have personally begun to strip away the layers of the Christianity I spent my life believing, not to turn away from God, but to learn more about the reality of God, and as you said — my response to Him.
I’ve begun to wonder, perhaps heretically, if God has more going on than we realize. Perhaps He’s got a way of equalizing things we know nothing about.
Look at the parable of the rich man and Lazarus. Lazarus lived the life of a poor, humble beggar, while the rich man lived the life of a selfish, excessive fool. That’s all we’re told about the lives of each man. Yet Lazarus ends up at Abraham’s side and the rich man in hell.
I don’t want to over-simplify things. But I wonder if God has an amazingly just way of setting things right with those who suffer. Just a thought. I’m sure it’s more complex than that. But the wondering does make it easier to believe that God is, in spite of the suffering we see, very good.