A Thought for Bad Times

 

The Bwa Kayiman

Friend Xerxes wonders why Haiti has had such a grim time of it—inspired to this thought by its latest earthquake. Why always Haiti?

Televangelist Pat Robertson had a theory. God has been punishing Haiti because the nation was actually founded on a pact with the devil. The Haitian revolution began with a voodoo ceremony, the Bwa Kayiman (Bois Caiman, Alligator Woods).

On the face of it, Robertson has a point. The Bwa Kayiman was, in Christian terms, a pact with the devil: all pagan gods are demons.

But I say that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons, and not to God, and I don't desire that you would have fellowship with demons. – 1 Corinthians 10:20

And such pacts with devils, like Moloch, are why, in the Old Testament, Yahweh destroys the Canaanites. In effect, a pact with the Devil—gross inherent immorality--is why Nazi Germany had to be taken out.

However, Robertson’s theory ultimately does not work, because the point of such destruction would be to punish individuals, but to eliminate a system that seduces people into sin. The calamities that have struck Haiti since independence have not done that, over two centuries. If this, then, were their intent, they are gratuitously cruel. 

There is another possibility: those whom God loves, he chastens. He tests them, like gold is tested in fire. Look at the prophets. Look at the Jews.

Too many of us have been corrupted by the errors of the “prosperity gospel.” If one has had a happy, contented, comfortable life, one ought to be worried. 

See the parable of Dives and Lazarus.

“But Abraham said, 'Child, remember that during your lifetime you received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner evil things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in agony.’”