Haiti And A Loving God: Pat Robertson Answered The Wrong Question

Skeptics, atheists, and agnostics, have every reason to ask me, as a Christian, how my loving God could allow the earthquake in Haiti. And, as a Christian, I must face the fact that God, indeed, could have prevented the quake and spared the Haitian people such agony. And yet He chose to allow it.

Pat Robertson apparently attempted to explain God’s hand in the devastation as the playing out of a curse on Haiti for making a pact with the Devil. If Mr. Robertson is saying that there are consequences for sin, well, I could not agree more. Jesus, Himself, said as much. But that only confronts me with the question of why I was not fully destroyed prior to coming to Christ.

I am – beyond any shadow of a doubt – a sinner. And the Bible clearly states that “the wages of sin is death.” (Romans 6:23a) Yet, here I stand; healthy, happy, and facing no greater challenge than an evening of NFL playoff football and a full refrigerator.

I have no way of knowing whether the Haitian people ever made a pact with the Devil or whether the nation, in so doing, brought a curse upon itself. What I do know – and what Pat Robertson failed to mention – is that the Word of God says that all people are under the curse of sin. Galatians 3:10b, quoting the Old Testament, reads, “Cursed is everyone who does not obey all the things written in the book of the law.” That’s all of us, folks.

So, we Christians face another legitimate confrontation from the non-Christian: “Why did Haiti get hit so hard and not the rest of us.”

Jesus addresses this issue in the gospels and points us in the right direction, but does not give us the full answer. When he was told about the suffering of some people in Galilee, he responded, “(Do you think) those eighteen who were killed when the tower of Siloam fell on them . . . were worse offenders than all the others living in Jerusalem? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did.”

Jesus did not say, “Hey, its just one of those things. Stuff happens.” And He was not saying, “Those people who were killed were just as good as you.” He was saying, “You are every bit as sinful as they were!”

Yes. Bad things happen because there is evil in the world and sin has its consequences.

But the unbeliever still has every right to hit me with this: “Okay, so your God says that the penalty for sin is death and we’re all sinners. Doesn’t that mean that He should have hit us all just as hard as Haiti?”

And I answer, “Yes . . . The question is not ‘Why did God allow this to happen to Haiti.’ The question is ‘Why did He not allow it to happen to us, too?’”

With sincere apologies to skeptics, atheists, and agnostics, I cannot explain why our loving God has spared us. And I am left on my knees, trembling in fearsome thanks that God has not given me what my deeds truly deserve. And I hang onto the fact that though the wages of sin is death – and my day is coming – the gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 6:23b) My all loving God – in spite of my evil ways – gave me a way out. He went to the Cross and paid my well-earned and eternal death-penalty for me. Mr. Robertson’s, too.

No. I cannot explain a love like that.