Thoughts from Haiti

The drive from the Port-au-prince airport to Gonaives is a little more than 100 miles.  You can see a lot from your seat in the festively painted “Let’s Go Missionaries” bus.  Masses of people fill the streets and markets of each town we pass through.  Goats, pigs, and dogs wander about freely, scavenging what they can.  Large trucks, busses, and SUVs dominate the narrow roads, making their intention known with loud horns directed at the wall of people bustling about on foot and motorbikes.  Traffic laws and signs are apparently a luxury this government cannot afford.  As I peer out my window into a world very foreign to my own, I’m struck by the poverty and chaos openly on display.  What is it that these people really need?  How can all this be fixed?  The humanitarian in me seeks answers in the provision of clean water, sanitation, a better road system, education, just to name a few.  All these carry an importance that cannot be overstated.   But I wonder if any of these things in themselves are sufficient.  The Haitian people have made a life surviving on band aid fixes. Wires providing electricity to the few fortunate homes that have it are strung together like the Christmas lights decorating Clark Griswald’s house.  Many of the vehicles look to be about a single bolt away from abandonment.  Though it is welcomed, are there any real answers in relief?  The evangelical Christian in me, on the other hand, says that the answer to what people need will only be found in the Gospel (cue all men in the congregation to respond in unison, Amen!)  This of course applies to all people: the rich, the poor, the simple, the educated; but for some reason it seems to carry special importance to the impoverished souls living in third world countries such as Haiti.  And so we send out our missionaries, with pockets full of gospel tracks and savvy witnessing tools, to give the gospel to a hurting world as if the gospel could be tossed like candy from a flowery float in a parade of piety.

What do these people really need?  They need more people like Rodney and Cathy, the missionaries who graciously hosted our rag-tag group for a week in Gonaive.  Though they are white, and American, they are not just white Americans offering their virtues to the people of Haiti.  They have spent well over 20 years immersing themselves into every aspect of the lives of the Haitian people.  Sure they preach the Gospel with word.  Rodney has started nearly 30 churches that are now led by indigenous pastors and runs a thriving Bible institute. What impresses me the most though is how they live the gospel with their lives.  They have become a life-source for many of the people around them.  Haiti is not a place they go to carry on the work of God, but rather their home.  Ministry is not something they do.  It’s who they are. Working through them, Christ has changed and continues to change lives in Haiti.

The people of Haiti need more people like Pastor Aristedes and his wife, a successful Haitian couple who, motivated by the Gospel, have given up every bit of their comfort so that 36 abandoned Haitian children can find some.  We spent a few hours of a few days at the orphanage, giving what little we had to offer.  This family now has nothing outside the walls of that orphanage.  They have done what the rich young man spoken of in the gospels could not do.  They have followed Jesus by selling everything and giving it to the poor.  36 more lives (and counting) forever changed by the Gospel.

So yes, I do believe that the answer to the needs of the Haiti people is found in the Gospel.  The Gospel that I speak here of, though, is not the kind given out, but rather lived out.  Can you imagine the impact the church would have on the world if the Gospel had its way in the lives of its people?  Haiti is less than a 2 hour flight from major US cities, yet the gap in living conditions are centuries apart.  How can an American church so vast and so rich not be heartbroken over the realities of the world that surrounds it?  While you don’t have to look too far to find others like Rodney and Cathy, and the Aristedes family, who are carrying on the works of Christ daily, the truth remains that although the Gospel is preached and readily acknowledged in thousands upon thousands of churches across the nation, it is dead in the hearts of many who fill its pews each week.  I speak as a pew sitter.  The pursuit of American dream has taken precedence over the pursuit of Christ.  The sacred and the secular have been folded neatly into separate drawers so not to be mixed and matched.  Justice becomes a concern only when something gets taken from us.  Sure we know that we are supposed to love our neighbors, but really, who is our neighbor?  So we build fences. 

What the people of Haiti need is the Gospel to transform the heart of the church.   The people have the need.  The church has the means.  The Gospel is the answer.