LET'S MAKE IT A LIFESTYLE

$164 million PER HOUR from private donations poured into relief for Haiti in the week following the calamitous January 12 earthquake. That bears repeating. $164,000,000 per hour!, according to The Chronicle for Philanthropy. Not all of that came from the U.S., to be sure, but much of it did, and rightly so. Haiti, after all, is right in our backyard. One of the poorest nations on planet earth, where the average income is only $2 a day, languishes in the shadow of what is arguably the richest nation in the history of the world.

Of course, there have been on the ground in Haiti for many decades committed and compassionate missionaries and social workers doing stellar work to relieve the suffering of this oppressed nation. Yet, progress has been painfully slow. Navigating through the obstacle course of language barrier, rampant corruption, almost nonexistent infrastructure and all the accompanying ills of systemic poverty, we cannot overstate the significance of their sacrificial service. But, truth be told, most of us seldom if ever thought about Haiti before this earthquake.

Presidents Clinton and Bush, who accepted the assignment to oversee the United States' relief effort, have stated that Haiti has an unprecedented opportunity to rebuild, modernize and rise up stronger than ever as a consequence of the benevolent spotlight that is currently upon them. May it be so.

Perhaps you, like me, take a look at all this and ask yourself, what's wrong with this picture? How is it that we can allow such abject poverty to exist year after year, decade after decade right in our own "neighborhood"? Why is it that we wait until there is a natural disaster of epic proportions to arouse us to direct the resources we had in hand all along to help this suffering people? Were there things we should have been doing in a more proactive way to preempt the suffering? What if the focus of our foreign policy was to eradicate such chronic suffering? What if the primary role of our military was to assist people groups that need a hand to help them overcome circumstances that have held them back for too long? What if we didn't wait for an earthquake to establish modern hospitals, schools and food distribution points? What if we were proactive in assisting them in building earthquake resistant dwellings with proper sewage and water treatment? What if we made caring for the poor the top priority rather than fighting elective wars and bailing out Wall Street?

I do not think it is as big a step as one might imagine to link the responsive to crisis generosity of the American people with a well planned, proactive "war on poverty", to borrow an old, beat up phrase. If we're so ready to flood incredible sums of money into crisis stricken areas when called upon, surely it is reasonable to think we could do so much more to head off the dimensions of potential crises in advance. Let's envision the improvements in foreign relations that could come about if the world truly began to see and believe that our goal, first and foremost, was to serve the world with no-strings-attached generosity and kindness rather than the self-interested bullying that has been the nature of so much of what we have done in foreign policy lately. Rather than our extraordinary generosity toward Haiti being seen as crisis response, why not strive to make it a lifestyle?

Eden's Lie

Has it ever occurred to you that religion has fallen into the trap of repeating the lie of Eden to solve the problem created by Eden’s lie?

For those who may not know the story told in Genesis chapter 3, a cunning talking serpent convinced Eve and Adam that God was withholding something from them. He sowed a seed thought of discontent concerning their current standing with their Creator. “God doesn’t want you to be like him, knowing good and evil,” the tempter reportedly said. Apparently that was all it took to tip Adam and Eve over into the reckless behavior of breaking out of the boundaries of their ideal existence and trying to fix the problem they, until that moment, didn’t know they had.

The duped and disobedient couple took charge of their own destiny, ate fruit they weren’t supposed to eat and set themselves and their descendents on a downward spiral of self-doubt, victimization, blaming others and the gamut of dysfunctions and disorders common to us today. Merely the suggestion that they didn’t measure up in some way was all it took for the Deceiver to ruin the harmony that had existed between the Creator and the created.

Trying to solve the resulting sense of exposure and vulnerability their action had brought to their awareness, the guilty pair tried to hide behind fig leaves they sewed together. To which God, as he was confronting them with their folly, offered a better solution to their nakedness—fur coats he had made (sorry PETA). In other words, God in effect said to them and demonstrated by his action, “Your solutions don’t work. You can’t fix this. Only I can. Whatever resolution of this problem you’ve created and the resulting reconciliation is going to have to come from me.” I can further imagine God saying, “Don’t do anything else. You’ve already caused enough harm with your efforts.”

Now let’s fast forward through time and see what much of religion in its various forms offers us. Again we are told in many different ways that this God of ours is withholding something from us. In fact, as some versions would stress, he stands ready to give us the cold shoulder and the “hot forever” unless we do something. Subtly and not so subtly we are told the ball is in our court and if we’re going to rise to God’s level it depends on us. Make this decision, attend these events, say these prayers, give this money, read this book, act this way, do this and do that. If you don’t, the lie continues, you are really missing it with God. God won’t claim you.

So, if religion is telling us the same lie as the serpent in the Garden of Eden, where does that leave us? It leaves us right where Adam and Eve were totally dependent upon God to fix things. The good news for them and for us is that he did. Now all we have to do is quit looking for some fruit tree of personal effort.