Why should we even bother trying to do anything in Haiti – wouldn’t it make more sense to focus our resources somewhere else?

(Continuation from previous post)

C)  Why should we even bother trying to do anything in Haiti – wouldn’t it make more sense to focus our resources somewhere else?

Most of you have heard various iterations of my “theological rant” regarding our responsibilities to the poor – especially poor Christians in other countries – and what God expects of us in that regard, so I’ll skip that and assume, as a start point, that you get the fact that doing nothing is certainly not an option.

So…why Haiti?

A few things come to mind…

• NEED:  The need is still tremendous, and as real as it’s ever been – nowhere in the Western Hemisphere could you find a more desperate level of physical need, or a more profound level of spiritual darkness.

• PROXIMITY:  To find any greater level of scarcity and suffering you would have to travel almost half way around the globe to the African continent, whereas Haiti lies literally on our doorstep, only a 3-hour flight from Atlanta.  The people of Haiti actually live closer to us than 50% of the U.S. population, and I have long believed that Haiti is truly the “Lazarus” lying at the gate of the “Rich Man” – our U.S. churches.

• OPPORTUNITY:  It really is possible to do tremendous good in Haiti, if you go about it the right way (you definitely have to be smart about what you do, how you do it, and who you do it through).

You’ve all heard the “starfish” story so I’ll spare you the analogy, but it’s an important reminder:  The good that can be accomplished in Haiti may not ever lead to sweeping social reforms or a miraculous economic revolution, but you can still make a huge difference in the life of one child at a time, one family at a time, one church at a time.

There’s clearly only so much we can do to help with physical needs, and we’ll probably always find ourselves “swimming upstream” in that regard – but at the same time, there are huge opportunities for us to do a massive amount of spiritual good, and most of those opportunities are not as heavily dependent on our monetary resources.  Which leads me to…

• SPIRITUAL RECEPTIVITY:  As many of you have seen first-hand, there are many areas in Haiti where the people are clearly hungry for the gospel, and we’ve been blessed to share in close to 200 baptisms during the couple dozen trips we’ve made since 2011.

In case you’re wondering about this (because I certainly did):  I hate to admit it, but when I first started going to Haiti there was a jaded, cynical part of me that thought, “Would the people of Haiti respond to us differently if we went there and didn’t give anything to them, or do anything for them?”  (i.e., How much of their response to us was based on the expectation of getting something from us?  And once they realize they’re not going to get anything from us, would their response to us change?)

Since March of 2013 – on my 4^th trip to Haiti – I feel like I’ve repeatedly gotten a pretty convincing answer to that question.  That was when I started intentionally designing about half of our trips with a purely evangelistic agenda, with no real service or humanitarian component.  Part of our message that we started bringing to the people was that God cares about your physical circumstances – but he cares even more about your spiritual circumstances; God cares about what happens to you in this life – but he cares even more about what happens to you after this life is over.

And what I’ve discovered – and I think what all of us who have been to Haiti have discovered – is that even if you bring them absolutely nothing but your presence, your love, and the Word of God…

(Soon as I can get back to it, I’ll follow up with some thoughts re: that last – and most important – question:  “Is there anything we can do in Haiti that’s really going to matter?”)