Haiti - the Love of God

Response to the earthquake ranges from a wave of compassion to Pat Robertson's theological argument that a comparison of the fortunes of the Domincan Republic and Haiti can be explained by a voudou ceremony 200 years ago. Pat has made similar arguments before and it is all too easy to dismiss his rants. In fact, Pat is emblematic of the Prosperity Gospel heard every Sunday in thousands of Christian churches. Can both be right?

The Prosperity Gospel is but one contradiction among a host of others. Clearly much (perhaps all) dogma is a human invention. The same rational argument can be applied between religions in general and within religions in particular. Volumes have been written, enough to drain oceans of ink, but the matter reduces to compassion vs. judgment, or from another view, practice vs. theory.

Judgment as applied, is a human invention. No manner of bowing or kneeling or praying or reading or preaching alters that fact. But if the social Darwinists are correct, compassion, as practice, is divine. Compassion does not fit the paradigm of the survival of the fittest.

In the words of St. John and St Paul, "I get by with a little help from my friends".