The Failure of African Voodoo, Western Materialism, and a Divided Gospel
What Haiti Needs to Escape Poverty
By Darrow L. Miller
The world has been swept up by the recent disaster in Haiti. The money being donated to reputable organizations is being used to bring needed medical aid, food, water, and temporary shelter. It will take hundreds of millions of dollars to provide life-saving help in the relief effort. But while material aid is an absolute necessity in response to this natural evil, we should not think that money alone is the sole solution to Haiti’s chronic problems.
It is reported that in recent years there have been 10,000 non-profit organizations of all shapes and sizes working in Haiti, amounting to one organization for every 1,000 Haitians. Also in recent years the world has continued to increase its aid to Haiti: $580 million in 2006, $702 million in 2007, and $912 million in 2008. In addition, the “Haitian Diaspora invests $2 billion per year in Haiti.” Despite all this work, Haiti is still chronically poor. Does no one ask why?
One of the world’s leading experts on poverty, Jeffrey Sachs, the author of The End of Poverty, does not ask “why?” He simply reverts to seeing more and more money as the solution, saying, in regard to Haiti: “One can imagine annual disbursements of $2 billion to $3 billion annually over the next five years.”
The act of pumping money into Haiti is based on the atheistic-materialistic assumption that when we in the West share our resources, poorer nations will be pulled out of poverty. However, it is clear that even with the money that has been pumped into Haiti, and the agencies working there, the country continues to be deeply impoverished. How can this be? I believe it is because most of the aid flowing into Haiti targets the symptoms of the problem -- namely, hunger, poverty, housing, and inadequacy of infrastructure -- instead of the root of the problem, which is a development-resistant culture.
Surviving Natural Evil
Some argue that if Haitians were evangelized and her people professing Christians, then her problems would be solved. However, the nation is already nominally Christian in profession, with roughly 80% being Catholic and 20% Protestant. But Haiti is still largely Voodoo in her worldview.
So while Haiti has been evangelized, a spiritual “experience” alone is not enough. If the people of Haiti profess Christ yet continue to think and function from an animistic or Voodoo paradigm, they will continue to languish in poverty and be woefully unprepared for future disasters.
The natural evil of floods, earthquakes, droughts, and tsunamis makes its way around the world often unpredictably. In 1989 a magnitude 7.0 earthquake struck the San Francisco Bay area, injuring thousands and leaving sixty-three people dead. The earthquakes in California and Haiti were of the same magnitude, striking major cities at approximately the same time of day.
What produced the discrepancy in destruction and death toll? It was a difference in worldview: The institutions, infrastructure, and habits of the heart of the people of the United States were influenced and ordered by the Judeo-Christian worldview, while those of Haiti were ordered by an animistic worldview. A nation’s mental infrastructure determines the quality of a society’s outward infrastructure. The development of a nation has more to do with moral and metaphysical capital than it does with physical capital.
Most international agencies function from a materialist paradigm, failing to see the non-material elements that contribute to a nation’s wealth or poverty; they view all problems as having only material causes and thus material solutions. But what if materialism is wrong? What if, in addition to the material world, there is development-resistant culture? Could there be a spiritual or metaphysical contribution to physical poverty that needs to be accounted for?
Let me be very clear that the earthquake was not God’s retribution to Haiti! God is not capricious. God loves nations. He has built an order into creation, which when discovered and followed, allows people and nations to flourish. When that order is denied or disobeyed, disorder in society follows. This disaster was a natural event. But it is the disorder in the soul of Haitian culture that has made it virtually impossible to prepare for or cope with such disasters.
Haiti "Desperately Cursed"?
It is unfortunate that Pat Robertson said that Haiti was “desperately cursed.” The comment was untimely and ill-toned. What Haiti needs in this moment is not condemnation, but empathy and compassion that manifests itself in an outpouring of money, medicine, food, water, and volunteers. Thankfully we are witnessing such a global outpouring of aid.
However, following any relief effort there needs to be a focus on rehabilitation and development. The international community, as it usually does, is beginning to pivot from relief aid to helping to restore Haiti to what she was before the earthquake. Here is where we need to think with our heads and not simply respond emotionally. We need to analyze with our minds why is it that, with all the billions of dollars in aid and the presence of 10,000 aid organizations, Haiti is so poor. Doing more of the same will not help Haiti. We need to begin to look at non-material cultural causes to Haiti’s enduring poverty.
Ideas do have consequences for good or ill. The actual root of material poverty is not lack of resources; rather, the root of poverty is bad ideas and bad ideals, which lead to a development-resistant culture. Bad ideas will leave a nation “desperately cursed.” A pact with Satan in the Haitian past, if it is true, will have consequences that are bad. The worship of Satan will leave a nation cursed.
The culture of a people is formed by what they worship, and their cult, as it were, determines the nature and strength of the social, economic, and political institutions of the society. Some cultures support the development and health of a nation, and some cultures are resistant to development, leading to the disintegration of society.
When Gods Are Capricious
Haiti’s culture is a product of worship derived from the polytheistic tribal religions of West Africa and specifically from Voodoo, which views the universe as capricious rather than orderly. When the gods are capricious, humans often respond by trying to placate them with gifts, which sets up a culture of bribery and corruption, feeding an attitude of hopelessness and despair. People seek simply to survive the droughts, earthquakes, or floods that the whims of the gods bring. What many journalists read as the tranquility of the Haitians in the midst of their suffering may be resignation and fatalism.
In contrast, Judeo-Christian theism understands that the universe is orderly. There are natural laws governing the physical universe which can be discovered through science and applied through technology to solve problems of hunger and poverty and to build infrastructure that will withstand earthquakes and limit the impact of flooding.
What Haiti needs is a new “cult,” as it were, the worship of the Creator God revealed through verifiable Scripture, and then the transformation of culture on the basis of liberating information given by the Creator for healing in a broken world. Unfortunately, the secular development industry wants to solve the problems of Haiti without a metaphysical component, as if man lives by material bread alone. And, sadly, many Christian missionaries have brought a divided gospel to save souls out of this world for heaven, instead of a gospel of the kingdom that would bring hope to Haitians in life today, as well as in eternity.
As has been previously noted, a people’s cult -- worship -- produces culture, from which the institutions and structures of society are formed. All authorities rule through laws and ordinances. God governs the universe through his laws and ordinances, so when nations found their societies upon God’s laws, what follows is growing justice, freedom, community health, and prosperity.
A Framework for Life
We must weep at the plight of the Haitians today and give generously of time, talent, and treasure to help with the aid effort. But while the earthquake was the trigger of the destruction in Haiti, the extent of the physical devastation and loss of life is rooted in a faulty worldview.
The Biblical order creates a framework for increased life, health, bounty, and ability to plan for and withstand the bitter destruction of natural disasters. The church has been instituted by God to be the primary transformative change agent in society, the instrument of kingdom culture bringing truth, beauty, and goodness to societies. We have seen the church function in this capacity at times in history.
What Haiti will need as she pivots to rehabilitation and development is a transformed culture -- a wealth-creating, justice-creating, and freedom-creating culture.
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Darrow Miller is co-founder of Disciple Nations Alliance and author of Discipling Nations: The Power of Truth to Transform Cultures. Thanks to Mandie Miller for editorial work prior to final submission. For media interviews or general inquiries, please email info@disciplenations.org or call 602-386-4560.
