Inevitably, the idea of “an angry god” has been injected into the stories coming out of the earthquake-ravaged Haiti.
In a short piece out of Port-au-Prince Pooja Bhatia, a fellow at the Institute of Current World Affairs, says among other things: “If God exists, he’s really got it in for Haiti. Haitians think so, too. Zed, a housekeeper in my apartment complex, said God was angry at sinners around the world, but especially in Haiti. Zed said the quake had fortified her faith, and that she understood it as divine retribution.”
Decency demands that one refrain from weighing in as the people of a country so profoundly wounded find different ways to rationalize and heal themselves. However, calling it “divine retribution” is nothing more than a case of mystifying self-loathing. The movement of the earth’s crust is neither divine nor retributive. It is purely geophysical.
For a fellow at Institute of Current World Affairs to say that, “If God exists, he’s really got it in for Haiti” or even “Perhaps a God who hides is better than nothing” is endorsing the absurd argument that somehow the Haitians had it coming.
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