Havoc and helping hands in Haiti

Four weeks have passed since the earthquake that rocked and ravaged the entire country of Haiti. Throughout that time we have had ample opportunity to observe two radically different forces at play amidst the debris and temporary shelters.

When the first images depicting the massive destruction and human misery arrived, even the most resilient and impregnable probably felt at least a tiny drop of sympathy for the helpless victims. Some soon surrendered their urge to help to apathy and shock, but a host of governments and private organisations responded in such a decisive way as to prove, once again, that when other members of the human race suffer, we rush to obey the deeply entrenched instinct to aid our 'brothers and sisters'.

However badly the relief efforts have been organized and coordinated, it's still my judgmnent that the insufficient quantities of food, medicine and clothing that have been sent to the earthquake victims, testfy almost triumphantly to the fact that our God-given drive to reach out to the destitute cannot be eradicated. Evolutionists cannot explain why our consciousnesses haven't been dulled to the point where they no longer react to the misfortunes that are not our own. We still haven't sunk to the level of absolute indifference in the face of raw, horrifying suffering. When we see the helpless child, we do not walk away. We stoop down to pick her up.

Haiti has seen the darker side of the human heart as well. Instead of receiving a helping hand from sympathetic adults, children have experienced grown-ups who have stolen their desperately needed crumbs of bread. Women have been molested,and their children have been cynically sold off to the highest bidder, probably to end up as slaves or child prostitutes somewhere else. Our capacity for cruelty towards the helpless knows no bounds, it seems, and it times of desperate crisis utter selfishness sometimes, sadly, prevails over altruism - over the love of our fellow man that the Lord Jesus commends and requires from us.

Haiti and Haitians will still, hopefully, be made to feel the effects of the kind of prolonged and targeted aid that makes us stand out from the rest of God's wonderful creations: unlike the calloused, savage predators of the animal kingdom, humans won't always tolerate the slow death of the sufferer of nature's whims. The Creator still stirs us to action on behalf of those who cannot stay alive alone.