Mirror of Justice

Thanks, Rob, for that link to the post on Pat Robertson at Get Religion.  It does, as you say, provide useful context---context that the author rightly says should be mentioned by people reporting Rev. Robertson's remarks.

I do not know if others who have viewed the video clip perceive it as I do, but among the things that struck me was Robertson's evident sincerity.  In this case, at least, I don't think he was being a showman.  He seems to really believe in the "curse" and the legend of the "pact with the devil."  Moreover, I didn't perceive any rancor toward the people of Haiti in his tone.  On the contrary, he seemed sincere in asking for prayers and financial support for them.  There was no suggestion of glee that the Haitians were "getting what they deserved," or anything like that.  Belief in the "curse" sure seems wacky to me, but there it is.

This business calls to mind something I saw a few years ago in a documentary film about French peasants who, at enormous risk to themselves and their families, hid and rescued Jewish children during the Vichy years.  A simple farm couple who had saved many children were asked by an interviewer why the catastrophe of the Holocaust had fallen on the Jews.  It was, they said, because the Jews had rejected Christ.  Like every other viewer, I suspect, I was stunned that people who had behaved so heroically toward Jewish victims could have believed such a thing.  The interviewer then asked why they had risked their own lives to save Jewish victims.  It was, the wife (if I recall correctly) said, because the children were in grave danger.  And, the husband added, the Jews are God's chosen people.  Gosh, the world is a complicated place, is it not?

Another issue that Robertson's remarks brought to mind is the question of when, if ever, it is appropriate to speculate about whether a catastrophe represents the judgment of God upon a people.  My first impulse is to say, "never."  Yes, yes, I know the Bible is filled with stories of catastrophes that represent the judgments of God, but (assuming that what Judaism and Christianity teach about biblical inspiration is true) it is one thing for an inspired writer to report that a catastrophe is a divine judgment; it is quite another thing for those of us who are not inspired to speculate on such matters.  But then I recall the most profound speech in our national history---Lincoln's second inaugural address.  Despite the familiarity of Lincolns words, they never lose the power to move:

"Woe unto the world because of offences! for it must needs be that offences come; but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh!" If we shall suppose that American Slavery is one of those offences which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South, this terrible war, as the woe due to those by whom the offence came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a Living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope--fervently do we pray--that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue, until all the wealth piled by the bond-man's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord, are true and righteous altogether."

What are we to make of that?  I have no answer.

The brilliant historian of American slavery Eugene Genovese gave some lectures a few years ago that were published as a book entitled A Consuming Fire:  The Fall of the Confederacy in the Mind of the White Christian South.  Genovese asked the question, how did Christian supporters of secession account for the defeat of the Confederacy?  He looked at sermons preached in southern churches after the civil war for the answer.  He suspected that the preachers would see the defeat as a divine judgment on the South, but what sin would it be a judgment upon?  Slavery?  Or something else?  Genovese found that preachers indeed viewed the defeat of the South in Old Testament terms.  Lincoln was presented in many sermons as the equivalent of a Persian tyrant who was used by God to execute chastening judgment upon God's people for their sins and waywardness.  The sin of which the South was guilty, though, was not slavery, as the preachers saw it.  They continued to insist that slavery was sanctioned by the Bible.  Rather, the southerners were guilty of practicing slavery in an unChristian manner.  In particular, the southern slave system deprived the slaves of access to the saving Word of God (by denying them literacy), and it encouraged sexual immorality by, among other things, not upholding marriage among the slaves and by permitting slave families to be separated.