Sermon 3?

I think it needs to be stated clearly: saying Pat Robertson is Christian may be blasphemy.

To start off, the people of Haiti (a nation that is 80% Roman Catholic, I believe) have experienced a horrible tragedy. The capital city of Port-au-Prince essentially was leveled by a earthquake measuring 7.0 on the Richter scale. Preliminary estimates are that over 100,000 people were killed. In short, this is one of the worst natural tragedies ever to occur in the western hemisphere. (Well, in human history, anyway. There was that big piece of space debris that crashed near the Yucatan Peninsula about 65 million years ago.)

Now, most scientists will tell you that the earthquake resulted from sort of geological phenomenon (I think this one is tectonic activity, but I'm not sure). However, Pat Robertson, in his infinite wisdom, knows the true cause: at the beginning of the nineteenth century, the Haitians sold their souls to Satan to overthrow the French.

To begin with, I would like to know the source providing evidence to this claim. I highly doubt Haitians proclaim that they got their independence because they sold out to Satan. If the source is the French who were overthrown, we may need to consider the source carefully.

But, for the sake of argument, let's say the Haitians of 1804 did sell their souls to Satan for independence. I'm going to go out on a limb and say they are all dead now. I think I would have heard if someone was over 200 years old. But what does that mean in regards to the Haitians alive in 2010? Well, they didn't sell their souls to Satan. Now, yes, the Bible does say that God reserves the right to visit punishments to the third and fourth generations, as opposed to visiting goodness to the thousandth generation of offspring of the righteous (Exodus 34:7--there is also much to be expanded upon here, and if I were giving this as a sermon, I would), but today's Haitians are well past that fourth generation mark. So already, Robertson's conjecture is running into trouble with the Scriptures. And don't forget the story of the city of Nineveh, that had essentially sold out to the devil, but repented when judgment was pronounced by Jonah and was spared by God (the Scriptural source for this is obvious).

Since we have this trouble of finding support in the Scriptures for Robertson's conjecture, may I propose a hypothesis that has backing of Scripture: sometimes bad things happen to the righteous? The Scriptural basis is a good portion of Acts and the entirety of Job. Bad things happen to good people. Peter was jailed, both Peter and Paul were executed by the authorities in Rome. Oh, and I don't think that Jesus guy did anything wrong at all. Yet he was beaten, bloodied, and nailed to a cross.

Going back to the religious demographics, we see that four out of five Haitians are Roman Catholic. That means the vast majority of the population is Christian. So they have been reconciled to God. Thus, Satan no longer has claim to their souls. Maybe Robertson should focus on that. You know, the power of the Crucifixion in reconciling the world to God? There is one potential problem, though: they are Roman Catholic. We know how some evangelical "ministers" believe the Catholic Church is Satan incarnate (*cough* Hagee *cough*).

So, how about we focus on what Christ would call us to do here: help those in need through this disaster? You know, feed the hungry, shelter the homeless, clothe the naked, care for the sick, etc.? After all, these are the things for which God is going to call us to account on Judgment Day. So let's focus on taking care of that piece of business, and let God worry about who actually sold their souls to Satan. In a way, we all kind of sell our souls when we sin. But the key part of Christianity is that our souls can be redeemed by accepting Christ. So faith in Christ kind of makes the entirety of Robertson's argument moot.

Actually, Robertson's behavior reminds me of the priest and Levite from the parable of the Good Samaritan. Let us heed instead the actions of the Samaritan in this tragedy as Christ calls us to "Go, and do likewise" (Luke 10:37).

Okay, argument over. Well, should I need to come up with a sermon quickly, I may have a good starting point.