I was recently reading a book by Donald Miller that suggested that there were two kinds of people out there.  There were those that spent their time thinking about “how” to get things done and then there were those that looked at why things happen.  The “how” people looked at the world from the perspective of “how to get a job, how to find a husband or wife, how to start a family, etc.”  And then there were those that focused on the “whys” of life.  Instead of just doing things, the people that ask why try to find the meaning behind the pursuit.  As he mentioned, if we know why, then we will know if it is even worth the pursuit.  But it is the why questions that cause sleepless nights.  Essentially because many “why” questions are unknowable, so they fall by the wayside in a sea of other questions that make us wonder, ultimately about the value of ourselves and moreover the breadth and depth of the universe.

This was me as I thought about the recent events in Haiti.  For me the question isn’t how an earthquake can level a city and leave hundreds of thousands of people homeless…or dead.  The question in my mind ultimately races to why?  Or why Pat Robertson is an idiot for presuming that God’s wrath would level a poor and destitute country.  Because it was his statements that made me question my affiliation with a religion and maybe even the American Church or a culture that tries to so easily place meaning on such devastation as some sort of divine manifestation of vengeance.  Please, Mister Robertson, you do not speak for all of Christianity.  Nor does your podium allow for such irresponsible presumptions about God.  Unfortunately, that’s also one of the other dangers of being a “why” person.  Sometimes it’s too easy to make presumptions that wrath could be poured out on the third world as a justification for the need for reverence.   I honestly don’t presume and do not dare make the same leap to speak for God because I think that God is alive and well and can fully speak for himself, should God desire.  So please, Mister Robertson, respectfully, shut up.

I am currently in San Diego, where the whys of life seem to haunt me given the recent events on the news.  Ironically I’m asking the why questions in a city that has the best weather anyone could ask for.  It’s a city that seems like it’s perpetually 72 and sunny with a chance of almost no changes in the foreseeable forecast.  It’s a beautiful city completely opposite of Haiti.  It’s a city where even the homeless seem as laidback as the unchanging weather.  As I walk through downtown, I can’t help but notice that it appears like the homeless seem to soak in the atmosphere while asking for change. They almost seem like tourists themselves begging in relative safety.  Strangely, I know that they don’t ask the why questions.  They don’t look at themselves as fortunate the way that I do.  As I pass one I think, why are they so lucky to be homeless where there’s so much beauty? There are people dying today.

I guess it bothers me that unless you watch the news or read what is written on the internet, walking around the city of San Diego (and maybe any city not touched by disaster), there’s almost nothing that would suggest that something bad could happen.  What happened is only for the people out there somewhere far away.  Why didn’t disaster strike here?  I don’t know.  I think that disaster often comes with unknowable answers, despite Pat Robertson’s claims.  So maybe as I walked around trying to think of what I would write about, maybe I needed to know that Haiti was far away.  Maybe I needed to know that there was such a thing as being lucky – of being fortunate – of being thankful without knowing why.  No doubt it was I that needed to know that trouble was far away.  And that it was I that was as removed and possibly immune from death – maybe even trying to steal wisdom from homeless in San Diego who no doubt do not likely ask why, but how?  How could they not on a sunny day that made no demands of them?

Over 100,000 dead?  It seems so unreal.  It seems so far beyond a why question.  It just seems to scream that there are questions that cannot ever be answered with such easy prepackaged and gut responses based upon notions that we understand all there could be to understand about our universe.  Hell, we can’t even truly answer how we came to be much less why?  And it’s because of this, I will likely lie awake and continue to wonder not about disasters, but how anyone could presume anything without extending our values of compassion, of love and extending support that eventually (and hopefully) breeds hope.  Isn’t that really the bottom line anyway?  The people of Haiti need to know that there is a world (no matter how far away) that is willing to be God to them.  Especially and in spite of anything a televangelist might stupidly say.

by Paul Stamat