In God's name

With more than a million homeless as the rainy season approaches, Haiti might just be slipping back onto the front page of the daily drivel. Moreover, it is certain that those rains will come and it is certain that an already tormented people will suffer further agony. Nevertheless, another story, one where some academic caution is necessary, on Haiti also caught my eye and my attention turned to the ten US baptists who were caught trying to smuggle 33 Haitian children out of the country. They contend that  they were trying to fulfill their God-given mission of helping the children "find new life in Christ" and we might want to doubt, if not divine motivation of their mission, at least the "good" that our misplaced, culturally insensitive bible bashers would have achieved had they been successful.

Apart from the fact that many of the children had loving, albeit desperately poor and struggling, parents, there is something else to be considered here. Namely, the borderless arrogance and ignorance demonstrated by a group of people from that very same section of the "God Squad" that believes in the, rapture, in the "End Days", in actually thinking that they are better fitted to look after children than the children's natural parents are. No the human touch would have seen the Americans offering the parents assistance instead of taking their children away from them. Unfortunately, because this was not forthcoming we have in fact further proof that the world inhabited by our bible bashing baptists is every bit as at unhealthy as the world those children find themselves in after the earthquake and before the rains. Of course, the "divine" nature of the mission always meant that there never could be that type of humanistic altruistic gesture that makes the world a better place.