With each click of my mouse, my heart sinks further.
Each picture with its own take of ruin and destruction. Limbs hanging off of mattresses, topped by cement. Limp hands peaking through rubble. And the aftershocks still come. Saturday, the aftershock was a 4.5. Refugee camps and homeless men, women, boys and girls plaster my screen. Food is trickling to these resilient people, yet challenges remain.
News broadcasters are in Haiti, bringing us back news of human suffering. But what can they say - there are no words. Everybody seems, to borrow from a Haitian, “numb with pain.” That is - everybody except for some folks, hundreds of miles away, looking on from behind their plush surroundings and comfortable microphones, ready to link disaster to money and speculation.
For me, it’s sickening. The way that a natural disaster is distorted for personal gain. Before the news has had an opportunity to sink into our hearts - before we can wrap our minds around the magnitude of the need and destruction - before we can get a reasonable estimate of the number dead and injured, there were radio hosts talking about how much money the US already gives to Haiti; undiscerning religious leaders crying that Haiti is a cursed nation; credit card companies ready to take a profit from charitable giving and fake internet sites ready to misdirect your charity into their pockets. When will we learn that money is not security?
Yet, this is the world that we live in. As I think about it, it makes me even more heartsick. We are a wealthy nation, founded on Christian principles. But we are a sick nation. Sick with the love of money; chained in some sense, to our own distorted view of right and wrong.
It’s time for a change.
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