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Advice to young pastors: When someone with a major media platform like Pat Roberston asserts that Haiti’s founders made a pact with the devil, we’re not supposed to just swallow the assertion whole.  It’s an extraordinary assertion, composed of four extraordinary necessities:  1.) that such a pact was actually made;  2.)  that those who made it were authorized to act on behalf of the entire nation;  3.) that it’s being made by those authorized to enter into such a pact actually bound Haiti spiritually for the next 200 years (at least); 4.) that it had anything whatsoever to do with the recent earthquake.   So far as I know, there’s no historical evidence that such a pact was made in the first place.  A Haitian pastor with the Church of God, Jean R. Gelin, Ph.D, did his homework and could  not come up with any credible historical source for the claim.  And that’s just the first first of the four necessities.   Why do we fall for these things?  
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You’ve already heard what he said: the earthquake in Haiti is the outworking of a spiritual, not a geologic history.  A supposed pact made with the devil around the time of Haiti’s birth as an independent nation. The wrong thing to say at the wrong time for so many reasons.  But let me just point out one of those reasons: laziness.  Robertson was cherry picking historical factoids.
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This is a guest post from Steve Hamilton, a young Vineyard pastor in Maryland who is  active in mobilizing the church to help the victims of human trafficking.  Steve hosts his own blog, verse by verse.

The pathos [sorrow, suffering, pity are synonyms] of God is on the prophet. It moves him. It breaks out in him like a storm in the soul, overwhelming his inner life, his thoughts, feelings, wishes and hopes. It takes possession of his heart, giving him courage to act.”

- Abraham Joshua Heschel

You know how when you are in a conversation with someone and stumble upon some topic that they are really into, and they start getting all passionate and animated, and it makes you take a step back and say “Okay…tell me how you really feel about that…”; well, I believe for God, that issue is justice or what we might more precisely call biblical justice.  Biblical justice is the more precise term that I prefer, mostly because it reflects the range of justice issues that I see God clearly and deeply cares about, as witnessed in scripture and in my own experience.  The issues of biblical justice are social, economic and environmental.  They are also intertwined and interconnected.
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