A personal or global tragedy always presents an opportunity for believers and non-believers to attack the grace, love, and very notion of God. Haiti was no different.

In the hours following the disaster in Haiti, everyone knows the terrible, seemingly inhumane things Pat Robertson said. Of course we also know the response he was given, and as a result of the words he spoke the picture that was painted of most Christians. It presented itself as yet another opportunity for the faithless to attack those that believe. We were all clumped in with the radicals and immediately written off as crazy.

Aside from the Robertson flub, the days following Haiti also allowed plenty of opportunity for people to question the mercy of God Himself. Here is an article (click the link in the headline of this post) that is exactly what I’m talking about. It’s an Op-Ed piece from my favorite newspaper, one of the leading papers in the world, the New York Times. The following quote pretty much sums up the entire article:

A survivor’s gratitude is combined with theological fatalism. This response is entirely understandable, uttered in a ruined landscape beyond the experience of most of us, and a likely source of pastoral comfort to the bishop’s desperate flock. But that should not obscure the fact that it is little more than a piece of helpless mystification, a contradictory cry of optimistic despair.

Here the author is basically stating that it is in their opinion, praying in a time of disaster or invoking God in any way with any relation to the subject is basically pointless. It is a piece of “helpless mystification.”

My God and my faith are no myth. What about yours?