The following is a blog post from my Haiti mission chum, Darren Tyler
Donor nations from the United Nations recently pledged $5.3 Billion Dollars to aid Haiti in the rebuilding of their nation. This number does not include the Billions already given. It also does not include the $3 Billion that was donated by the US alone up until the day before the quake.
If you’ve been to Haiti before the quake, you perhaps would ask the questions I would ask. For instance, where on earth did $3B dollars go? Certainly not on the road system or infrastructure. In a nation that reports somewhere around ¾ unemployment it’s not in creating jobs. There aren’t enough toilets to have flushed it down. What on earth went wrong?
Paul warned Timothy that the love of money is the root of evil. When Jesus said a man can’t serve two masters, He didn’t say that you can’t serve God and Satan. Instead he set up the juxtaposition between God and mammon or money. When God refers to the subject of money, it’s not so much that it’s a sin, rather it’s that it’s very dangerous.
Maybe it should come as no surprise that us throwing this thing that God warns us to be careful about has caused more problems than solutions. Hang with me here.
Jesus did say to give to the poor. In fact the Bible talks about it over and over again. Hundreds of times God asks us to serve the poor, the oppressed, the marginalized the orphan, the widow. Often times when it records this, it says to do so through our giving. In Matthew 19, Jesus told the rich man to sell all he had and give it to the poor. So how do we reconcile the problem with our rich nation giving to this poor nation with seemingly no tangible benefit.