The headlines from Haiti in 2024 have been unremittingly bleak, but even by those standards, this week’s gang-led massacre of 184 elderly people in the nation’s worst slum stands out for its senselessness and wanton cruelty. A few days ago, a gang leader ordered the massacre after consulting a voodoo priest about his son, who was deathly ill and would eventually die of his illness. Apparently, the priest told the gang leader that elderly people in the slum had cast a curse on the boy. In reprisal, the gang leader sent out henchmen who dragged dozens of people over the age of 60 from their homes, killed them in the street with guns or machetes and burned their corpses.
While it isn’t politically correct to say so, it should be clear from this story that Haiti’s current gang-led dysfunction is directly linked to the spiritual darkness that dominates a large percentage of the population. After decades in Haiti, we can confirm that attribution of what Westerners would tend to think of as random events to spiritual causes is quite common. Although it is tempting to write off such thinking as primitive superstition, the Bible teaches that the spirit world is real and can interact with the physical world in ways that include causing illness and death. The Bible does not differ with Voodoo on whether darkness has power but on whether darkness will have the last word. Scripture teaches us that Christ conquered darkness once and for all through his death and resurrection, bringing life and immortality to light through the Gospel.
The appeal of Voodoo to its devotees is that it offers the opportunity to leverage spiritual power for temporary gain. Most Voodooists are aware that there will eventually be a price to pay, but they usually want something so badly that they make the bargain anyway. A few years ago, a friend of mine shared the Gospel with a woman who had come to the beach to make a sacrifice and throw a curse. “I’ll come to the Lord one day,” she told him. “Right now, I just want to kill the person who hurt me, though. Jesus won’t do that for me. Jesus will tell me to love my enemy.” This mindset, in which hatred always has the last word, has directly contributed to the current state of affairs.
Over the last several years, we have often wondered why the Lord has allowed so much suffering, from which the righteous have not been exempt. Perhaps the answer is found in the words of C.S. Lewis, penned during the Second World War: “God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.” Perhaps the current convulsions are for the nation’s healing because there is no future for a Haiti dominated by voodoo. Join us in praying that the love of power would be overcome by the power of Christ’s love.
Rehoboth Ministries 
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