I’ve written before about my friend Dr. Vilmer Paul, pastor in Haiti and also administrator of a large school. Vilmer also is one of my “Unsung Heroes,” as I wrote on July 14, 2019. Vilmer has written an article about the recent assassination of the Haitian President. I encourage you to read it in its entirety to see the challenges Haitians face. Here’s a sample:

• 4 million tons of trees are cut each year but only 500,000 tons are replanted. The results are clear: Haiti has only 1.5% forest cover
• 13 households out of 14 have to carry the water they use. However, thanks to the rain, Haiti receives 560 times the water needs of the population
• Haiti produces the least waste per capita of the whole area (0.70 kg per person per day), compared to 1.26 kg in the Dominican Republic and 2.04 kg for the United States. Haiti is however the most unhealthy country in the whole zone because we only collect 11% of our garbage, compared to 60% for the Dominican Republic and 76% for Jamaica.
• Every night, 8 million of our compatriots sleep in the dark, without electricity
• 5 million of us can not read or write and are in the dark, day and night
• 8 out of 10 Haitians live on less than US $ 2 a day (9 out of 10 in rural areas)

Vilmer points out that a very few of their leaders, including the one just assassinated, were trying to do something about this. Trying to help the masses rather than the wealthy few. But then they are martyred. Then he asks: what is the church’s response? How shall we live? Here is his conclusion:

For some church leaders, the church should be jumped right in politics to solve the problem.

For some others the church should be separated completely from politics to not be empoisoned by its venom.

But Jesus doesn’t say any of these in those ways. This is what he says:

“May we, the Church be light in this world, be the salt of this world” (Matt 5:15-16) in other terms, be the influencer of this world.

I am and until I go to the grave attached to Christ’s word. God’s people should be the influencers by being, acting, saying, doing, and managing things differently, in the depraved, decayed, and selfish society. I mean, being in politics if one is not light and salt, the situation becomes worse, be separated from politics has nothing good in itself if one is still not light and salt. It is time that Pastors, deacons, believers stop being involved in so much corruption and impurity of life among my fellow brothers and sisters.  Let’s give another image of Christ to our society, it is time, it is our role.

If Our Haitian church played his role as it should have been, we probably would not have seen so much drama before our face.

The Apostle Peter would agree, and I would add: pray for our brothers in Haiti.

But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul. Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation. (1 Peter 2.9 – 12, ESV)