Si Dye Vle

Yesterday we had a meeting to discuss patients/the clinics, etc. Although I had some trouble keeping up, as it was conducted in Kreyol/French, I had friends around me who would periodically bring me back up to speed on the meeting. Basically, there was a big argument about how more and more patients are stopping their drugs and saying that God will heal them. Apparently, they were saying more and more patients are responding during counseling with “If I get HIV that is OK, it must be from God.” There was a heated discussion about why this attitude is becoming more and more prevalent. Some were saying that the more missionaries and others teach the power of prayer and the almighty power of God, the more people think that is that answer to their HIV, not the medicine. Whether or not this attitude is stronger because of missionaries or because of local church authorities is hard to say. But it was the same attitude I faced when in the STI clinic – women having husbands with multiple partners and feeling that whatever God wants will happen. Doesn’t matter if that is HIV, death, etc. One can’t help but wonder if this is the attitude one must adapt when life is full of circumstances that are as harsh as here, regardless of what these people do. Stay in school, study, work hard. And yet at best you get a job which brings little fulfillment and little opportunity. Most people are unemployed, half cannot read, and those that have jobs have very little room to advance. So it must be God’s will. God’s will that you endure these circumstances, at least until the afterlife. Most sentences about the future in Haiti are ended with “Si Dye vle”. This literally means “if God wants” or really “God willing.” So they don’t say “N'a we demen” (see you tomorrow), they say “N’a we demen, si Dye vle.” (see you tomorrow, God willing).

From a healthcare perspective this is a disaster. Imagine if your dad was having a heart attack and rather than rush him to the ER to open a coronary artery you sat around him and prayed instead. Imagine your three-month old is vomiting and has diarrhea and rather than calling your Dr. or getting him to a hospital or trying to get fluids in him you sat around and prayed. Unfortunately, prayer won’t get fluid into your blood vessels. Prayer won’t open an occluded coronary artery. Otherwise medical care would be very different. In fact, many people have tried to “study” the effect of prayer on medical outcomes. While there are some studies suggesting that the psychology of prayer is complex (i.e. some people do worse when they know they’re being prayed for, etc), nothing suggests that prayer in any medical sense “works”.

I once was in a discussion and the following was posed. If prayer does work in a medical setting as so many espouse that it does, then the test for this is simple. (Bear in mind that the value of prayer as part of meditation or culture or ritual is very different than “does it work?” The test for “does it work” is simple – pray for someone to be healed. Then look- did it work, were they healed?) There are many things in medicine we do not understand. Some cancers spontaneously go into remission. Some patients respond to certain medicine regimes while others do not. Many times a patient's remitting cancer will be credited to God or a higher power. The truth is we just don’t understand cancer. At all. It doesn’t take much to look back over recent history and see that all too often when we don’t yet understand a natural phenomenon we attribute it to "God". We do know that God doesn’t make dirty water clean; boiling it does. God doesn’t reset broken bones; orthopedics putting them in casts do. God doesn’t kill syphilis, penicillin does. But things we don’t fully understand yet, that are too vague, are attributed to God. Imagine how strange it will be in 50 years when medicine IS personalized, and we understand why people with certain genetic profiles do and do not respond to certain medicines. This work is already being done across the US at major medical centers.

To get back to the point, the test is simple. If prayer works, then pray for tangible results in a medical area we understand. Take a cohort of patients that have had limbs amputated. Then have groups pray for them to regenerate new limbs. Then see how much/if regeneration happens. If regeneration occurs, prayer works. Most people would say this is not possible; limbs cannot regenerate. But indeed, in other species limbs can regenerate. But no one would do this study. Why not? We like our religion and convictions too much to put them in a situation in which we know they will fail. And if you think prayer would work for this, then let's do the study. Perhaps you'd think "do not put the lord your God to the test". But then this begs the question, if earnest prayer from a believer could result in easing suffering in this world, what type of God would refuse this because he didn't want to be "put to the test"?

If this characterizes a God that exists then we should be frightened. He knows our suffering, he hears our pleas. Many believe he created this all, including the laws of the universe. So now we have a system that was created in which people suffer and their pleas are not answered; it's as if there was no other way to do this.

If you were God, would you create a system in which the large majority of people in your creation would spend their existence in eternal torment and suffering? Would you really choose to damn people for eternity because they were born into a different belief system? A belief system in which many of the themes are the same - help each other, love your neighbor. Would you damn these people that you allowed to be born into loving families and cultures that provided JUST as much evidence for truth as what was true according to you? Would you really provide so little evidence that your truth was the right way and then damn so many people to eternal suffering?

If this is the type of God you would be, I'd like you to meet those people from other cultures, look them in the eye, and tell them that despite their earnest seeking, loving hearts, and promotion of love in this world, you will be damning them to eternal suffering.

My hope is that you would be a better God than that, si Dye vle.