Sunday, April 25, 2010

Haiti I

I'm supposed to start this with a disclaimer: The opinions expressed on this blog are purely those of myself. In no way, shape or form does this necessarily align with the opinions of my traveling companion at all - he'd just like to make that clear. :)

En route, it became increasingly obvious that there were many other aid workers of various stripes heading down to Haiti. One thing I must mention, however: there were certainly a ton of the evangelical kind. Which, of course, in and of itself is not a bad thing, seeing as I'm one of those myself. What I could not abide, however, was how blatantly obvious that they were: T-shirts blaring "missionary", or "God is coming to Haiti", or "Christian mission" - all of them in gaggles wearing the same tribal colours to self-identify themselves.
These types of Christians creep me out. To me, it denotes utter lack of humility and wisdom; who says that one group or another has the monopoly on deciding who gets to bring God to town??? Would they even have the gall to wear such kind of gear if they were going to such places as China or Saudi Arabia?? I would hope and pray not. However, if bearing that bare minimum of knowledge of cross-cultural sensitivity, you'd persist with that kind of behaviour just because it's Haiti, that shows a breathtaking amount of cultural arrogance....

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