Nathan Brown's piece in the Adventist News Network entitled "A Deeper Response to a Deeper Disaster" is laudable for its critique of the armchair theology attributing Haiti's earthquake disaster as necessarily due to God's judgment; however, the essay is nauseatingly self serving it how it uses the topic of Haiti's disaster and poverty as a self righteous self congratulation of the Adventist Church's imperial, unchristian, and partisan efforts; efforts which are undertaken outside of America, under the pretext of "fighting poverty".  I wonder if Mr. Brown would have waxed so elegant in the need to fight poverty if the subject was New Orleans, rather than Haiti.  In reading Mr. Brown's piece, one gets the subtle impression that the piece is exploiting the issue of poverty for some nefarious agenda, such as justification of situational ethics or the Adventist Church's support and propping up of puppets under the pretext of "fighting poverty".  
    The Adventist Church has attempted to shore up the moral standing of Adra workers implicated in the Rwanda Genocide by continuing to employ these workers as Adra workers who purportedly are concerned with "fighting poverty" in non-American locations.
    [What the Church has failed to mention is Adra's own spotty record with transparent and ethical usage of US Taxpayers' dollars. Click here to read.]  According to this link here, former ADRA administrator Floyd Murdock has stated that ADRA sometimes mislead governments and double billed for the same projects in order to garner as much money as possible.   The question is asked in the article, "Is everything in the church for rent or sale?"
    I agree with Brown, that the Adventists and others professing Christianity, should be offering Haiti Christian compassion and grace, rather than a graceless condemnation.
    Haiti deserves the world's help because of the sheer tragedy of the natural disaster that befell it.
    I don't know if the earthquake that befell Haiti was God's judgment against Haiti for voodoo worship that allegedly occurs in the country. I do note that the bible has recorded God's judgment upon peoples and nations for all sorts of crimes, such as fornication, idol worship, and pagan religions. I also know that the bible says in Mathew 5, verse 45, that God makes the sun "to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust."  What I find objectionable, is that Adventists would single out the people of Haiti and/or New Orleans as exemplars of extreme evil, while failing to suggest  that the Wall Street Bankers who've caused the current economic crisis with their Greed, or an ex-President who failed to enforce gender civil rights laws, etc. are evil.  Why would God punish Haiti and New Orleans, but not other places in America, England, or France that are riven with gross sins?
      Steve Wohlberg, an Adventist and director of Whitehorse Media (according to Spectrum Magazine), has recently claimed that New Orleans and Haiti were visited by natural disasters because of these places allegedly being consumed with some of the grossest forms of immorality.  In my opinion, Mr. Wohlberg's Haiti remarks imply that those parts of America spared natural disasters are relatively free of the grossest forms of immorality.  Mr. Wohlberg's comments about Haiti and New Orleans rank sins, and subtly perpetuate the point of view that, for example, Wall Street greed, sexism, and tribalism, and partisan exploitation of Christianity, are not as immoral as those sins allegedly practiced in Haiti and New Orleans.
    Wohlberg's comment about Haiti and New Orleans reminded me of the fact that many people like Mr. Wohlberg including many Adventists, think of themselves in self congratulatory terms.  This is evident by the number of Adventists posting comments at Adventist Today, who defended Wohlberg's unchristian comments.  Steven Wohlberg's type of condescension against North American peoples such as the Haitians is accepted as justified and normal within many Adventist circles.  The Adventist Church especially seems to be filled with people like Wohlberg,  Pat Robertson, and the Ugandan Adventist Conference Leader who voiced support for legislation in his country showing a lack of grace for homosexuals, (even as heterosexual promiscuity  continues to be the predominant vector of HIV/AIDS in his country). In my opinion, these are people who are confident of their own supposed righteousness and yet express condescension against others.  Luke 18:9-14 seems to have been especially written for the Steven Wohlbergs, Pat Robertsons, and th Ugandan Adventist Conference Leader, when it says:  " To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everybody else, Jesus told this parable: "Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood up and prayed about himself: 'God, I thank you that I am not like other men—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector.  fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.  But the tax collector stood at a distance.  He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, 'God, have mercy on me, a sinner.'  I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God.  For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted." It is interesting how Steven Wohlberg and Pat Robertson seem reluctant to pontificate on whether or not  America's current economic malaise among the masses is attributable to the commission of the grossest of sins.  It is almost as if Steven Wohlberg and Pat Robertson are insinuating that God has given his divine blessing to the sins committed in the course of the birth of some rich nations by blessing these rich nations with prosperity in "spite of" or because of their sins.  But Steven Wohlberg and Pat Robertson's comments about Haiti, distort God's long suffering. 

  Last week's Adventist Sabbath School Quarterly Lesson was about patience and stated that:  "But when we study the history of God's long suffering, it becomes evident that His patience was not for a day, a week, or even a year. Often generations would pass before His long suffering would be exhausted, which, of course, is not an option open to us."  Steven Wohlberg, Pat Robertson and the Adventists rallying behind these men's anti-Haiti comments,  have interpreted the prosperity of many rich nations, and relative absence of natural disasters on the scale of that which befell Haiti, as God's favor and approval of these nations's sins.  They have ignored the possibility that generations could pass before God's long suffering and patience are exhausted with respect to a family, or a nation-state.  
    Will Steven Wohlberg, Pat Robertson and their Adventist supporters revel in triumphalist hubris and smugness, if China, which is relatively an atheistic communist nation, supplants America as the World's economic and technological superpower, because of the obstructive poisonousness of congressional partisanship?  Will they be able to correlate China's rise, with China's choice of religion? Pat Robertson's comments also subtly imply that Haiti won the disfavor of God by trying to emerge from under the "heel of the French."  Robertson alleges that Haitians made a voodoo pact with the devil in a bid to overthrow the French, but there is no evidence of this wild claim.
    The problem with Adventism is that it is filled with too many people who are confident of their own presumed righteousness and yet perpetuate an ungodly, and ugly condescension towards peoples in the Northern Hemisphere like those found in Haiti or New Orleans.
    When Steven Wohlberg postulates Haiti and New Orleans as the grossest exemplars of immorality, but fails to put the likes of Bernie Madoff in the same category, one begins to wonder if Steven Wohlberg is judging people, but not on the content of their character.
    When Michael Jackson is the only person stated to be immoral on an Adventist Lawyers' Website (click here),  yet no mention is made of the gross immorality of Bernie Maddoff, of the immoral extramarital sexual fornication of South African President Jacob Zuma [click here, here,  here, here,  here, here,  here,(Source: Sowetan) and here(Source: Sowetan) to read], or of the immorality of Adventists who've been affiliated with genocides, self righteous, graceless hypocrisy is afoot in Adventism.  I have a funny feeling that we won't read or hear of the same Ugandan Adventist Leader who called for criminalizing homosexuality in Uganda - criticizing South African President Jacob Zuma's extramarital fornication and calling for its criminalization.  We won't read of media in Southern Africa that have defended con artists and confidence tricksters and those who've swindled others out of money, decrying President Jacob Zuma's fornication - nor will we hear any peep from Adventist Campus Ministry Leaders employed in mid-western conferences, who've defended exploitation of women and promiscuity.
    We are constantly told by the purists that Adventism represents the only true avenue to Christ, and that true Adventism is superior to other denominations where drums are played and tongues are spoken.
    But what many adventists fail to realize is that many extreme sins such as tribalism, murder, manipulation, dishonesty, rape, promiscuity,  and genocides are tolerated by the Adventist Church hierarchy and campus ministry leaders; yet these gross sins are not tolerated to the same extent in other denominations deemed by Adventists to be inferior religions.
    I've never heard of the Apostolic Church of God, for example, harboring parishioners implicated in genocides; yet this has occurred on more than one occasion in the Adventist Church.  I've never heard of the Apostolic Church cheering on exploitation of women or manipulation of others with lies, or praising fornication among its own ranks, yet Adventist leaders and at least one Adventist Conference have been implicated in endorsing such sins within the church.   The Apostolic Church of God seems to possess a certain level of class and integrity that much of the Adventist Church lacks.   It is not a mere coincidence that those Adventists who proclaim themselves to be more upright and favored than the earthquake-stricken Haitians are also the same persons who would never be caught portraying Jesus in their Churches as a Haitian or a Hurricane Katrina victim. 
    It is no coincidence that even in non-western Adventist Conferences, that Jesus is depicted in 19th century terms as resembling Pat Robertson or Steven Wohlberg.  (Click here to see an example of a depiction of Jesus in a non-Western Adventist Conference).  
   If China supplants the USA as the world's new superpower, because of the poisonousness of obstructive congressional partisanship, will many of the Adventist Church's recruits opportunistically renounce their Adventism to adopt the state religion affiliated with the Chinese State?