“And there shall be … earthquakes in divers places.” — Matthew 24:7

To the unfortunate residents of Haiti, the earthquake that struck the impoverished country Jan. 12 was apocalyptic in proportion.

Pat Robertson, with his usual tendency to blame everything on God, said Haiti was being punished for making a pact with the Devil back when “they were under the heel of the French. You know, Napoleon III, or whatever.”

Aside from the fact that the evangelist got the wrong Napoleon (it was Bonaparte; Napoleon III came 50 years later), he failed to show empathy for the suffering slaves of Haiti under the rule of a nation that professed allegiance to God.

One former slave wrote that the French masters hanged slaves upside down, drowned them in sacks, threw them into boiling cauldrons of cane syrup, and fed them to man-eating dogs. Even allowing for exaggeration, we’re left with the fact that slaves had to be imported constantly into Haiti to maintain the population under brutal conditions. Small wonder the Haitians wove strands of African voodoo into the “Christian” religion imposed on them by their masters.

The Haitian war for independence followed the French Revolution, which brought on the Reign of Terror. That orgy sacrificed the heads of thousands of French citizens to the bloodthirsty guillotine. Maximilien Robespierre, a prime mover in the revolution, justified this the way modern terrorists justify attacks on innocent civilians: “Terror is nothing more than swift, severe, indomitable justice; it flows, then, from virtue.” Robespierre eventually encountered that severe, indomitable justice: After he mangled his jaw in a suicide attempt with a pistol, the guillotine finished him off.

After swapping atrocities with the French during their war for independence, the victorious Haitians massacred more than 3,000 white Frenchmen, leading their black leader to proclaim, “We have repaid these cannibals, war for war, crime for crime, outrage for outrage.” For a couple of generations afterward, defenders of slavery in the United States pointed to the Haitian example as a warning of what might follow emancipation of slaves in the American South.

Was the Haitian earthquake retribution for the violence against the French in 1804? Or was it God’s punishment for that “pact with the devil”?

Many people look at the destructive earthquakes of the past century and are reminded of Jesus’ words to his apostles shortly before his death. Others dismiss the prophecy, noting that the number of earthquakes has been more or less constant over the past 2,000 years, though the casualty rate has increased markedly.

Was Jesus looking ahead and foreseeing the inevitable consequences of human actions?

The Haitian earthquake is a reminder of what happens when too many people are squeezed together in too little space. The earthquake that turned Port au Prince into a horror scene hit an island in which close to 10 million people are crowded into a mountainous area one-fifth the size of Alabama.

As the earth has filled with people, earthquakes that might have gone largely unnoticed in former times have wreaked epic damage. Since the beginning of World War I, the globe has experienced, on average, about 17 earthquakes a year that were strong enough to damage buildings. During that time, six of them have claimed more than 100,000 lives. Only five earthquakes in the preceding 2,500 years had claimed that many people.

Back in December of 1811 and January of 1812, massive earthquakes struck the Mississippi Valley. Modern estimates place the strongest at 8 on the Richter scale. It destroyed the little Missouri town of New Madrid (population 400) and rang church bells as far away as Boston. But few people were killed, because the Mississippi Valley in 1812 was sparsely inhabited. If an earthquake of that magnitude were to strike the same area today, it would endanger millions of people, striking the cities of St. Louis and Memphis between the eyes and shaking the terrain around several nuclear power plants.

Earthquakes in populated areas of the United States have been less deadly than those in Third World countries, because Americans have the resources to design earthquake resistance into their buildings. But I’m not sure how sturdy the buildings in St. Louis, Memphis and other Midwestern cities would be in the face of an earthquake mighty enough to alter the course of the Mississippi.

Pat Robertson could probably point to sins being committed in those areas sufficient to justify the “swift, severe, indomitable justice” that Robespierre believed in.

I’m inclined to attribute the tragedy of Haiti not to the hand of God but to the inability of man to rein in the planet’s mushrooming population or to govern himself in an orderly and humane fashion.

The earth’s overpopulation, ironically, is the result of human progress in disease control and food production. As we curb infant mortality and increase life spans without controlling the birth rate, population inevitably increases — faster than the food supply. The good things we do often bring unwelcome results. So the planet becomes full of hungry mouths living in substandard conditions, crowded into areas that are vulnerable to earthquakes, tidal waves, hurricanes, floods and mud slides. And the accumulation of misery turns the masses in developing countries into incubators of revolution and terrorism.

Unfortunately, the well-meaning people around the world who have the resources to improve the lot of these suffering masses don’t get turned on to their plight unless an earthquake, a tsunami or some other highly visible disaster brings unspeakable misery.

The prophet Jeremiah once wrote, “It is not in the way of man that walketh to direct his steps.”

But we sure need direction from somewhere.

Readers may write Gene Owens at 315 Lakeforest Circle, Anderson SC 29625, or e-mail him at WadesDixieco@aol.com.