The sluggard says, "There is a lion in the road, a fierce lion roaming the streets!"  As a door turns on its hinges, so a sluggard turns on his bed.  The sluggard buries his hand in the dish; he is too lazy to bring it back to his mouth.  The sluggard is wiser in his own eyes than seven men who answer discreetly (Proverbs 26:13-16).

Haiti is a country with major problems.  It is (and has been, for quite some time) the poorest country in the Western hemisphere -- and consistently one of the ten poorest countries on earth.  In addition to this, it's one of the few countries in the world which has actually become poorer and poorer over the last half-century, despite billions of dollars in foreign aid and the involvement of more than 10,000 non-governmental organizations working to do fight against the country's abject poverty.  Clearly, it's an incredibly difficult situation; and worst of all, no one knows exactly how to fix the problems in Haiti.

This American Life recently produced a radio program, entitled "Island Time," which reported on the situation in Haiti, four months after the devestating earthquake of January 2010.  I'd highly recommend their report as a means of gaining a broader understanding of the issues facing Haiti.  But to provide something of a summary / spoiler, it's interesting to see how Haiti's issues seem to parallel much of the issues from the 26th chapter of the Proverbs -- particularly the verses related to "the sluggard" (Proverbs 26:13-16).  Laziness is not the entirety of the problem in Haiti, but it certainly seems to be a significant part of it.

There's laziness on the part of the Haitians themselves.  A lot of times, the problems are remarkably simple and small -- for instance, digging a 5 meter canal to supply water from an immediately adjacent river to a couple of mango trees that provide a farm family's livelihood (as explained on the radio program) -- but the poor mango farmers seem to be too expectant of hand-outs and help from outsiders to do anything about the problems for themselves.  Their insistence on idealism (as opposed to pragmatism) smacks a bit of Proverbs 26:14, where it says, "As a door turns on its hinges, so a sluggard turns on his bed."  Or verse 15:  "The sluggard buries his hand in the dish; he is too lazy to bring it back to his mouth."  From all outside indications, it seems that the local population shares a part of the blame for Haiti's problems.

But then, as one explores the situation in Haiti more fully, it seems that the non-governmental organizations (who are supposedly there to help) also complicate things considerably by their own sort of laziness -- primarily related to inflexibility in trouble-shooting problems as they come along and slowness to develop long-term sustainability (which would step down dependence on the NGOs and phase out the NGO workers' own jobs).  There's an ongoing remnant of colonial paternalism that seems to smack of Proverbs 26:16:  "The sluggard is wiser in his own eyes than seven men who answer discreetly."  These outsiders spend all their time in meetings.  They consult Haitians ad infinitum, ad nauseum... but it often seems to be more for show (a token photo opportunity to put on the brochures for raising money back in the United States or Europe) than for actual consultation.  They create all kinds of red tape that slow things down.  And, in effect, they demonstrate a certain degree of organizational laziness which adds to the problems of Haiti.

And that's where the rest of us, outside of Haiti, come in.  In the face of all this laziness and inefficiency, it can be easy for us to say, "Yikes!  What a hopeless situation!  We need to just get out of there and let them figure things out for themselves.  It's better to not get involved."  But honestly, this too smacks of laziness issues as described in Proverbs 26.  We become the sluggard of verse 13, crying out:  "There is a lion in the road, a fierce lion roaming the streets!"  Instead of getting involved and getting our hands dirty, we say that it's just too messed up, too scary for us to do anything.  So we stay inside our own comfortable environments and let Haiti be Haiti.  This is also a kind of laziness, isn't it?  Or we'll feel sympathetic towards the problems in Haiti and send money to whatever non-governmental organization seems to be offering hope for the country -- but we don't really know how that's going to work itself out in the end.  We exercise laziness even when we want to help.

It feels like a very challenging, very overwhelming situation.  Haiti has a lot of problems.  But laziness is never the answer to these problems.  We need to pray hard.  We need to support believers in Haiti who can be a part of seeing God change hearts.  We need to be ready to pack up and get our hands dirty, helping Haiti (or other parts of the world in similarly dire circumstances), when the opportunities present themselves.  It may be hard work; but it's a lot better than being the sluggard of Proverbs 26.