Cynicism is among our most punctual instincts. Within days of the earthquake in Haiti, there came warnings of impending compassion fatigue, wagers of how long it would be before we turned away to the Super Bowl, the Olympics and the Oscars, leaving Haiti to misery.
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But I don't believe people get tired of helping--only that they get tired of feeling helpless. The challenge arises when we witness what health crusader Paul Farmer calls "stupid deaths": death in childbirth, death by mosquito, death, in the case of Haiti, from infections that spread when crushed limbs aren't amputated fast enough. Help never arrives fast enough because no two disasters are alike and chaos is an agile enemy. So I wondered how we would feel, after texting our $10 donations to the Red Cross and writing checks to Save the Children, still coming home night after night to the growing mass grave on our flat-screens.
Epic disasters inspire dreams of glory. "Everyone wants to be a hero. Everyone wants to help," Dr. Thomas Kirsch, a co-director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Refugee and Disaster Response, told MSNBC. "It's not the way to do it." A team from his school arrived in Haiti so unprepared, its members needed rescue themselves. "They had no bedding, supplies or food," he said, and they had to rely on other relief agencies for support.
Desperation deforms judgment, and not just among victims. Thus we meet missionary Laura Silsby and her flock, who in the face of so much suffering set out from Boise, Idaho, with a trailer full of children's clothes and a vow to help Haiti's orphans "find healing, hope, joy and new life in Christ." "Our hearts were in the right place," she insisted, but her head was somewhere else entirely, and they all wound up in jail. We know a bit more now about her regard for the niceties of law and protocol: unpaid debts, civil lawsuits, a house in foreclosure and an improvised mission to scoop up a load of children and head to the border without so much as a license or even confirmation that they were all orphans.
We also know that the families she encountered were desperate to survive. Parents were told their children would be cared for and schooled in the Dominican Republic; the families could even visit. "If someone offers to take my children to a paradise," a mother told the New York Times, "am I supposed to say no?" Silsby was warned by local officials about obtaining proper papers, and by that mark alone, her behavior was criminal. But it was also criminally naive.
One's duty in the face of disaster is not just to be kind but to be sensible. When a soldier, however brave, runs into enemy fire without a plan or shield, his death isn't just a loss; it's a waste. The same is true of all those who want to help but wind up getting in the way, a distraction neither the victims nor the professionals can afford. Chances are that if the 82nd Airborne can't get food to the tent city fast enough, your food bank can't either. On its website, Samaritan's Purse asks aspiring volunteers to "please be patient and we will get back to you."
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