One of the challenges of war is a lost sense of humanity. Among those in power, war minimizes natural human impulses like generosity and compassion in favor of bolstering control or even domination. As wicked men kill mothers, fathers, and children, or take food from a population to introduce starvation, basic decency recedes from view. This is what’s happened over the last few years of gang warfare in Haiti.

When we think about war, we often try to evaluate whether it’s a net good or evil based on its driving motivation. A war that accomplishes freedom from oppression, communism, or other social hardships might be a war where the overarching good outweighs the cost to the individual. It’s harder to see things this way in Haiti. The challenge in considering gang warfare, like the kind that’s controlled Port-au-Prince for the past few years, is that there is no higher purpose.

The reasons for gang violence are predictable. I want more money. I want people to fear me. I want to increase my power. Gang warfare retains all the dehumanizing aspects of war, but with no legitimate godly, or even socially acceptable, purpose. A culture oppressed by gang warfare is a culture experiencing an incredible amount of suffering.

We see suffering all throughout the Bible, but the purpose behind every moment of sorrow is to preserve God’s people and His message of salvation. Even death itself, nowhere more undeserved than in the death of Christ, becomes meaningful in light of the overwhelmingly positive plan God designed for it to accomplish. The larger framework makes sense of individual trials. Similarly, any kind of war that ultimately accomplishes a greater good can preserve a sense of dignity. The effects of an unjust war—motivated only by selfish desire and a hunger for power—are to diminish a civilization’s sense of humanity.

Our goal as we serve in the war-torn country of Haiti is to reaffirm the common dignity all people have as image-bearers of God. We pray daily that God will comfort the oppressed and heal the broken, for where the Spirit of God is, there is freedom.

To learn how you can be praying with us for the ministry in Haiti, visit Prayer Requests.