A Christian Response to 9/11
September 4th, 2006
Next week will mark the five year anniversary of the events now known simply as 9/11. Probably most of you, like me, remember where you were when you heard the news of the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington. But 9/11, terrible as it was, is only a symptom of a much greater tragedy. We live in a world filled with terror and war. Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, Israel, Palestine, Lebanon--we are bombarded daily with reminders of just how unstable and violent our world actually is. In light of such atrocities and chaos, how can we possibly respond as the people of God?
Hope. Hope is the answer. Hope is what the church is all about. It is the story we tell each Sunday--the story of deliverance from a fallen garden, from Egypt, from exile. And finally, in the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus, we tell the story of deliverance from death itself. That is the good news.
But all too often, we do not act out of hope. Instead, we act out of fear or hatred. It is interesting to me that the first reaction of a nation stunned by 9/11 was not to cry out to the church to stand up for peace, but to clamor for military retaliation. In other words, people looked not to the church, but to the government to do something about the terrorist problem. Although many folks came to the church in the days following 9/11, it was not because they thought the church could stop the violence, but because they believed the church would make them feel better about the violence that had already occurred.
Here's the rub---We're looking in the wrong place for help. The United States military and the United Nations peacekeeping force and the Iraqi army may be necessary groups in our current political system and this article is not intended to denigrate them. But no human government or agency will ever be able to put an end to the destruction that consumes our world. No amount of military force or legislative action or building of democracy will ever eradicate sin from the face of the earth. Even if every last terrorist was hunted down and killed, even if Israel and Palestine agreed on a peace treaty amenable to all sides, even if nuclear weapons were banished from the planet---even then, sin would still exist in the world and violence would not cease.
We in the church have to stop turning to secular organizations for solutions. We have to resist buying into the myth that governments or armies are the only agents of reconciliation. We have to stop seeing the church as a passive institution, indifferent or unable to address the complex problems of our world. We don't have to go looking for answers to the world's problems somewhere else because we already know the answer-hope. Just one little word. But it's enough. And we need to start acting like it. There's a world out there that desperately needs to hear some good news.