Reflecting on 9/11

Where were you when you first heard about the terrorist attacks that beautiful September morning? I was in my home in Pittsburgh working on next Sunday’s message when my daughter, Bethany, called, “Have you heard what’s going on in New York?” I turned on the TV and fast became mesmerized by the horrible images. About that time my son, Travis, returned home from an early morning college class. We sat stunned, the only distraction, the roar of a low and fast flying jet overhead. I assumed it was military aircraft, only later discovering that we lay directly under the flight path of Flight 93. Minutes later Todd Beamer, his fellow valiant passengers, and the terrorists they fought would lie dead in field not more than 90 miles from where we sat. An event is permanently imprinted in one’s memory when it is accompanied by great emotion. Anger, sadness, fear, love—all was present in my heart that day. I shall never forget. 

The very next night I left my family in Pittsburgh and under an eerily quiet sky drove to New Jersey for 3 weeks of chaplaincy ministry, serving the first to deploy to Afghanistan. Over the next five years I would spend close to three of those years away from home caring for our airmen heavily involved in the fight against Al Qaeda. I had planned on soon retiring from the Air Force chaplaincy prior to 9/11, but felt compelled to stay after that day. I didn’t retire until mandated to do so seven years later. This is just one of the ways 9/11 changed my life, as it did for all of us. 

Remembering 9/11 is important. Reflecting on it is far more so. What became apparent that day was the existence of evil. The images of 9/11 are unmistakable evidence of evil in human beings. Are we not even now, 10 years later, angered by the evil of 11 men whose only intent was to maim and murder as many as possible? But I wonder whether anger is the proper emotional response to 9/11. If I am only angered by the evil of 9/11 and other atrocities, then I see evil as separate from myself, as something others possess, but not I. This is a dangerous attitude that fuels the never ending cycle of violence in our world. The 9/11 hijackers didn’t see themselves as evil. They were killing evil Americans. Likewise, I fear that in our response to their attack, we might think in similar fashion, we are killing evil Islamic Fundamentalists. How much harder it is to kill others, when one owns up to his or her own evil. At the heart of “Just War Theory,” that calls for restraint in exercising war, is the Biblical truth about every human heart, including my own: Jeremiah 17:9 (NIV) The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it? English writer and philosopher, G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936), was asked, “What is wrong with the world?” He surprised his questioner by answering, “I am.” His answer agreed with Jesus who pinpointed the human heart as the seat of evil. Mark 7:21-22 (NIV) For from within, out of men's hearts, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, ²² greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. The admission of evil in our own hearts will elicit restraint in the prosecution of war, lest we perpetrate unnecessary evil on our fellow human beings. 

Such an admission will also compel us to turn to the only solution for the human problem of evil. Government is not it. Government, their military, and their law enforcement agencies were ordained by God to restrain the evil of the human heart (Romans 13:1-6). Fortunately, God did not stop there. God went much farther. He put in a place a way to actually change the human heart. 2 Corinthians 5:17 (NIV) Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! When we enter a relationship with Jesus Christ, God begins to exercise His power to change our hearts from a perpetrator of evil to a harbinger of good. Government restrains the human heart. God changes it. 

On this 10^th anniversary of 9/11 I like you will view the images of that horrible day again. I pray that you will join me in not just remembering, but reflecting, seeing the reflection of our own evil hearts in the evil perpetrated against us that day. I pray then that you will also join me in turning to the only one who can solve the problem of evil, our Lord Jesus Christ. May God not just restrain evil, but reduce its presence in the human heart, beginning with my own.