Six years ago, I was sitting at my desk when someone in the office took the Lord’s name in vain.
Maybe she didn’t, she was pretty shocked by it all.
I tuned into NPR for audio coverage, CNN.com for video and one other website to find out the identities of the three other planes still in the air. At some point we gathered in the break room to watch TV and saw the second plane hit the South Tower. Many co-workers were stranded in Houston, one was stranded in lower Manhattan. Everyone was okay, though we weren’t certain until the 13th.
Two things occur to me in Remembrance of the events of today.
We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. When the loyal opposition dies, I think the soul of America dies with it.
Edward R. Murrow
and
Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows.
Galatians 6:7
The first has political and spiritual ramifications. On the political side, those that opposed the Patriot Act and the subseqent attacks on the Taliban in Afghanistan were quickly demonized as unpatriotic. In our anger, we wanted the murders to pay, and pay quickly. We rushed to judgment and declared a global war on terror. I did, too. I was all in support of the Coalition forces charging into Afghanistan and finding Bin Laden.
The politics about this is really complicated and a bit outside the scope. FWIW, I’ve since changed my mind on a lot of things involving the war on terror and its politics. The spiritual ramifications though, have been pretty big. The biggest one is that somehow the 9/11 attacks are now required to have some deep spiritual lesson attached to it in order to have meaning. The first to speak was Pat Robertson and Jerry Fallwell. Their spiritual lesson was that God was punishing the Great Christian Nation known to men and angels as America. We were on holy notice that we had, in fact, sinned enough and that we were going to be forced into repentance by God Almighty.
That went over with many people pretty badly.
Since then, I’ve read that religious intolerance brought about 9/11, religious tolerance brought about 9/11, God’s judgment of the US and/or Afghanistan and/or the Middle East brought it. I’ve seen 9/11 tied to the books of Revelation, Daniel, Ezekiel and all the apocalyptic favorites. It’s been tied to rage, hatred, Bin Laden’s personal sin, George W. Bush’s personal sin, and/or the collective sins of the people of America. Any explanation of why that I have read has pointed to the people or ideas responsible and a subsequent call to eliminate those people and ideas.
It’s really easy to overspiritualize something. Jesus asked a pointed question in Luke 13 about 18 people that died in a tower collapse. He asked if the dead were worse sinners than any other Galileans because of their suffering. The tower falling was not a judgment on them or Galilee. Independent of those events, the audience of that sermon needed to repent – and the tower had nothing to do with it.
Ultimately, I believe the why of 9/11 is that a group of men wanted to attack the United States because they saw America as the great enemy to their god, their country, and their lives.