The Lessons of 9/11

Jesus once chided the Pharisees and Sadducees for their inability to discern "the signs of the times." (Matthew 16:3) Somewhat abruptly, he then went on his way. Matthew gives no hint of what these religious leaders thought and felt about Jesus' chastisement. My own hunch is that some of them stayed angry long enough to make sure that no one would ever again do to them what Jesus had just done to them. And the way they sought to pull it off was by jumping into every tragedy with a definitive explanation of why it happened, sometimes even before the "why?" question could be asked.

Pharisees and Sadducees like these are still around. Last year, following the 9/11 attacks, they made their presence known immediately and gracelessly, imperiously shoving aside our cries of terror, disbelief, confusion, grief, and anger with truly appalling "discernments" of what we were supposed to take away from the overwhelming tragedy unfolding before us. Surely the most outrageous were these:

1. God is punishing America for the immorality its liberals have unleashed on us.
2. The certain damnation of those who died in the conflagrations before giving their lives to Christ should be a warning to all.
3. Muslims the world over must be brought to account for their hate-filled religion and hearts. And
4. The final battle with Satan is now fully launched; the end of the world is near.

No one I know who said any of these things has been open to much discussion about the pronouncements. Even so, perhaps there may be one or two somewhere willing to consider at least these rejoinders:

1. It is hardly likely that all who died in New York, Washington, D.C., and Pennsylvania as a result of terrorist attacks were less moral than the rest of us who survived.
2. Salvation and damnation are matters for God alone; no human being has the right to claim "certain" knowledge of anything pertaining to either.
3. Most Muslims the world over are at least as outraged by the desecration of their religion as non-Muslims are. And
4. Inside traders of so-called religious secrets are even more contemptible than their counterparts on Wall Street; religious prophets of the end of the world have a track record whose errancy is without parallel in any other sphere of human experience.

The way that Jesus saw through his antagonists' disingenuous requests for help in discerning the signs of the times must have been truly galling, as were his concluding words to them, that the only sign they will have is "the sign of the prophet Jonah." At least, it would have been had they remembered that Jonah is sign of the power and scope of repentance. Even if reluctantly, Jonah went to Ninevah as God demanded, and there preached the necessity of repentance. To his shock and amazement, the Ninevites listened, and repented. And so should we, if we are at all inclined to gloss over the real lesson of 9/11 because we find it too hard to confront. (cf. Jonah, chapt. 3)


9/11 most especially forces us to deal with the awesomeness of God's great gift of freedom to human beings, the power to act on the basis of deliberation and choice, and on the basis of instinct and whim. We cannot have freedom in the first sense without also having it in the second. We are not truly free until we choose the first use over the second. The implications are staggering. We are not free to be responsible unless we have the power to be irresponsible. We are not free to trust in God unless we have the power to reject his will and his way entirely. We are not free to create unless we have the power to destroy. We are not free to love unless we have the power to hate. Could God have eliminated all of these very dangerous possibilities inherent in human freedom? Of course. Would we then still bear within ourselves a measure of his own glorious freedom? Of course not. Is freedom, then, worth the price? Yes, thanks be to God.

So: what does this all have to do with gleaning the lesson of 9/11? Simply this: 9/11 is the work of a few human beings who used a divine gift for demonic purposes, and the work of no one else. 9/11 calls us to genuine repentance of every misguided effort to put the blame anywhere else. It reminds us that freedom misused can be catastrophically destructive, even as freedom used as God intends can overcome every evil that its very existence makes possible.