Do We Dare Release the Fading Memory of 9/11?

A new tower stands at the World Trade Center, along with
historic Trinity Church that was spared of destruction on 9/11.

Sept. 11, 2001 started off as what seemed to be just an ordinary day. Millions of people going to work, to school, the grocery store, the gym, the doctor, the auto repair shop. By midmorning, however, it seemed as if the world had been turned upside-down – at least in the United States.

Four commercial airline jets had been hijacked and commandeered, three crashing into the north and south towers of the World Trade Center in New York City and the west side of the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., and because of heroic efforts of passengers, a fourth crashed near Shanksville, Pa. before it could reach another destination for destruction and mayhem.

 

In all, 2,996 people died as a direct result of the hijacked plane crashes, not only passengers and occupants of the buildings but also firefighters, paramedics and police officers.

 

Sadly, in the more than two decades since, the sense of horror and disbelief has become a fading memory for many people. There are memorials at the site of what’s become known as “Ground Zero,” but aside from the unending annoyance of passenger screening at airports that didn’t exist prior to ”9/11,” there’s little to remind us of what transpired that day.

 

An entire generation of young people who weren’t even born at the time know little or nothing about the terrorist acts. In fact, a U.S. congresswoman once referenced the Sept. 11, 2001 events as “somebody did something.”

 

The evening of 9/11, and for days and weeks afterward, churches across America were jammed with mourners, frightened Americans and persons seeking answers for the orchestrated acts of hatred. However, within a month or two, the temporary spiritual fervor had waned as people calmed down and returned to “life as usual.” Today, instead of flocking to the nation’s churches, it seems throngs of people are leaving them, apparently convinced they don’t need God.

 

Should we release the diminishing remembrances of 9/11, dismissing them as “that was then, this is now”? Simply as “somebody did something” and leave it at that?

 

The answer should be a decided and unequivocal “No!” Just as we dare not abandon the painful yet important histories of slavery, the Holocaust, and other terrible times in the annals of humankind. Not to stir up renewed anger and festering bitterness, but to remember the individuals who died, the families devastated that day – and the terrifying example of the evil possible when God is removed from the equation.

 

As we read the Bible, especially the story of the Israelites in the Old Testament, we learn the consequences of short memories. The Israelites saw God perform great miracles in freeing them from four centuries of bondage in Egypt – creating plagues that eventually convinced Pharaoh to let them go; parting the Red Sea as Egyptian chariots and horses pursued them; providing water, manna and quail to sustain countless thousands of men, women and children. Yet, during times of prosperity, they quickly forgot what He had done.

 

We see the Israelites faithfully serving and worshiping God when led by humble prophets and godly kings, but once those leaders died, the people quickly turned to idolatry and pagan practices. Memories were extremely short, especially during good times when they forgot they needed God. As the book of Judges concludes, “In those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did what was right in their own eyes” (Judges 21:25).

 

Things haven’t changed much in the many centuries since. In the days after 9/11, some expressed the opinion that one reason the Lord allowed such unbelievable acts of evil was to get our attention, to remind us of our need for Him. Perhaps for a moment or two He did have our attention, but it appears we have turned our focus to other things. For many people, God is a mere afterthought, if that.

 

Not long ago I read a compelling quote from the late Aleksandr Solshenitsyn, a famous Soviet author and outspoken critic of communism until his death in 2008. He was arrested for his dissent and suffered for eight years in the notorious Russian gulag system. He wrote novels about Soviet oppression – one, The Gulag Archipelago, won him the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1970. Here’s what he said:

 

“Over a half century ago, while I was still a child, I recall hearing a number of old people offer the following explanation for the great disasters that had befallen Russia: 'Men have forgotten God; that's why all this has happened.' Since then I have spent well-nigh 50 years working on the history of our revolution; in the process I have read hundreds of books, collected hundreds of personal testimonies, and have already contributed eight volumes of my own toward the effort of clearing away the rubble left by that upheaval. But if I were asked today to formulate as concisely as possible the main cause of the ruinous revolution that swallowed up some 60 million of our people, I could not put it more accurately than to repeat: 'Men have forgotten God; that's why all this has happened.'”

 

We live in perilous times today. As dark memories of 9/11 fade, as more and more people live ignorant of such acts motivated by fathomless evil, we’re also losing the conviction of our individual and collective need for God. All around us, we are reaping what we’ve sown.

 

Proverbs 29:18 carries a cautionary message: “When there is no vision, the people perish….” Another translation states it this way: “Where there is no [prophetic] revelation, people cast off restraint; but blessed is the one who heeds wisdom’s instruction.”

Did the Lord allow the tragic events of 9/11 to serve as a wakeup call to a nation – and a world – turning their back on Him? That’s up for debate. But we can’t ignore the reality that absent of an understanding of God’s design for us and standards for living, people indeed are casting off restraint and ultimately perishing, empty and hopeless. That’s what happens when, as Solzhenitsyn wrote, “Men have forgotten God.” 

Another Day That Continues to Live in Infamy

Sept. 11, 2001 – a day that all of us who are old enough to remember will never forget. It’s one of those “where were you when?…” events that mark and mar human and social history.

Nearly 3,000 lives were lost. More than 6,000 others were injured that day, and over the years since, many other lives have been lost, mostly first responders who courageously rushed into the devastation despite great danger.

 

Four jet airliners commandeered that morning by terrorists, two of them flown into the iconic Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan, New York, one into the Pentagon, and a fourth forced into the ground in rural Pennsylvania before it could reach another terror target.

 

Not long ago, a congresswoman described the murderous acts of 9/11 as “somebody did something.” But for many of us, that “something” was akin to the Dec. 7, 1971 attack by Japanese naval and air forces on Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, killing more than 2,400 military and civilian personnel and injuring more than 1,000. The following day President Franklin D. Roosevelt labeled it, “a date which will live in infamy.”

 

As the mournful anniversary of what is commonly known as “9/11” reaches its 20^th year, it’s a time for reflection. Like many people, I was at work. One of our staff came to tell me one of the towers had been struck. Several of us gathered in front of a conference room TV to watch the news coverage. 

 

Some felt led to pray for the victims; while we were praying, we heard the report that the second tower had been hit by another airliner. This confirmed to all that this was an intentional, planned event. Our eyes remained riveted on the TV screen as first one smoke-spewing tower, then the other, collapsed in an enormous heap.

 

After the reality of what has just happened started to settle in, I thought of my friend Jerry, who lived in Bayonne, N.J., across the river from Manhattan, and worked in the North Tower. A few years earlier, I had enjoyed lunch with him and another friend in the famed Windows of the World restaurant, located on the tower’s 107^th floor. Could he have been in the tower?

 

Providentially, Jerry was not. After staying up to watch a Monday Night Football game, he had failed to properly set the high-tech clock radio he had received the previous Christmas, and the alarm never went off. Being sole proprietor of his Manhattan business, Jerry had decided not to make his usual commute into the city. Instead, he was sitting at his kitchen table, drinking coffee and reading the morning newspaper when one of his daughters called, frantically hoping he was safe.

 

Jerry immediately turned on his TV and saw the destruction of the iconic towers unfold. Unlike most viewers, he personally knew dozens of people trapped in the North Tower, the final minutes of their lives caught up in the chaos. Had he awakened on time and ridden the subway to the station under 1 World Trade Center, Jerry likely would have been on the 77^th floor visiting with friends when the building was rammed. To this day, my friend grieves their loss – and still marvels at how God spared his own life because an alarm clock didn’t wake him up.

 

Twenty years later, grim memories remain. From a spiritual perspective, what can we glean from this heinous terrorist plot? Of many possible lessons we could draw from, I’ll suggest only a few:

 

First, the senseless acts of 9/11 gave us indelible evidence of the prevalence of evil in our world. In one of the Bible’s most powerful prophetic books we read, “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9). Many years later Jesus said, “A good man brings good things out of the good stored up in him, and an evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in him” (Matthew 12:35). If there was any doubt about this, watching commercial passenger jets crash into the glistening towers dispelled it.

 

Second, virtually all of us go through life planning for tomorrow, next week, next year. The tragedies of 9/11 were a grim reminder that we’re not guaranteed five minutes from now, let alone tomorrow or some later time. Using a parable about a rich fool, Jesus taught about life’s brevity and the importance of establishing and keeping proper priorities. In the story, a rich man had accumulated so many goods and such an abundant crop that he resolved to tear down his existing barns and build larger ones. “…But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?’ This is how it will be with anyone who stores up things for himself but is not rich toward God” (Luke 12:13-21).

 

Sadly, the past year and a half of the COVID-19 pandemic also has pressed this point home, with people we know falling victim to the virus. Young or old, we need to be prepared for the day we will stand before the Lord. “But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night, in which the heavens will pass away with a great noise, and the elements will melt with fervent heat; both the earth and the works that are in it will be burned up” (2 Peter 3:10). While this refers specifically to what is commonly known as “the end times,” it can also apply to our final moments on earth.

 

One last point: During His earthly ministry, Jesus made a habit of presenting unconventional teachings. One was His response to the commonly accepted view of retribution, “An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.” During Jesus’ “sermon on the mount,” He gave an opposing perspective: 

“You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor’ and ‘Hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Do not even tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than others? Do not even Gentiles do the same?” (Matthew 5:43-47).

 

This is one of the most difficult of Jesus’ messages to grasp and apply. We don’t want to love our enemies. We want vengeance, to make those who hurt us pay a severe price. We certainly don’t want to forgive. This, however, is one of the precepts that separates the teaching of Jesus Christ and Christianity from any other religion or belief system. How can we love our enemies, those who persecute and seek to harm us, even kill us? This is only possible through the presence and power of God’s Spirit living in us.

 

Let’s hope and pray we don’t need another 9/11-type of calamity to remind us of these truths. 

The REAL Root of All Evil

There’s a common misconception the Bible teaches money is the root of all evil. What the passage (1 Timothy 6:10) actually says is, “For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil.” There’s a big difference.

Throughout history money – the love of it, that is – has served as stimulus for many forms of evil: Greed, envy, jealousy, unethical behavior, arrogance, murder, robbery, burglary, muggings, bribery, extortion, and many others we could name.

But if there’s a singular root of evil, it’s not money. It’s pride. If you look at the list above, you’ll note in one way or another, each form of evil is a manifestation of unhealthy pride, unrestrained emphasis on self and self-interest at the expense of others.

This isn’t to be confused, of course, with proper expressions of pride – like satisfaction with a job well done, or being pleased with the accomplishments of a loved one. But pride presents its sinful side when “I” and “me” become paramount.

We see pride manifested in competitions for “biggest” and “tallest,” for instance. The Council for Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (did you know there was such a council?) reported developers of new super-skyscrapers all over the globe are installing huge, useless needles atop their buildings in a quest to market their structures as the world’s tallest. The still unfinished One World Trade Center in Manhattan and Dubai’s Burj Al Arab are just two examples.

At this time of year, football fans across the country are caught in “We’re No. 1!” hysteria. For some reason, when our favorite team excels, it’s our chests that get puffed up.

Even some churches display pride in its worst forms – practicing one-upmanship with the size of worship facilities, flaunting statistics about membership and baptisms, even seeming downright self-righteous about “correct” doctrine, traditions and teachings.

This is hardly new, however. If you believe in the biblical story about what theologians call the “original sin” and “the fall of man,” it seems the first sin was not disobedience by eating the forbidden fruit, but Adam and Eve’s being suckered in by a prideful appeal.

In Genesis 3:1-7, the serpent (Satan) approaches the first couple and asks, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?” Eve replies they were told to avoid only one tree, explaining God had said, “you must not touch it, or you will die.” Then the serpent responds, “You will not surely die…. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

At that moment pride, in all its insidiousness, reared up. The passage doesn’t record this, but I can imagine Adam and Eve eyeing each other and saying, “Hey, that’s right! Who does God think He is, anyway? Who is He to tell us what to do?” The rest, as they say, is history.

In his classic book, Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis wrote, “There is one vice of which no man in the world is free; which every one in the world loathes when he sees it in someone else; and of which hardly any people…ever imagine that they are guilty themselves…. There is no fault which makes a man more unpopular, and no fault which we are more unconscious of in ourselves…. The vice I am talking of is Pride or Self-Conceit; and the virtue opposite to it, in Christian morals, is called Humility.”

The world around us tells us pride is okay, even commendable. “Look out for yourself,” the mantra advises. Baby Boomers (I’m a card-carrying member) have been called the “Me Generation,” describing our zeal for “self-realization” and “self-fulfillment.” But for those of us who have become followers of Christ, such attitudes pose a contradiction. If we take a deep, honest look at Jesus, pride should be instantly dispelled. His life – and death – personified humility.

Jesus had every reason to burst with pride, to “lord it over” everyone around him. But instead, God incarnate became humble. Philippians 2:8 states, “And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death, even death on a cross.” He calls His followers to die to self as well.

The Old Testament records what God said about pride: “Let not the wise man boast of his wisdom or the strong man boast of his strength or the rich man boast of his riches, but let him who boasts boast about this: that he understands and knows me, that I am the Lord, who exercises kindness, justice and righteousness on earth, for in these I delight” (Jeremiah 9:23-24).

God says, “If you want to be proud – be proud about that!”