Day of Prayer and Mourning: Friday, 14 September 2001

My dear loved ones,

Today is a day of prayer and mourning all throughout America. How shall we ever erase the images and the memory of this national tragedy? We grieve with our countrymen, but not as those without hope.

That is why I am writing you.

I came home from work earlier than usual this afternoon so I could compose for you some reflections about this week's events and offer you a commentary that expresses both realism and hope. I write this to my children, whom I love dearly; to my grandchildren, for whose young lives I pray; and to my family, who will (I think) understand this burden of my heart. My purpose is not to frighten or agitate, but to help provide categories for perceiving what is going on in God's world.

I claim no expertise in international politics, nor special insight in questions of appropriate policy or response in the face of the attacks of this Tuesday. But I do claim that the majority of media commentators lack the categories of thought that we need for a true and adequate assessment of what is going on.

At this time, all the signs seem to be pointing to Islamic terrorists as the perpetrators of these attacks. If that should prove to be false, nothing of what follows would be untrue, since America has been victimized throughout the past decade by Islamic terrorists.

First, there is the matter of war by terrorism. Think carefully about this: unlike any other experience of war with which we're familiar, in the case of terrorism we cannot see the enemy, and therefore cannot defend ourselves against him. What America experienced this Tuesday is Columbine writ large, on a national scale. There may well be no effective response against terrorism short of totalitarianism. Already we are hearing people propose "solutions" for defending ourselves against terrorism that consist of nothing less that the curtailing of freedoms. We've all heard of "lockdowns" in schools, businesses, and public buildings threatened with violence. But how do you bring about the lockdown of an entire country? Well, we saw how to do that this week. With box-cutters and plastic-handled knives, a bunch of well-trained and well-funded "idiots" slashed a hole in our economy and our military. And though the targets were symbolic, the impact was real.

Because modern terrorists cannot be identified with a single nation-state, any military response of bombing the daylights out of some Middle East Islamic country, any imposition of economic sanctions against some rogue government, may certainly be therapeutic for Americans ("Well, we've got to do something! Let's beat the tar out of 'em!"), but it won't be effective. Every Islamic leader we kill becomes a martyr for the 500,000,000 Muslim men who are eagerly waiting for the chance to imitate their leader's example.

And that provides the second category we need for a proper assessment of what happened this Tuesday. Did I say these terrorists were well-trained and well-funded "idiots"? Madmen? Oh, that's what Peter Jennings and Tom Brokaw are telling us. And that's all they can tell us. Because in America today we cannot--not just may not, but cannot--talk in religious categories. But far from being "idiots" or "madmen," these Islamic terrorists are missionaries, martyrs, whose religion is just as totalitarian and absolute as Christianity. By that I mean, both Islam and Christianity lay claim to the entire person--body and soul. Total devotion, in every area of life. One difference is that Islamic fundamentalists will kill unbelievers (which means Jews and Christians, who are pagans in the eyes of Islam), whereas Christians will shake the dust from their feet and move to the next town. Because the American press cannot comprehend this, and because Americans generally have little sense of history, people fail to realize that the motive behind this Tuesday's attacks is more than 1,400 years old. That motive is radical Islam's deep-souled hatred, a bone-marrow despising of all who are not Muslim.

More than twenty years ago, I wrote an editorial for the magazine then called Renewal, entitled "The Real Cost of Arab Oil." Back then, during the mid- to late-1970s, Mr. Carter was our president; he was brought to political ruin by the hostage crisis in the Middle East and the rampant inflation caused by exorbitant oil prices. Back then, the real cost of Arab oil had nothing to do with oil; it had everything to do with competing religions. And this Tuesday's attacks have everything to do with America's uncritical alliance with the state of Israel, who is the lifelong, history-long mortal enemy of Islam. Out of loyalty to Israel that has been fueled by American Jewish Zionism and by American Christian dispensationalism, "Christian" America has repeatedly turned a blind eye to the atrocities Israel has committed against the Palestinians and other Arab neighbors, most of whom are Muslims. Well, they just poked a fat finger in that blind eye.

So the attacks of this Tuesday were by no means senseless. Only those who are irreligious would think such stupidity--and proceed to attribute their own stupidity to someone else, like kamikaze Islamic terrorists.

Well, then, here's the third category we need for a proper assessment of this week's events. As believers in Jesus Christ, we are dealing, uncomfortably, with three competing realties -- (1) Christianity, (2) Americanism, and (3) Islam. The painful truth is that as Christians, we share many of Islam's criticisms of modern America--America's sexual licentiousness; America's destruction of the family through feminism; the widespread disrespect for authority and rampant slavery to drugs in America; and so forth. The toleration and moral relativism being practiced in modern America offends both Muslims and Christians. While it is true that the seeds of America's liberties sprouted in some measure from the Christian faith, because our liberties have been severed from their root, the tree now bears fruit that has become poisonous.

And this is my burden, my heartache as your father and grandfather, your brother and friend.

As a Christian, while joining my fellow Americans in mourning the carnage of this past Tuesday, I cannot accept the analysis of its cause that we're hearing and reading from the news media. For this analysis is being formulated in the rhetoric of "us-against-them." But as a Christian, I do not belong first of all to "us" or to "them." I belong to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ, and to His body, the Christian church. My loyalty to Jesus Christ and His Word leads me to wonder whether Christianity is, finally, compatible with the individualized freedoms being championed by modern democracy. Our constitutional freedom of privacy has become a mother's freedom to kill her unborn child. Our personal freedom of speech has become the pornographer's freedom of expression. America's freedom of religion has become its suicidal freedom from religion.

You may reply that the price of liberty is that we'll have to take the bad with the good. And you're right, to the extent that the Christian church may not depend on the sword to make people moral. Christ calls us to let the weeds and the wheat grow alongside one another, until the harvest comes (Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43). Now is not the time to get out the sickle, for if we were to pull up the weeds, we'd destroy the wheat along with them. But as Christians, we may never let our loyalty to political liberty displace or compromise our loyalty to genuine liberty in Christ--a liberty that can exist only within the boundaries of God's law.

So let me ask you to reflect on this question that no CNN reporter will ever ask--or answer. Which is more dangerous to your Christian faith: a cadre of suicidal fanatics committed to Allah, or a nation of suicidal fanatics committed to themselves?

I began by speaking of both realism and hope. Where, then, is the hope?

Our hope is this: in His sovereign wisdom, God is graciously giving us Christians who happen by His blessed providence to live in this great country one more opportunity to get it right--to show the watching world that death to self, through unceasing repentance and unswerving faith-obedience toward Jesus Christ, is the route to eternal life now. This is the painful lesson of September 11, 2001, that America must learn: each of us must die, not in misguided zeal for Allah, but in penitential surrender to Jesus Christ.

To my children and grandchildren, I say with all the fatherly urgency I can muster: Stay close to the Lord. Remain loyal first to Him, that you may keep dying to self and keep living in Him. As you process those unforgettable images of incinerating jetliners and imploding skyscrapers, let the Image of the Invisible God, Jesus Christ, govern your heart and guide your passions.

Blessed be our Triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. God bless His people, from every tribe and tongue and nation. And for their sakes, God bless America.

With love for all of you,

Dad / Grandpa