Subj: One preacher's response to 9-11-01 
Date: 9/14/01 5:33:24 PM Eastern Daylight Time 

She dialed "911" on 9/11. She was in reality sending up a "May Day" for all humanity as, in Kipling's words, 
"Wrong came up like thunder."  Perhaps evil never funneled its heinous venom into one act with more 
lasting impact since the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. The closest  rivals would be the enslavement of 
Africans by Europeans and Americans and the calculated effort of the Third Reich to exterminate the 
Hebrew people. All the world seems tonight to realize that this has, in ultimate States of America. 
This is an incredible larger demonstration of General Sherman's definition of war that anyone could have 
imagined in 1864.  The "hell that war is" now has been redefined; the war of the 21st  century leads us 
further down a path of destruction than did the invention of gunpowder or the coming of the nuclear age. 
More so than Shiloh when all the branchwater ran red with blood, more so than the Thirty Years War when 
a third of the population of Europe was killed or starved, more so than Pearl Harbor, more so than at 
Omaha Beach or Hiroshima--this day shall live in infamy. 

We must keep focused. The enemy is not Islam. Mohammend said something to the effect that 
"Allah loves the ink of the scholars more than the blood of the martyrs." Only a fanatical, late 20th 
century distortion of Islamic teachings have become distilled into a doctrine of ethnic hatred. Mohammend 
never condemned Jesus Christ; he only condemned the treatment of the Arabic people. The Moslem faith is 
being used by evil men (they allow no voice for women) as a shield to divert personal responsibility. Even the 
scene of rejoicing in the streets of a West Bank town in Palestine should not lead us to conclusions that even 
a large minority of Arab people have any sense of solidarity with terrorism.

To so judge Islam would be equal to judging America because one classroom of children clapped 
when they heard President Kennedy had been shot or when Rodney King had been beaten. We 
cannot do again what we did to the Japanese Americans in 1942. 

While our president's speeches will likely be criticized for not having the rhetoric of Lincoln, Roosevelt, 
Kennedy, or Reagan; many of his phrases are on target. More than buildings or cities or a nation has been 
attacked. "Freedom has been attacked." No one alive today will forget the indelibly seared scenes of 9/11/01. 
No one will saunter as unthinkingly as in the past down an airport jetway, past a control center cockpit on your 
left, and into the confined capsule of a cabin.

But more than that. If we are honest and true to reasoned conclusions which these evil acts taught us, 
we must at last abandon the 20th century myths which social sciences--education, psychology, sociology, 
and even economics--taught three generations. We were systemically brainwashed by a well intended falsehood 
that flowed from a so called "age of enlightenment"--that human kind is inherently good, that material wealth 
and mental cultivation will solve the world's problems, and that the older mythology of the Bible and the Church 
are obsolete. We were sold a bill of goods; now the piper has been paid. Two World Wars and several small ones 
did not shake the foundations of this Polyanna philosophy. Now is the time for a major paradigm shift in who it is 
we think we are as a race and how deeply contaminated the mind of humanity can become. The pages of all 
human history are deeply stained with blood. What was called in the days of male chauvanism--"man's 
inhumanity toward man"--is a sadly true commentary on humankind(though it is demonstrably true that 
much more evil has literally been perpetrated by the male gender than the female).

The heart of the human problem is the problem of the human heart," some sage has said. Evil has run like 
an everflowing river through the nature of humankind since early in the morning of creation. The Genesis story 
(the macro picture of the first chapter and the micro picture of the third chapter) is an inspired effort of the 
ancient mind of faith to explain evil. Adam and Eve and Cain are pictured as the archetypes of all humankind. 
Modern social science assumptions burned in the rubble of Manhattan and Foggy Bottom on 9/11. Let us now 
open the pages of ancient sages and read as if they were hot off the press the story of "the fall." 

In our world view, human evil came to focus at Golgotha. Humanity effected its most damnably worst deed. 
No, we cannot smear the Jewish faith with this crucifixion; it was perpetrated by systemic and personal evil 
and played out through the responsible acts of Caiaphas and Herod and Pontius Pilate. Let a caudron boil 
long enough and it will overflow; it did for Jesus; it did for America.  Gone also is the triumphalist theology 
that has persistently marked  American Protestantism. Ours has been an "onward and upward" yellow 
brick road mentality of "building the Kingdom of God." Matched with our national progress, we went 
about stamping out evil, even with a terrible swift sword. We fought the "war to end all wars." 
We naively thought that defeating the German Kaiser made "the world safe for democracy" in 1918. 
We thought it again for a fleeting moment in 1945. We thought it again when the Iron Curtain fell like a 
deck of cards. But now we know; evil is real and deep and deadly. The first cornerstone of Christianity is 
a cross. That scene also was one of carnage--blood, guts, and the stench of death. Let us not romantize 
"the place of the skull." 

But wait! Evil did not make the last move! The meaning of life cannot be defined by the cross! 
For on the third day, as men cowered behind closed doors "for fear of the Jews," women found an 
empty tomb. God had stepped onto the stage of human history, grasped at last the bloodied hand 
of evil and said, "Now that your dastard deed is done, though 'the wrong seems oft so strong,
' I, the Lord God of history am the Ruler yet. Life overcame death. Hope overcame despair. Faith replaced 
fear. 

Tonight as my headlights penetrated the highway darkness, NPR radio switched to a reporter at the 
White House. To the obvious dismay of the anchor person, and certainly to the cynical mindset of Daniel 
Schorr who was being interviewed, a George Washington University coed was plucked from the crowd. 
The anchor persons asked her what was going on. She explained that about 500 young adults were 
spontaneously gathering on Pennsylvania Avenue and singing hymns and patriotic songs. "It is the 
most fantastic thing I have ever experienced," she said. "Listen." And the girl held up a microphone 
and recorded the voice of God speaking 

through young men and women. They were singing "Amazing Grace," "America the Beautiful," 
"God Bless America," and a whole repertoire of hope songs, faith songs, belief songs, affirmation 
songs, solidarity songs, patritotic songs, gospel songs, and "longing of the human heart to believe 
in something bigger than evil" songs. The tears that blinded me as I drove were no longer tears of 
frustration and anger; they were tears of joy. 

For the rest of our lives, the battle must be resolutely fought. But just as the resurrection was 
God's answer to the cross; so may we see a swing in the pendulum of Western culture--so rich 
in things and poor in soul these last seventy years. To our knees we go in a prayer for help, but don't 
close your eyes and bow your head. No, lift up your heads oh ye gates and and be ye lifted up ye 
everlasting doors and the King of Glory shall come in. Who is this King of Glory? The Lord of Hosts is 
the ultimate king of Glory. "And thought the wrong seems oft so strong, God is the ruler yet." 
"O Lord of hosts, be with us yet, lest we forget, lest we forget