Tag: terrorism

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Where Was God?

I will always remember where I was on this date 25 years ago. I was attending mission board meetings at Glen Eyrie, in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Our morning devotional was interrupted by the news of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City. As the television news reported the unfolding events throughout the day, we became aware of the four hijacked airliners, the thousands of casualties, the attack on the Pentagon, and the heroic intervention of the passengers on United Airlines flight 93.

As a result of these attacks, the military was on high alert and all commercial flights were grounded. I was unable to get a flight home to Oklahoma City for several days. The staff of Glen Eyrie, headquarters of the Navigators, offered me kind hospitality during that time.

I was in Colorado Springs. Where was God on 9/11?

Where was he when hundreds of office workers were burned to death in stairwells and elevators? When civilians and first responders were crushed to death when the towers collapsed? When passengers on the four planes were killed when they crashed into the buildings? When thousands of families were told that their loved ones would not be coming home? When the deadliest terrorist attack in history challenged the mightiest nation in the world?

President George Bush issued a statement which included these words: “Tonight, I ask for your prayers for all those who grieve, for the children whose worlds have been shattered, for all whose sense of safety and security have been threatened. And I pray they will be comforted by a power greater than any of us, spoken through the ages in  Psalm 23: ‘Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil, for you are with me.'”

“You are with me.”

A pastor was called to the home where a tragedy had occurred. A teenage boy was killed in a car crash. The embittered father snarled at the pastor, “Where was your God when my son was killed?” The minister sat silently for a moment, then replied, “He was where he was when his own boy was being killed.”

That wise pastor was saying that God is not oblivious to our sorrow. In fact he has entered our world of sorrow and is with us when we grieve. He is with us in the person of Jesus Christ his Son who endured the greatest of all suffering when he died for the sins of the world.

Bruce Milne described it this way: “(Jesus) enters into the full reality of death, not merely walking with us right up to the door only to pull back at the final second, leaving us to walk the dark valley on our own. He comes all the way with us right into the grey, after-death world of funeral parlors and the making of arrangements for the disposing of the body, the world of strained faces, hushed voices and tear-stained eyes.”

Of course that is not all. In his triumphant resurrection, our Lord “is alive forever and hence our contemporary. He still comes to transform broken, sorrowing and fearful lives with the sheer, uninhibited gladness of discovering him, alive and with us.”

Where was God on 9/11? President Bush got it right when he quoted the promise that God is with us when tragedy comes. He was with us on 9/11. If our faith is in Jesus, he will be with us whenever and however our end comes. He will be with us on that great day when he restores creation and there will be no more death, sorrow or crying, and no more 9/11s!

Pastor Randy Faulkner

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Living Life Under the Threat of Terrorism

The daily newspaper and television documentaries have been reminding me that we are approaching the twentieth anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on our nation. Newscasters have been interviewing survivors and family members of those who were killed. They are reliving before the cameras the terrible events of that September day in 2001.

Some of them fought back tears as they remembered fellow first responders, family members and co-workers who had died. Some testified to the new lease on life they had been given as survivors. Some shared deeply moving stories of their struggles with permanent injuries and PTSD.

Like you, I will never forget where I was and what I was doing when news of the destruction of the World Trade Center reached me. I was at Glen Eyrie, the home of the Navigators in Colorado Springs, attending meetings of a mission board. Flying home was out of the question. All commercial airlines were grounded for several days afterward. I remained at Glen Eyrie until I could get a flight home to Oklahoma City three days later.

Tomorrow we will remember the tragic events of September 11, the porous airports, the hi-jacked airliners, the heroism of the passengers on United Flight 93, the crash into the Pentagon, the rush to protect government officials, the confusion in the streets of New York City. We also recognize the profound changes to American life that have ensued, especially the willingness of Americans to trade privacy and personal freedom for increased security.

The precipitous withdrawal of American forces from Afganistan and the subsequent resurgence of the Taliban, has thoughtful people speculating about the possibility of new terrorist organizations emerging to threaten the United States of America. Some say that there have been “sleeper cells” of terrorists in our country all along, awaiting the opportunity to strike again with renewed confidence and deadly force. Is their signal to strike the anniversary we commemorate tomorrow?

What should we do? Should we close our borders and close our hearts? Should we load up on guns and ammo  and fuel our passions with suspicion, fear and prejudice? Should we hunker down and hide out until the second coming? What is our duty to one another, to ourselves, and to God as we seek to live healthy lives in a dangerous world?

You and I are not the first ones to ask such questions. At the beginning of the Second World War, the Oxford University scholar C.S. Lewis was invited to give a sermon at St. Mary’s Church in Oxford. This was occasioned by the uncertainty caused to Oxford undergraduates by the coming war with Germany. Lewis, himself a veteran of World War I, was asked to put world events into perspective for the young men of the university. How could they continue with their studies when war was imminent?

What Lewis said to those students about the war in Europe could apply as well to us living under the threat of terrorism. Permit me to extract just a few of the points he made. (To read his address in its entirety, you may find it online, or you may order the book of Lewis’s addresses edited by Walter Hooper, The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses.)

Lewis said we must remember that the world has always been a dangerous place. Life has never really been “normal.” The war (or terrorism) “creates no absolutely new situation; it simply aggravates the permanent human situation so that we can no longer ignore it.” We must accept it.

He reminds us that the great Christians of the past “thought it is good for us to be always aware of our mortality. … We see unmistakably the sort of universe in which we have all along been living, and must come to terms with it.”

Just as Lewis  believed the allied cause was just and that serving one’s country in the military was a legitimate duty, so it follows that he would agree that to oppose terrorism is a righteous cause. That said, it does not excuse or endorse every strategy, political, military, or covert that has been used in the war on terror. Those are prudential judgments to be made by the wisest of leaders under the guidance of God.

Ordinary people are not to suspend the ordinary course of life on account of the fear of terrorism. To the students living under the threat of war Lewis said that they should consider their work as scholars as work done for the glory of God. “The work of a Beethoven and the work of a charwoman become spiritual on precisely the same condition, that of offered to God, of being done humbly ‘as to the Lord.'”

Just as we are not to live in fear, we are not to give in to futility and frustration with the thought that life is so tentative and uncertain that there is no use pursuing one’s dreams and goals, marriage, children, career, serving God. No!

C.S. Lewis wrote, “A more Christian attitude, which can be attained at any age, is leaving futurity in God’s hands. We may as well, for God will certainly retain it whether we leave it to him or not. … Happy work is best done by the (person) who takes his/her long-term view somewhat lightly  and works from moment to moment ‘as to the Lord.’ It is only our daily bread that we are encouraged to ask for. The present is the only time in which any duty can be done or any grace received.”

” Christianity does not exclude any of the ordinary human activities. St. Paul tells people to get on with their jobs. He even assumes that they may go to dinner parties, even dinner parties given by pagans. … Under the aegis of his church and in the most Christian ages, learning and the arts flourish. The solution to this paradox is, of course, well known to you . ‘Whether ye eat or drink or whatsoever ye do , do all to the glory of God.'”

One thing I noticed in the interviews with survivors of 9/11 is that they did not stop living. Nor were they living in fear. The were determined not to be defeated by the threat of terrorism. They embraced the gift of life.

Pastor Randy Faulkner