Je Suis Pharaoh

This time we mean it! This time we’re good and mad! This time we won’t forget!

Last week’s events in Paris are the last straw. Now we finally get it: Terrorism is for real and we are really, really going to get tough.

Hmm. That’s what we said and how we felt on the 11th day of September 2001. Thirteen years ago it was not “Je Suis Charlie!” but “Nous sommes tous Americains!” For the nostalgia of it, I looked up an old editorial about that infamous day in France’s leading newspaper, Le Monde (my translation):

“In this tragic moment, when words seem so poor for expressing the shock that we feel, the first thing that arises in the soul is this: We are all Americans! We are all New Yorkers, as certainly as John Kennedy declared it in 1962 in Berlin. How could we not feel, as in the most grave moments of our history, profound solidarity with this people and this country, the United States?”

In the days following 9/11, Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter wrote, “I think it’s the end of the age of irony,” a comment later mocked, as the acute horror of Armageddon’s dress rehearsal leaked away and a new normal ended up absorbing irony pretty well. One of the first things I noticed after the Twin Towers fell was that humor columnist Joel Stein dropped off the face of the earth, or at least Time magazine. And it was hardly surprising because nothing was funny for a while, especially his brand of humor. But Stein came back eventually and was as “ironic” as ever, if that’s what Graydon Carter meant by irony.

It seems that it’s hard for us to stay outraged. To be sure, we have had plenty of momentary Islamic-related outrage in this country alone: the 1979 Iran hostage crisis, the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the 2009 Fort Hood “workplace violence,” the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings, the decapitation of journalist James Foley.

But there is something distractible about human nature. Maybe we should all reread the Pharaoh story in Exodus 7 to 12. Here was a man with 10 chances to take God seriously and allow his Israelite slaves to leave the country: water turned to blood, frogs, lice, flies, diseased livestock, boils, hail, locusts, darkness, and the death of the firstborn. Each national disaster scared him straight. But as soon as God let up the pressure, and the skies looked normal again, Pharaoh would forget how awful the plagues had been, and went back to his old self.

Everything is put in the Bible for a reason (Romans 15:4). If you find your godly anger over Islamic terror dissipating, just remind yourself of Pharaoh and what became of him.