Waking up to terrorism

If you are of a certain age, you knew exactly where you were that fateful day, 24 years ago. I was just graduated from college and was working at a Christian ministry. The broadcast on a local Chicago talk show was interrupted by the news anchor, first with a low-key announcement that a “plane of some kind” had hit one of the World Trade Center towers. That’s odd. I thought. Perhaps a rogue single engine plane.

I stayed a minute to listen. Then, the news anchor dropped in again. “A second plane has hit the tower.” Terrorism wasn’t really in our vocabulary much in 2001, but I knew this was it. To say our lives dramatically changed in these moments is an understatement. In the days and weeks that followed, we huddled around the television screen and watched in horror the replay of the twin towers falling, the Pentagon attack, and the crash of the plane in a field in Pennsylvania. We heard the gut-wrenching, horrific stories of employees leaping from buildings, the search for bodies, and the dazed family members wandering the streets of New York in vain hope to find their loved ones.

Yet we also witnessed something rare in these times: a solidarity among Americans, however temporary. President Bush’s leadership and rhetoric after 9/11 matched the moment, calling the nation to both resolve in the face of terror and humble prayer before God. America’s pastor, Billy Graham, delivered words of comfort and hope at a special service at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. Democratic and Republican lawmakers put aside their fierce ideological battles to sing the words “God Bless America” on the capitol steps. Around the nation, churches hosted prayer meetings and blood drives. Restaurants offered free food to first responders. Rescue teams raced to Ground Zero to help find survivors. As a young, coming-of-age adult, this was our Pearl Harbor, our rallying moment to both patriotism and the cause of fighting evil. Sadly, this national solidarity didn’t last long enough.

9/11 was a watershed for the cultural shifts that followed in the 21st century. While the war on terror was successful in many ways in eliminating terror networks that prey on innocents in the West, the long-protracted wars that followed did not make an unstable world more stable. This, along with the financial meltdown that would follow not long after and the incompetence in handling Hurricane Katrina, would sow a deep distrust of key institutions and spark a populism whose impacts are still being felt today. One can draw a straight historical line from Iraq to Barrack Obama to Donald Trump.

There were also spiritual questions that arose from 9/11. Questions about evil were fuel for a new atheism and an increased antagonism toward organized religion that is only now beginning to thaw. Yet 9/11 also saw many turn away from idols and toward Christianity. It was visible in New York, where Redeemer Presbyterian Church rallied to help victims and Pastor Tim Keller answered the hardest questions with a bold defense of the Christian faith. It was also evident in Washington, D.C., where Capitol Hill Baptist Church and Pastor Mark Dever ministered to grief-stricken and fearful public officials who were tasked with responding to this act of terror.

9/11 also rekindled, for a time, a conversation about genuine heroism and self-sacrifice. The nation was inspired by images and stories of first responders running toward danger rather than away from it, men who gave their lives so that their fellow citizens might live. Peggy Noonan, whose columns stirred the nation after the attack, wrote this:

We saw an old-fashioned kind of masculinity come back. We looked for meaning. We grieved the firemen. Three hundred forty three of them entered history that day when they went up the stairs in their 70 pounds of gear, and tried to impose order on chaos. We knew: Those outer borough boys were not part of the story but the heart of the story. We’ll never get over them. We don’t want to. So many of them . . . understood they were on a suicide mission. But they stayed and wouldn’t leave.

Nearly a quarter century later, we can look back with compassion for the precious lives lost to a radical evil ideology. We can thank God that the American experiment, though rattled, was not shaken. We can recommit ourselves to the work God has called us to do. We can offer the world the joy and truth of the Christian story, which promises that Christ has defeated sin, death, and the grave and is making all things new.

For younger generations, including my own children and the students I teach, 9/11 is history. But for those of us of a certain age, 9/11 was reality. Let’s pray that our solemn remembrances cause us to rekindle the same sense of purpose we had in the days after America was attacked. And let’s pray to God that we might, with the psalmist, “number our days” for as 9/11 reminds us, we may never know which one is our last.