9/11

I am grieved at the loss of life. Any life. So on this anniversary of 9/11, I think of the families that were broken up by the active hatred of certain groups. But I also pray for our nation, that we would love our enemies. I pray that our hearts would be formed more by the heart of Jesus than by vindictiveness (or even some sense of justice).

Let's note that this is the seventh anniversary. Might it be possible to follow the spirit of the First Testament and forgive the debt that we feel "those people" have to us? There will never be productivity in being fueled by a "never forget!" mentality. We should learn our lessons and remember those for sure. But that part of an event that causes us to hate or be bitter . . . let's hold that so loosely as to forget it.

Personally, I am so patriotic to the vision of America as a "city on a hill" that I saw almost instantly the grievance "those people" had against us. I recognized the inhumanity of what they did to us, but I also saw the ongoing inhumanity we have shown to them. (Don't get me started.) That made it easier for me to forgive, in that "it didn't really directly affect me" sort of way. (That's what I mean by "city on a hill." We are willing to take the high road in every case, except that this is a fantasy at this point.) Even if one of my family members had been murdered on 9/11, I would still say, "Right grievance, wrong method." Death is always the wrong method. But systematic oppression, in this case through supporting one side then another without a second thought on a couple of occasions—with disastrous consequences for them—is a grievance that must be addressed. They just did it in a terrible way.

Now this is the key point: Even if they didn't have a legitimate grievance, we would still be called to forgive them if they attacked us out of the blue with no possible reason. Instead, we have two ongoing wars related to 9/11. Some would say that there are 50 million people that have been liberated from systematic oppression under Hussein. I don't buy it. We used death to "liberate" them. That's never a liberation. Granted, people are better off without Hussein as their leader. He was a brutal, terrorist dictator. He deserved to be retired. I'm just not sure that there was any moral basis for us to invade and further destroy an already decimated country. We could quibble about details all day, for there is supporting evidence on both sides. I choose to look at the evidence and say, "We should not have resorted to war for this cause." Again, only tangentially related to 9/11, but our wars were a response to that impetus. I think the world sees our wars as directly related to 9/11.

It's time for a seven-year jubilee. Let's forgive the debt of hatred. Let's find a way to love and serve our enemies.