Thoughts on the anniversary of 9/11
by David Sellnow
When the attacks of 9/11 happened in 2001, I was teaching at a ministry college. As the news shattered everyone’s thoughts that morning, the decision was made by the campus leaders that we would go forward and continue to have classes, because“we had important theological work to do.” I didn’t entirely agree with that decision, but I did what I was told.
My scheduled class was Introduction to Philosophy. The semester had barely begun, and nothing on the lesson plan for the day spoke to the moment of what our nation had just experienced. If we were going to sit in a classroom on that day, we needed to talk about something pertinent. I pulled up a reading we would have done later, from an 18th century German thinker, Gottfried Leibniz, from a book that he called Theodicy, or “justifying God.” [As if God needed us to provide justifications and explanations to validate his goodness.] Leibniz argued that because God is supreme and ineffable and perfect, the universe we live in—his creation—must be the best of all possible worlds. Otherwise, certainly, he wouldn’t have created things as they are. Leibniz even went so far as to say this: “If even the smallest evil that comes to pass in the world were missing in it, it would no longer be this world, which—with nothing omitted and all allowances made—was found to be the best by the Creator who chose it.”
9/11 attack on Pentagon (Wikimedia Commons)
I asked the young ministry students, “Is that the kind of message you would bring to a world where terrorists have hijacked and flown planes into towering buildings, killing thousands?” People who are scared and confused and suffering because of the ever-so-many evils that occur in this world don’t want some lofty attempt to explain why God must be good even though horrible things have happened. I had students in history classes at the college who would say things similar to Leibniz. They’d say that the Holocaust must have been in accordance with God’s will because it happened.(In their minds, everything that ever happens is God’s will.) They deflected blame away from unimaginable human sinfulness and tried desperately to make sense of tragic events.
Our logical (and illogical) theological attempts to justify and explain good vs. evil and God’s divine sovereignty do little to help hearts and minds that are in the midst of anguish. The French satirist Voltaire scathingly lampooned Leibniz in his tale of Candide (1759). Candide’s life was a progression of one misery after another. But he kept saying what his mentor, Professor Pangloss, had taught him: “All is for the best in the best of all possible worlds!” That is clearly not what we should say when horrific crimes are committed or dreadful harm befalls us.
Even Bible passages can be grabbed and used glibly in ways that are of no help to the hurting. Imagine visiting a family in the hospital waiting room outside of surgery, after their loved one has been hit by a drunk driver (or whatever other calamity) … and you say, “Don’t worry. ‘All things work together for good to those who love God’” (Romans 8:28). Would the family be comforted? They’d be more likely to scream in pain, “You show me how any of this is good or is ever going to be good!”
The students in the classroom asked me what, then, they could say. I asked them to remember the central truth of our faith—that there is nothing more important for us to know than Jesus Christ and him crucified (1 Corinthians 2:2). Go to the cross with people who are suffering. Go to the Garden of Gethsemane, where Jesus himself felt the weight of all the world’s sin and ugliness on his shoulders—the worst of all possible worlds. In that moment of agony, Jesus poured out prayers earnestly, “and his sweat became like great drops of blood falling down on the ground” (Luke 22:44). Our God is not one who needs us to defend and explain him to ourselves or others. Our God is the one who came to us in the midst of this world’s pain and death and experienced the suffering with us and for us. Jesus knows what it’s like to cry out, “God, where are you? Why have you forsaken us?” (Cf. Mark 15:34.) God did not respond to the problem of evil in the world by giving us lectures and textbooks to explain his ways. He responded by placing himself in the midst of humanity’s evil, incarnate in Jesus Christ. As prophecy had foretold, “He was despised and rejected by others; a man of suffering and acquainted with infirmity” (Isaiah 53:3). He was mocked and scorned, beaten and abused and killed. He bore our infirmities and carried our diseases; he was wounded and crushed for us, to heal and make us whole (Isaiah 53:4,5). Since we, the children of God, live in flesh and blood, God himself came to dwell with us in flesh and blood, so that he’d confront death for us and free us from death and all the evils of this world (cf. Hebrews 2:14-15).
That is our message to share with one another and others, in a world filled with grief and anguish. The best of all possible worlds is not what we’ll experience in the world as we know it here, but the hope and certainty we have in Christ. And we walk with one another and our neighbors, sharing our pains and supporting one another through the hardships and heartaches of this life. If one member suffers, all suffer together with their fellow souls who are one family under God (1 Corinthians 12:26).
May we not be insular in our approach to faith and life in this world, huddled in our classrooms discussing fine points of doctrine while neglecting opportunities to be engaged in daily life with others in our communities. Our God, in Jesus Christ, was committed to meeting people where they’re at and facing with us the problems of life as we encounter them. Christ was the embodiment of God in our world. We are called to be the embodiment of Christ to our neighbors.
