Lest We Forget

I realized I missed, somehow, an opportunity to speak to the tragic events of September 11, the tenth anniversary of which recently passed. It may have had to do with the fact that I spent the actual day in church and at a wedding; so when I came to write my last blog, it had already, somehow, gone from my mind. I was reminded powerfully of it today, at morning Chapel in school.

The college, bless their hearts, tried to play sound bites of calls made on that day; to make up for poor sound quality, they displayed in tiny print the transcript of the calls, but I was at such a ridiculous angle to the screen, I could not see it.

So I caught bits, here and there, of what was said; mostly I was struck by the reliving of that day through voices of people who were there. I do not know if those recorded calls were all from people who died, but I might assume at least some of them were. At the end, despite the static, one phrase came through. It was clear the man speaking was crying; and he said: “I love you so much.”

I cannot comprehend the loss that so many suffered that day; I was fifteen, about to turn sixteen at the time, at the YMCA with my family. Within four years, I was in Iraq with an artillery unit of the 101^st Airborne, at a place and time that would see the loss of six men from our unit. It was a time where, suddenly, I worried about my own life, if I would come back home. I thought Iraq would be a year that I would get through, and come home with a ton of money. But after one truck was hit and four of the five men inside it killed, suddenly I had to think about the fact that I might not actually make it home.

I don’t know what my mom went through, hearing me talk to her about this from thousands of miles away. And I don’t know what the mothers and wives of the men we lost went through when they found out their loved ones had been taken. And I don’t know what we go through that we so eagerly pursue the death of people.

As a Christian, to in any way claim, suggest, insinuate, allude to the idea that God does anything but mourn when a human being is killed especially when that person does not have a personal relationship with Him, is to believe that God’s love is conditional, based on actions. As a Christian, I know that is not the case. Jesus Christ died for Osama Bin Laden, and when he orchestrated the monumental evil that was the attacks of 9/11, I can guarantee Jesus wept, knowing Bin Laden would have to be punished for it. It is despicable to me, as conveyors of God’s love, that we should ever approach the killing of a human being with anything except the heaviest of hearts. Must it be done? Absolutely, evil must be punished. But to assert that we must kill because it “makes us feel good” is an act more despicable as Christians than the acts committed by Muslims, who do not perhaps carry the same knowledge that humans bear the image of God, and that God sacrificed His Son horribly so that we might be reborn into what He intended from the beginning.

We are all children, we are all fathers, husbands, mothers, wives, sons and daughters. There is always someone who loves us, who feels that we should not have died, whose life is forever changed by our absence. Americans are not the only ones who “love so much.” Keep that in mind the next time we punish someone for evil acts; carry it out, in Gods justice, by all means. But do not relish it.

See you Friday.