9/11 - Faith and Clarity and Choice

Spirituality Column #44
September 11, 2007
Current In Carmel (IN) newspaper

9/11 - Faith and Clarity and Choice
By Bob Walters

In early September 2002 PBS Frontline aired “Faith and Doubt at Ground Zero,” chronicling America’s and specifically New York’s religious take on the previous year’s terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center.

The show truly wasn’t about faith in God; it was about doubting God. It perpetuated the myth that those four hijacked airliners and the resulting loss of life and peace were a “senseless act.” It suggested morality is in the eye of the beholder. It said confusion about faith is normal. It indicted cultural misunderstandings.

Now six years later, if we remember nothing else about 9/11, with great clarity we must remember this: those violent attacks had clear moral purpose and made perfect sense to the perpetrators. Theirs was the ultimate act of faith. Those people attacked us because they most definitely understand our culture, which represents evil to them.

Since then we have all had to make choices about God and about our faith in the light, or perhaps I should say, in the dark, of that tragedy.

My choice was to learn all I could about God. My choice was to learn all I could about Islam. My choice was to study the philosophical and practical foundation and implications of religious and personal freedom in America.

My choice remains to love and fear God, to have faith in his plan on earth and in heaven, and to rejoice in our salvation through Jesus Christ. My choice is to fight evil where I find it, and when it finds me or those I love. My choice is to love my country.

Evil found the United States that day. God didn’t take the day off. It was a day He put us on His shoulders. It was a day to remember that God loves all mankind, and proof that our fallen world can be just awful.

I do know this: I stopped being confused about 9/11 long ago, and am able to make choices.

I choose God. I choose America. And I choose faith.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) wrote a newspaper editorial, partially excerpted here, that was published in the Indianapolis Star on the one-year anniversary of 9/11.  In Bob's book Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary (2011), the clip of the original Star article from 9/11/02 is on page 243.