America Attacked:

Where Was God and

What Should We Do?

by Lael Caesar 

Responses by David D'Amico, 

Lynn R. Heath, David R. Larson, Burns McLean,

John B. Wong, Shawn Brace and Frank J. Lemon

Lael O. Caesar:

There is a second preoccupation  in our question: What should we do? I reflect, and respond subjectively: "I, for one, should be embarrassed."

Why? Because of the pitiful difference between my cowardice and the courage of Rep. Barbara Lee of Oakland, CA. I admit, to begin with, that I am not one of the nation's security agents. I am not even your commonplace wimp. I am a first class wimp. Tuesday September 11, I drank water not from thirst, but to neutralize the acids wreaking havoc on my duodenum. That night, under the cloud of dark gloom which the slaughter stretched over my head, I trudged the streets of Country Acres, Berrien Springs, MI, hands sunk deep in my pockets, shoulders slumped. I struggled to keep my body moving--I should have been jogging--and struggled with my status as a conscientious objector. Cowardice or conscience won out in the end, and I returned home assured that living by the sword was not an option. My faith could not accommodate a response of terror to the terror that had been perpetrated that morning.

Later in the week I acknowledged to a colleague my awareness of the need for dispassionate analysis of the situation. Such level headedness would provide for responsible response on the part of an aggrieved nation. A call for balance was clearly in order. I also confessed my reserve about being the one to make such a call. Not that I know of any evidence that my silence would help the cause of justice over blood thirst; or that it would permit my government to act in proper awareness of the gamut of public opinion. It could hardly honor my faith, my understanding of the divine character which I claim leads my life.

I cannot imagine my Lord Jesus Christ encouraging a rhetoric of annihilation of those who must be demons because they have done this. Had these people lived in my neighborhood I would probably now join in the astonished resentment that such criminal elements had shared my streets, my air, and my greetings. Yet my faith provides me no such categorical distinction between despicable brutes and myself. 

 It is not my understanding that the heart of people who kill 5,000 at a blow is deceitfully, desperately, unknowably wicked, while my own is somewhat nicer. In the accomplishments of Adolf Hitler I see the twists of my natural self. And in the awareness that there is hope for every mass murderer, woman abuser and pedophile I find the only hope I know or need for myself. And because my silence would make none of this known, it was a dereliction of duty at a time when duty most urgently demanded faithful discharge.

By contrast with my cowardice, Rep. Lee has dared to speak. In 1999 she voted alone against 424 members of her house who supported the idea of bombing Serbia. Now she stands alone at an even more awkward time--at a time when America is angry. Dealing with a resolution unanimously passed in the Senate to grant President Bush "all necessary and appropriate force" against those responsible for the airplane attacks, Rep. Lee cast the single "nay" vote while 420 approved the measure. She is patently outvoted. But she knows what to do so that she will not be responsible for us becoming the evil we denounce.

David D'Amico:

On Sunday morning, September 16, 2001, my wife Ana and I were sitting in the crowded sanctuary of a famous New York City church. The city's tragedy made all of us in the pew instant fellow travelers. While the organ played, a commander of the Coast Guard and his wife, he in full uniform, assured me that two destroyers were in the New York harbor ready and willing to defend our city from military attacks.

Closer to me sat a young man, in his thirties, Bob, who told me without my asking: "I work at the World Trade Center."  He almost burst into tears. "I am glad you are alive and in church," I replied.

While the Coast Guard commander gave me a message of military security, Bob was telling me without expressing it that he was searching for God amid tragedy.

I could notice that he had not been in church often.  As gently as I could, I tried to help him find the hymns and follow the liturgy from the bulletin.  During the singing of an anthem, I could not resist my paternal feelings and extended my arm around his back, like I would have done with my three grown sons. Bob is the age of one my sons.

The minister's sermon title, "The Weakest Link," was a play on the words of a popular television program. He clearly wished to upend popular culture with the truth of the Gospel. His text was II Corinthians 12:9-10. His message:  In the arms of Jesus and his grace we are strong.

For the benediction at the end of the service,  the minister asked the congregation to hold hands as a sign of solidarity, warmth, and strength. We were one in the Spirit.

The Coast Guard commander left early because his cell phone alerted him to go back to military duty. His wife stayed and shook our hands before leaving.  We assured her that we would pray for the Coast Guard, the President and all others involved. "Do you have a Bible?" I asked Bob. He said he did and that he would start availing himself of the ministry of the church that had had prayer and counseling services the previous week.

I cried when singing the third stanza of "Crown Him With Many Crowns.

Crown Him the Lord of Peace, Whose power a scepter sways

From pole to pole, that wars may cease, And all be prayer and praise.

His reign shall know no end, And round His pierced feet

Fair flowers of paradise extend Their fragrance ever sweet.

Ana and I learned quickly last week what the preacher had expressed so eloquently. We were the weakest link when helping Todd find his girl friend after he had been rescued and taken to the New York University Medical Center. We were the weakest link when embracing the police officer near Ground Zero on Saturday.   We were the weakest link when telling the rescue workers that many were praying for them. Now we were the weakest link when holding Bob's hands as he went his way to find out whether he would have a job on Monday at the remains of the World Trade Center.

As we attempt to continue our mission to the diplomatic community of the United Nations, we realize that the cries of Jesus over Jerusalem bring tears to our eyes as we cry for New York City. We are the weakest link in the urban mission to the diaspora--the peoples of the world scattered from their homes in India, Pakistan, Germany, England, and yes, from Texas, Georgia, North Carolina, Arizona, Colorado, and from the ends of the world. 

We hope that in Christ we can be made strong.

Lynn R. Heath:

The calamity that breaks our hearts is often one that opens our eyes.  American culture is composed of a pragmatism that usually prevents our feelings from clouding our vision.

In a creation where there is free will, God is present as always working in all things for good.  Free choice is meaningless if those who choose evil cannot actually do evil.  God works, as should I, to bring about good ends even from evil beginnings.

It seems to me that a government is obligated to defend and protect its people.  I am in favor of a strong military (as opposed to police/legal) response.  If thugs invade my house and harm my wife and children, I will kill them if I can.  I feel morally obligated to protect my family in any way necessary.  And if there were no 911 emergency telephone number or police or justice system and the thugs got away, I believe it would be my responsibility to pursue them and kill them, if possible.For the United States there is no 911 or police or justice system to which we can turn.  We are it.

I have read many good arguments and heard them in Sabbath School which are opposed to my position.  I have sometimes been temporarily persuaded that I am wrong; yet if it were happening to me, or if I had to make the decisions which the president must make, I realize with sadness that these are the enemies I would kill.  I would be as specific as I could. It seems to me there must be boundaries and consequences.  I am using the word "kill" in order to avoid any euphemistic softening that might deceive myself or others.

At one time there were pirates on the high seas and there are records which show how bad it was then.  The United States and England systematically took out the pirates ship by ship, one at a time, and made it so difficult to be a pirate that the risk was not worth the reward.

It seems to me that it would be expensive yet worth while to approach the present terrorism problem in similar way.  I am opposed to war in the conventional sense because it wreaks havoc on the innocent.  I am opposed to a police action because this is a type of warfare in which adjudication seems useless as a deterrent.

David R. Larson:

At least two ways of talking about how civilized nations around the world should respond to the terrorist attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001 are surfacing.  One of these emphasizes prevention and precision.  It claims that the purpose of all responses should be to make it impossible, or at least difficult, for such horrible madness to happen again.  The other emphasizes retaliation and comprehensiveness.  It claims that the purpose of all responses should be to exact retribution on the terrorists and those who harbor them even if doing so, some state and others imply, this means that we will harm or kill many noncombatant and innocent bystanders in the process.  Although we also hear variations and combinations of these two alternatives, they seem to be the two primary options.

My own view is that the first alternative is responsible, both ethically and prudentially, but that the second is not.  I am particularly concerned that some are beginning to describe the response of the United States and its allies as a "crusade" in the fierce battle between "good" and "evil."  This concern rests upon a number of considerations.

To begin with, I can think of no word more likely to inflame millions of Muslims around the world with justifiable revulsion than the English term "crusade" and its equivalents in other languages.  Given the history of that term, and the evil uses of military power in the history of Christianity and other religions about which it cannot help but remind everyone, it is a wonder that some are now using it in public discourse.  The sooner we stop using this word the better!

A related consideration is that framing our responses as a battle between "good" and "evil" allows us to ignore how much good there is in the lives of those who have attacked us and how much evil there is in our own.  Good and evil are not merely subjective alternatives like idiosyncratic preferences for either vanilla or chocolate ice cream.  Neither is it the case that they are equally present in all persons and groups.  Nevertheless, when we portray those who have attacked us as wholly evil and ourselves as wholly good we deceive ourselves in ways that pave the way for us to act in atrocious ways.  It is difficult to demonize individuals and groups when we speak  without eventually doing so when we act, something that seems obvious once we state it.  But an early step on the swift road toward crimes against humanity is the choice to maximize the evil of others and to minimize our own.

Still another factor plunges us into the ongoing debates in philosophical and theological circles about retributive justice.  No one doubts that its purposes should include preventing current or would-be terrorists from harming others and, if possible, encouraging and enabling them to turn from their evil ways.  The question is whether retributive justice should also seek vengeance. For both practical and ethical reasons, I doubt that it should.

On the one hand, it is difficult to give as much harm as one has received, no more and no less, and even if one succeeds, doing so often evokes additional rounds of violence as individuals and groups keep trying to "even the score."  As we have often observed and experienced, this futile process can continue for centuries with massive losses on all sides.

On the other hand, one cannot help but wonder about the moral quality of our lives when we find satisfaction in causing others to experience as much needless and  pointless suffering as we have.  Although I prefer the just war tradition to that of pacifism, I believe that the second rightly insists that somewhere, even though it will be painful to do so, we must stop the endless round of violence begetting even more violence. The sooner we stop this senseless cycle the better!

Yet another consideration applies only to those positions that defend avoidable and intentional attacks upon noncombatant men, women and children.  Given the generations of ethical thought that have condemned this practice, and given the reality that it is neither logically nor psychologically possible to make the maxim of this practice a universal norm that applies to us and to those we love in the same way and degree that it applies to those we dislike, I find it impossible to imagine how civilized human beings can justify it morally.  

Thankfully, few attempt to do so.  But that some in places of great influence either ignore or reject the distinction between combatant and noncombatant citizens is worrisome even though in contemporary wars it is often difficult to distinguish the two.  It is one thing to attempt to honor the distinction but fail and another and worse thing to dishonor it from the outset.

We often say that the economic well-being of a society is best measured by what its policies and practices afford those who possess the least.  It is also true that a civilization's political health is best assessed by how it responds when under attack.  If nothing else, the horrors of September 11, 2001 give us an opportunity to demonstrate to ourselves and to all others what kinds of persons and nations we truly are.

Burns McLean:

 The question in my mind is whether the month-after-month situation in Iraq is any less tragic than the one-off situation in New York and Washington.  The numbers are about the same:  5,000 Iraqi children die each month as a result of the sanctions than were imposed because of the Gulf War.

If we are not equally horrified by this statistic, is it because we believe that the lives of people in the free world are worth more than the lives of those who live under a military dictatorship?

I'm not saying that Saddam should not be  held accountable for his actions.  Its just that I'm very uncomfortable with a lot of this "us and them" rhetoric at the moment.

John B. Wong:

Lurking behind the question, "Where was God on September 11, 2001?" and screaming aloud is the more indicting question, "Why does a good God, if He is all-powerful, allow such unspeakable horrors?"  Of course, this question presents the problem of evil—its genesis, manifestation and final resolution. Theologians, philosophers, ethicists and men and women of all ages have wrestled with pain over this conundrum for centuries.

Let me posit a construct with some degree of coherence that makes sense to me. Let me hear your critique so that we can work together toward a more perfect model. If Christians don’t express themselves correctly about God and speak well of Him, who will? 

Some 15 billion years ago, God created the universe. From eternity till then, the Triune council had met numerous times. The agenda had always centered on: "Let’s do some creating." Creativity is part of God’s nature.  That urge is so strong that its suppression is impossible.  To an infinitely small degree, asking God not to create would be like asking Augustine not to think of God or Mozart not to compose music.

Why were there so many meetings and hesitations about creating, especially about creating free human beings, on the part of the Triune members?  The "problem," if we can call it that, was God’s foreknowledge.  As soon as the subject of creating the universe and humans was conceived, all the implications and consequences were before God's "eyes." 

The members of the Trinity foresaw all:  love, freedom, its abuse, evil, sin, rebellion, suffering, damage control, the plan of rescue and redemption, the temporary reconfiguration of the Godhead and its incarnation and the unbelievably destabilizing God-challenge.  Before them were the death of God’s grandson Abel, the Flood, the death of Jesus-the-Incarnate, the lions’ devouring Christians in the Coliseum, the Black Plague, the millions dying in the French Revolution, the American Civil War, World Wars I and II, the Holocaust, the Nanjing Massacre in the Sino-Japanese War, and the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center crumbling to the ground.  More vividly, divine foreknowledge saw the millions of clenched fists and wrenched hearts pointing to Heaven with the question, "Where is God?"

Each member of the Triune Council at various times had repeatedly tabled the vote. Eons went by. But the urge to create could no longer be contained, even though the Triune fellowship was all sufficient and it members were not lonesome, lonely or feeling any need other than the desire to create.  But a breakthrough came when the Second Member, who previously had deferred to further discussion along with the others, now voted to go ahead with creation. 

Immediately they heard a Big Bang. Or did they see it?

More discussions followed and 10 billion years went by.  The earth, which humans were eventually to inhabit, was brought into existence. More discussions followed, especially during the creation of the pre-Adamic scenario (To see my creation-evolution model on this web site, please click here.)  About 10,000 years ago, planet Earth was adjusted and made suitable for human habitation according to the "Anthropic Cosmological Principle."

Behind the Triune struggle are these issues:  God is love.  He is the most free of all free beings. He is the Creator, and the urge to create, which is a part of His nature, is irrepressible.  God's love desires nothing but the best for His created beings.  Nothing but the best includes what He Himself has, namely love, freedom, and creativity among other attributes.

     Genuine love cannot be coerced. It must be expressed on the basis of freedom. Among other things, genuine freedom includes the possibilities of loving as well as hating and rejecting the one who loves.  Thus freedom entails the risk that beings and things other than those which are loving and ideal can happen.  These non-loving beings and non-ideal things in the temporal-spatial dimensions occur as moral and natural evil.

     As I have said elsewhere on this web site, I believe that God, with His omniscience, foreknows all the morally and eternally significant choices we will make with our God-given freedom right down to the end of our lives. This includes the terrorists' decisions. Without encroaching upon our freedom, or acting contrary to His own character and attributes, God does everything in our favor by lining up positive elements that point toward love and goodness under His sovereign control to make the ultimate choices of free beings realizable, the choices He already foreknows. 

     I posit such foreknowledge on the basis that God knows all the details of the infinite situational factors of this universe:  life and non-life, organic and inorganic; time, space, energy, matter, and their infinite possible alternatives, combinations, and outcomes; order, complexity, or chaos whether Newtonian, quantum, or Heisenbergian, as well as all the eliminatable dead options. Because He knows all the live options that are open to us, plus our past behaviors and patterns and those of others, which are based on our genetics and other things, all of which He also knows to an infinite degree, there is not much of a mystery for God as to what choices we will make.

     I believe that God's omniscience is compatible with limited, yet genuine human freedom. I have no problem in positing that God limits His power for the sake of honoring human freedom, a gift He lovingly bestows upon us. To think, however, that He limits His omniscience, that He chooses not to know what choices humans will make, is quite another matter.

      As I understand Him, our God is not a dichotomous, split-minded deity whose "right mind" does not know what His "left mind" does or think. Anything God does not know, whether it be our choices or anyone or anything or any situation in the universe, is potentially a threat to His ontological being. This unknown factor potentially has an upper hand over God.

     It is not enough to say that God with His infinite resources can cope with any situation. That would be like saying that someone has all the resources necessary to cope by picking up the pieces after the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City have been brought down. The God who knew that the towers would be demolished independently of His will to prevent or allow this destruction is surely greater than a deity who is caught by surprise.     

     Assuming that such a scenario is putatively valid, I maintain that God even knows what He chooses not to know. Why? Because a God who knows what He chooses not to know is greater than a deity who doesn't know.  And by definition, as Anselm puts it, God is a Being than which nothing greater can be conceived.  I prefer to think of Him as the One over whom nothing and no one in all reality can prevail.  Absolutely nothing!

     God is not only omniscient and omnipotent, He is also the freest of all free beings. There is no possibility, probability or actuality, including the events of September 11, 2001, in which He is not free to be involved or to know.  Logically speaking, there are a few things God is not free to do. God cannot will Himself out of existence, to be God and not-God, to do evil, to be illogical and absurd, to be anything contrary to His character as we know it from His revelations, such as to renege on the gift of freedom He gave to the terrorists.  

     God is free to limit His power and in so doing He need impinge on neither His omniscience nor the creaturely freedom with which He has gifted us. As long as God refrains from interference or imposing any kind of control, direct or indirect, His knowledge of the future alone would not compromise human freedom, which at most, however one defines it, is a limited freedom.      

     For theology to make sense in our lives and thinking, it ultimately has to come down to a personal and existential level. Sure, we picture God and His attributes in anthropomorphic terms. But how else can we do it? Between the extreme of a "process theism" God whose being and fulfillment are dependent on a material world of some sort, which to me is not the God portrayed in the Bible, and the opposite extreme of a God who has ordained and predestined every event in the physical world, as well as every detail of the lives of His created beings, thus making history just a forward replay of His finished product, where do we find the significant human freedom that we cherish? 

     Somewhere in human history and in our own lives we find the markings of God’s dynamic interactions with us. Deep down in our existential struggles, in the face of the evil and sufferings of this world, our souls cry out for a God who, we can be confident, has the power, will and goodness to vanquish evil with certainty. Any God less than that is too effete. 

     Made in the image of this God, here and now, we want the gift of genuine creaturely freedom to be authenticated. Yet, staring at us bloody and raw are the horrors which are a consequence of unprincipled uses of freedom. God is in the same dilemma as we are, so it seems.

     A contingency, philosophically speaking, is neither an impossibility nor a necessity. This means that a contingency is a possibility. A necessary condition, being or proposition is one which depends on nothing else. By contrast, a contingent condition or being is one which is dependent on something or someone, as yet uncertain, in order to occur. Thus, God is a necessity. Our world, humans, the future are all contingencies, because they all might not have been or might not have occurred, from our human viewpoint.

     Using David Larson's definition, a contingency is an event that might or might not actually occur. As such, contingencies are inherently uncertain. From this point of view, future events are contingent because it is uncertain whether they will or will not occur.

      As brought out in other discussions, we all believe that God is omniscient but we have different understandings of what this means.  I tend to think that there is nothing that is uncertain to God. This is contrary to the Whiteheadian and Hartshornian views that the future cannot be known in detail even by God. I believe the uncertainty is with us.

     I hold that even Heisenberg’s uncertainties are known by God's omniscience. Mathematicians, it is said, can use calculus, high math, and computers to map out the exact pattern a certain drunk will walk, taking into consideration millions of facts (such as the thickness of the heels of his shoes, the thousand minute variations of the surface of the road, the direction of the wind, the condition of his hip joints, etc, etc).  If there are one trillion possibilities that might shape a certain event, God knows them all. If there are ten trillion, trillion, trillion possibilities as how an event might turn out, He knows them well. Let that number take the infinite regress or progress, and He is on top of all of them.

     Nonetheless, even if certain events or choices by free beings will lead to tragedy, individually or globally (how more relevant and graphic could the tragedy of September 11 tragedy be?), God may or may not interfere because of His respect for our creaturely freedom. He knows who is going to respond to His grace and who will reject His love. I’ve come to think that He knows who will be saved. We are the ones who do not know.

     With this belief, I finally came to a solution (satisfactory to me at least) as to whether those who lived before Christ’s incarnation will be saved, or whether those infants or children who died before the age of decision, such as the ones buried in the rubbles of New York and Washington, D. C., will be. Love and justice demand that salvation be equally offered to everyone who might want to accept it. Thus, those born before Christ, as well as the hijacked passengers, the inhabitants of the Twin Towers, even those who masterminded the September 11 attacks, will be judged according to the light they had in their circumstances. God knows how they would have responded  had they been presented with the truth and the gospel. Based on that knowledge, God will either grant them salvation or not.

     Of course, some are familiar with a view some attribute to Ellen G. White on this matter.  It is that some people, particularly those whose freedom to love or not love, whose essential humanity, was prohibited by others from developing, will be as if they had never been.  Well, that is certainly one way to deal with the problem. I think mine portrays God as having a more personal and caring touch with His creation.

     Getting back to the Whiteheadian view, one of my questions is this: If contingent future events are outside the purview of God’s omniscience, and therefore outside His power to plan and cope for in advance (sure, some will say He is able to cope once the event has occurred—like the mop-up job once a bomb has exploded), does that uncertainty not control God?      

     For example, if the uncertain future is forever out of God’s grasp, what guarantees against and coping mechanisms for are there for the possibility of second or third rebellions against God? Given the millions of saved with their freedom exercised over infinite stretches of time or eternity, the possibility of a repetition of Adam's Fall cannot be ruled out. I myself would not like to relive the saga of "The Great Controversy Between Good and Evil" and all the pain and suffering of humankind. 

     Given my concepts of God’s omniscience and omnipotence, I do have an answer regarding the possibility of second or third rebellions against God, should they occur. I hold that any relentless push toward any form of determinism, indeterminism, self-determinism, absolute divine sovereignty, human freedom, and degrees of openness of God and reality, God’s omniscience and foreknowledge, lands us in the realm of mystery.

     I would feel uneasy about leaving my destiny in the hands of these so-called free moral agents over stretches of time and eternity, never sure that one of these might not abuse the agential freedom again and again and again! I would rather put my trust in the goodness, justice and love of an omnipotent Creator. I know that deep down in me (I can only speak for myself), there is that longing for closure--personal and cosmic.

     Might it not be unnecessary for God to act should rebellion be repeated? I'd like to think that we, the veterans of sin, suffering and redemption, would be assigned the roles of judge, jury and penal administrator for anyone involved in the second, third or any subsequent rebellion against God. As David Larson said, at that point we would "have been there, done that and had enough." We could play the "videos" of human history, individual and corporate. I am absolutely certain that we would have a sure verdict for that "wayward" member, one without a reasonable doubt. No coercive force need be employed. That wayward member would beg for a state of non-being after marshaling any kinds of evidences and being granted any witnesses and testimonies he or she desired. The trials could last as long as necessary while the effects of the rebellion are contained. God would just "sit there" and enjoy the whole scene. 

     That, perhaps, would be His crowning glory: to see free, moral beings deciding on what is best for them without any of His help. In deep satisfaction, the Trinity could then univocally sigh, "Ah, our creation was not in vain, as we have known all along! We knew it when we first decided to create free beings. We know it now." 

     For the redeemed, the will to enforce a collective aspiration for a universe at peace and in harmony would find its grounding in the law of Heaven set up and subscribed to by all heavenly inhabitants. This enforcement of a commonly shared will would not be coercive to the wayward who, by virtue of their membership in the heavenly abode, would have personally sworn to uphold the "Heavenly Constitution."

     One's freedom, when encroaching upon another's freedom, is in itself a passive form of coercion. I want to retain my freedom to be what I want to be, to live in peace and harmony and perfect relationship with God and His created order. I have the freedom not to be robbed of this freedom or not to have it disrupted by someone else's abuse of freedom. Should disagreement and unresolved issues come up as is often the case among free beings, we can always refer them to the "Living Constitution," and its unerring interpretation, whose name is God.

     Now let us return to our discussion of love, freedom, evil and suffering and the Triune struggles for creating free moral beings, including Satan who can bring on evil and horrors on a massive scale, such as those of September 11, 2001.  How many of us have said in times like these "If I were God, I could probably do better." 

    It has dawned on me that only love can authenticate love, only genuine freedom can guarantee the exercise of genuine love while risking the expression of genuine hate.  Love, however, being the essence of God, is such a strong attraction that it will be genuine freedom’s ultimate choice and resting ground. That reality is what will guarantee against second, third or any subsequent rebellions by free beings. God knows no defeat.  Freedom and the consequential evil is only a detour.  His ultimate intention for His creation cannot be thwarted.

     On an existential level, the human carnage and inexplicable sufferings of September 11 demand justice by the cosmic Ruler.  After touring the rubble site, Hillary Clinton said it seemed she was standing at the edge of hell. Except, of course, the people in that hell had not chosen there to be their abode, neither did they deserve it. Cosmic justice must be meted out in the form of resurrected bodies for a life eternal. In comparison to September 11, and whatever remaining temporary life some who died may have lived to the fullest after that date, the glory and reality of the resurrected life will be worth far exceedingly, abundantly above all one could think.

     Trying to arbitrate all the tensions amidst the reflection of love, free will, evil and human suffering, I frequently arrive at the tentative proposition that what happens is the best that could happen in the context of God's character, human freedom and a fallen world.  Then I recoil by asking myself, "Was what happened on September 11 the best that could have happened?" 

     It  sounds callous and non-caring to answer "yes." In fact, on the surface that answers resembles the despicable celebration for the events of September 11 of some groups in another part of the world.  Yet, if the answer is "no," a ghost haunts us in the form of the accusation that God somehow is less than all-powerful, all-perfect and all-knowing.  We are left with the impression that God is not in total control of what goes on here on earth.  Therein lies the mystery of evil.  I maintain that the only one who can explain evil is God.  We shall look forward to hearing that lecture!

     The Archbishop of St. Patrick Cathedral, quoting Aquinas, says that evil is nothing, non-being.  How then can one fight against nothing?  Many speak about evil, but few have identified the Evil One in public discourse.  Even a staunch evangelical Billy Graham did not cite Satan, Lucifer, the Devil, the Evil One by name in the Friday Memorial Service.  Is evil really the faceless and nameless one?  Evil in its abstraction does not bother us. It is only poignant when it touches our own personal lives, individually and as a community.  Thank God, evil and the Evil One does not have the final say.  God has the final word, and it's going to be nothing but good.

     When we consider what we should do in the aftermath of September 11, 2001, our thoughts turn to what is doable in a practical world.  From a Christian perspective, in different degrees we do as we always do in the face of tragedy, whether personal, national or international.  We pray, seek God’s guidance, comfort and sustaining power and study His Word.  We open our hearts to the love and support of Christian and other communities. We grieve mostly in private, we sometimes act irrationally, we have a "funeral," literally and figuratively speaking.  We pick up the pieces, with courage, hopefully now wiser and humbler, and move on. We do so not aimlessly, but reminding ourselves that every happening that outrages our senses of justice and love reinforces the reality of this world's fallenness. We look heavenward and toward resurrected life for the ultimate resolution.  This is my experience, what is yours?

     Regarding what we should do in response to the events of September 11, I believe David Larson has outlined a balanced approach in light of contemporary debates in the United States. I too am more persuaded by just war theories than pacifism. It is my observation that pacifism works only if there is an overwhelmingly large number of other people who are willing to arm themselves and die for the causes pacifists espouse.

     At minimum, especially for Christians, The Ambrosian-Augustinian concept of just war with all its subsequent modifications demands that whatever we do must be:  (1)  for a just cause—to eradicate terrorism; (2) with the right and competent authority—United Nations resolution and proper authorization from the United States Congress; (3) with the right and defined intention—to achieve a peaceful world free of terrorism for all people; (4) in proportion to Christian and democratic values—war acts with their attendant violence must not have even worse effects, such as causing indiscriminately injuries and deaths to untold numbers of people and the unraveling of the international community; (5) in line with our utmost concern for the innocent and most vulnerable of society; (6) weighed against the foreseeable outcome and probability of success if war is undertaken; and (7) the last resort and unavoidable option open to deliberation and implementation.  A scenario rendering this last resort to war unnecessary would be that if all the terrorists were truly converted to Christian love and voluntarily surrendered themselves, asked for forgiveness, restitution, and submitted themselves to deserved punishment.

     After watching Amnesty International's television documentary on Afghanistan last night, I take #4 and #5 above very seriously.  To see the oppressed and suffering people, especially women and children in that country, caught as they are in the midst of the moral and natural evils of this world, is to want to shun war at all costs, unless we have no other option.

     Ultimately, national and international tragedies break down into individual and personal tragedies, albeit in different degrees.  That's where the struggle lies.  We should be thankful that in our existential struggles and pain we can still hear that distant refrain:  evil and the evil one do not have the final say. God does. Hope beckons.   Life in our resurrected bodies is not just a vision, it is a reality because it is the cry from our hearts.

David R. Larson:

     Although I appreciate Doctor Wong's remarks, I do experience some tension between his claim that God is now wholly in control of all things and his equally strong claim that God has given human beings varying forms and degrees of what some call libertarian freedom.  By this I mean the ability to make at least some choices without being compelled in any particular direction by factors within or without one's life other than one's own irreducible power of self-determination.  Libertarianism therefore differs from the various forms of determinism, on the one hand, and the various forms of compatibilism, on the other.

    Laying aside for now questions as to whether divine omniscience can always predict with total accuracy what choices individuals who have libertarian freedom will make in the future, it seems to me that all who affirm it are for this reason compelled to deny that God is now in complete control of every detail of everything that happens.  To the extent that we are truly free, God does not solely determine everything that now occurs, I believe.

     My view is that the horrible events of September 11, and many others that have previously occurred, are not to be attributed to God except in the very broad sense that God has brought in to being individuals who can use the libertarian freedom they possess for woe or weal.  But if God had not done this, true love would now be as impossible as genuine hate, as Doctor Wong states so well.

Shawn Brace:

God is love.  It is in this context that we must bring the issues of our present time.  If, in our interpretation of God’s love, we conclude that we should rise up and “kill” the enemy, so be it.  But perhaps God has called the Seventh-day Adventist Church for “such a time as this” to show an unloving world a picture of God that it has never seen before.

In the context of God’s love, would He strive to “pursue them and kill them, if possible”?  In the context of Calvary’s cross, would He “feel morally obligated” to seek retribution when wronged? The great Love Chapter, 1 Corinthians 13, gives us a description of everything that God is.  God “suffers long and is kind…does not seek [His] own, is not provoked.”  When we’re wronged, our human love tells us to hit back.  When God is wronged His love compels Him to love back.

Herein lies the difference between ourselves and God.  God has that unconditional love that we cannot understand.  No matter how hard we seem to try and push Him away, He returns the act by drawing us closer to Himself.

When He was being abused on the cross, there was one thing on His mind.  You and me.  “Forgive them Father,” he said,  “for they know not what they do.”  He was not worried about “fighting back.”  He was not worried about “getting even.”  He was worried about our good—the very people who were nailing Him to the tree.

“What wondrous love is this, O my soul, that caused the Lord of bliss to lay aside His crown for my soul.”

The great Christian martyr, Steven, shows us a picture of Jesus as well.  When he was being stoned he cried out,  “Lord, do not charge them with this sin” (Acts 7:60).  How many of us “Christians” are crying that right now?

Yet in his love God does demand justice.  However, this justice is not one that “seeks its own.”  It’s not justice that says,  “You hit Me, so I’ll hit you back.”  That kind of “justice” is something that we’re taught not to do in the first grade.  God’s justice is in light of the offender’s best interest—not merely to satisfy His own craving, but to “heal the brokenhearted.”

Furthermore, we’ve always had the problem of categorizing sin.  For us there seems to be different degrees of sin.  But is the fact that someone killed 5,000 people in two hours any worse than me lying to my teacher and saying that I read something that I didn’t for a class?  Is it any worse than you, when you sit around and waste your time, the precious time that God gave to you to further His work?

When we start categorizing sin (Jesus said that if we break one commandment, we’ve broken them all) we get the feeling that we’re not so bad.  It’s a “holier-than thou” feeling that we all suffer from.  This is precisely one of the great problems with the Laodicean church. 

The statement,  “There but for the grace of God am I” is true.  Yes, but even more, “there am I.”  Period!  Some Muslim group in Afghanistan is not solely responsible for the mass murders that took place last week, we all are.

In the light of God’s tremendous love for me—I would find it difficult to seek “retribution” and hunt down these men without rest.  Their sin is my sin.  Their sin is all of our sin.  Praise God that Jesus does not have the same attitude that we have and seek to “get even” with us, when we wrong Him every minute.  And Praise God that we can “seek these men” without rest, not to blow them to pieces, but to shower them with a great love that God showers upon us without condition, moment after moment.  That is the only true way to rid the world of terrorism.  If we don’t believe that, how can we call ourselves “Christian”?

John B. Wong:

I have problems with Shawn Brace's nondiscrimination between the terrorists' sins on September 11 and lying to a teacher and wasting time instead of furthering God's work.  This kind of reasoning, if carried to logical ends, sends all of us to "hell." 

I shudder as I think of such theology, which also includes, according to Shawn, showering the terrorists with great love without conditions.  Such naiveté in the practical world ignores the Christian principles of justice and wisdom as well as the freedom and power God has given us to deal with reality. We must be careful not to modulate the tensions between love and justice by overemphasizing one at the expense of other. Shawn is correct, however, to remind us that some Muslim group in Afghanistan is not solely responsible for the events of September 11 and to call us to reexamine what it means to be Christians.

With respect to David Larson's Observation on September 21,

Let me cite a personal experience to illustrate this point. Many years ago, our family was vacationing at a remote beach.  One of our sons ended up with a large piece of broken glass in the bottom of his right foot which caused excruciating pain and bleeding.  I happened to have a hemostat in my bag but no anesthetic.  Any thought of taking him to an emergency room was only a second option, at least to me. After I explained to him what I was going to do, he begged me not to do it; however, he also wanted to be relieved of his severe pain and bleeding. So I enlisted the help of a couple bystanders (my wife could not do it) who forcibly held him down while I explored and finally extracted the jagged piece of broken glass from his foot.

During the exploration and extraction, our son fought and screamed, the bystanders began to complain, my wife wept and our other youngsters turned pale.  I felt every struggle in his foot, every thought of his little mind.  Everything seemed out of control to him and others.  Nevertheless, I was in total control.  I knew what I was doing.   I also knew the negative consequences of not doing anything and the positive outcomes of intervening, of which I was sure, humanly speaking.  This is a crude analogy, of course.  Yet it does suggest that the interim must not be equated with the ultimate.

Frank J. Lemon:

Where was He? Why, He was with me. And I was with Him. And He also was in some mysterious way with all of the 7000+/- who were vaporized on that bright and beautiful Sept 11 morning. 

I know that thought will bother many who know that He was (and is) really only with those who had already thought it all out, who already had the right answers and had already made the "right decisions"; already done the "right thing"--the kinds that I would make and do. With the terrorists too? Must surely have been. They were all in the same place at the same time. 

Does that mean he approved of their horrendous act? I don't think so. But, He doesn't approve of some of mine either--or yours. I won't try to say what He will do about or to the terrorists. But, He likely knows some things that we do not, and will act as only He can.

Isn't He remarkable?

Naturally, the question arises.  If He was there why didn't He do something about it? Maybe He did. Who knows? I don't.

John B. Wong:

Where was God on September 11, 2001?
God was no farther from the world and all of us than He was
when Adam and Eve fell;
during the Flood and while the world perished;
when Christians were food for the lions in the Roman Coliseum;
during the American Civil War, and World War I and II;
and when His Son hung on the Cross.
God is no nearer to the world and all of us than He was
on V-Day in 1945;
in the early hours of Sunday morning following Jesus' death;
on the occasion when one sinner repents;
on September 11 in New York City and Washington, D.C.;
and as He will be on the grand resurrection morning yet to come.
Hallelujah!