Response to Terrorist Attack
Sorting
Through the Emotional
and Spiritual Aftermath
Ken Fong
Like many churches across America, our church hastily but prayerfully cobbled together a special worship service to deal with the immediate emotional and spiritual aftermath of the unbelievable horrors played out in Pennsylvania, Washington, DC, and New York. As the senior pastor, I prefaced the lengthy service with a brief explanation.
All of us are still in shock over what transpired earlier this week. Undoubtedly we are not all at the same place in dealing with this. Wherever you happen to be right now, we hope to take everyone through a process, starting with grief, moving through confession, facing a challenge, and ending on a note of hope.
Afterwards, many people expressed how helpful all of that was, but a few let us know that they were deeply offended and turned off by the part where we led them in a confessional prayer. To them, confessing to God that we were just as sinful as the attackers was unfathomable, given what some people had just experienced. At the very least, they shared that what we had them do was grossly mistimed and mis-toned. As I ask the Lord to speak clearly to me through all of these conflicting and competing voices, in some ways I feel like one of the heroic rescue workers, clawing my way painstakingly through a mountain of pain, anger, guilt, and disbelief, looking for signs of hope.
The horrific events of September 11th not only attacked America as a nation; for some of us, they also attacked the way we understood many of the fundamental elements that make up our world. Because of this, many of us who consider ourselves to be committed followers of the Shepherd King are struggling with unfamiliar bouts of doubt and confusion. I know that I am.
I certainly am not confused about the blatant evil of the premeditated acts of terrorism that rained down from our heretofore-friendly American skies. In fact is quite clear to me that the first thing out of our mouths should be uncensored expressions of outrage, not attempts to understand the motives of those responsible for the deaths of more than five thousand unsuspecting American and foreign civilians.
For some of you who are inclined to be empathic, your first instinct maybe is to want to connect with the pain and anger of these terrorists. Or you are such a theologically evolved human being that your first instinct might be to focus on a fundamental biblical truth, e.g., "What shall we conclude then? Are we any better? Not at all! We have already made the charge that Jews and Gentiles alike are under sin. As it is written: 'There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands, no one who seeks God. All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one…'" (Romans 3:9-24). You might even be inclined first to offer a prophetic 'explanation' why the Lord would 'remove his protection' from this most favored nation. There clearly is a time and place to fathom the origins of fanaticism and the possible implications for us Americans. And there obviously is a time and a place to let the Word of God strip us of our sense of superiority. However I believe that the time and place for those things are not now, not first.
To put anything else before condemning what was done as despicable, dastardly, and evil is to strip ourselves of the very humanity that Jesus chose to become in order to save us. In other words, it seems to me to be inhuman not to understand first and foremost that whoever did this for whatever reasons chose outrageously vile methods to accomplish their goals. The writer of Ecclesiastes wrote that there is an appropriate time for anything and everything, a perfect season for every activity under heaven (3:1). Believe me, I wholeheartedly maintain that there must be a time when we dig beneath the rubble of our raw emotions in search of answers, reasons, or God's penetrating and unifying truth.
However the first thing all of us should be about right now while all the dead have yet to be discovered or buried is decrying what was done without any qualifiers of any kind. Many well-intentioned people - Christian or otherwise - sound like we are inadvertently justifying what is morally simply unjustifiable. On this point, I am definitely not confused. I don't believe it is necessary to try and make nonsense make sense or to make gross immorality into something morally justifiable. There needs to be a time when we can stand back objectively and dissect all of this, but this is the time to feel appropriate outrage and anger.
If a serial killer broke into our home while I was away and raped my wife and then murdered her and our daughter Janessa, those close to me and I would be seething with anger. If a week later at the funeral, someone eulogizing my dead family members said, "God sees all of our hearts and the Lord knows that we are just as sinful as the person who did this so we shouldn't be thinking that this person is the only one deserving judgment," I believe that would not be the appropriate time for those comments, however well-founded. Or if the presiding pastor intoned, "As Christians we need to look beyond the obvious, to realize all of the ways this person was sinned against in his life that produced such pent up rage," that too would be inappropriately timed sentiments. There truly is a time to mourn that is clearly different from the appropriate time to rejoice. And there truly is a right time to be angry and subjective which is very different from the right time to be analytical and objective.
Our nation is grieving and I believe that we too should participate fully in that grieving process, even though we know that we are "resident aliens" here (1Peter 2:11). I know that I've struggled as a Christian with how much to identify with the rest of the nation as it is coming together to mourn these terrible losses and to feel the collective anger at the antagonists.
Strangely enough, here's where some of the advice I've given to Asian American Christians has some relevance. Oftentimes, an Asian American Christian is the only believer in his or her family. A parent or close relative dies and the funeral service will be held in a Buddhist temple. "I'm a Christian, so should I not attend? There's going to be chanting and offerings of incense and I am concerned that my participation, even just my presence there, will damage my Christian witness." This when I've said, "Your being a follower of Jesus doesn't mean that you give up participating as a member of your family. In fact, I can think of no poorer witness to your relatives than you not joining in to mourn with the entire family. If you disconnect from their collective grief, they are left to wonder why you suddenly don't know how to be a member of the family anymore. For those who value the family more than anything else, Jesus could only be seen as a warping influence, not a redemptive one. I believe that Jesus would want you to join your family in grief."
As much as there is a need for us to process this deeply, biblically, compassionately, and thoroughly as disciples of Jesus, now is really not the time for that. If that's what we're going to emphasize, there will be many Americans who right now don't know Jesus who will simply not be able to understand our absence from their grief and anger. Down the road, when we try to share the Good News with them, many will no doubt remember how we seemed untouched by the pain and anguish of these brutal acts of terror. And they very well might blame Jesus for our absence, for our apparent pulling back from being a part of the American family.
The Jewish military chaplain that presided over a traditional Yom Kippur service last week chose to perform it amidst the rubble of what used to be the World Trade Centers in New York City. He said, "In a foxhole, no one is an atheist. This is our foxhole and it is hard to believe that anyone in this country is an atheist today." I would simply add that, in the foxholes in Pennsylvania, Washington, DC, and New York, it is also hard for me to believe that anyone today is not an American.
Ken Fong
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