What 9/11 means for the church in 2017.
And the pendulum swings again in a confusing, yet eerily predictable world. 16 years on and the world now turns as normal once more, unifying wounds of the past all but forgotten. Though normal is relative, to be sure. We are brow-beaten daily with disturbing images, trends, figures to the point of immunity, or at least paralyzing shock. Our normalcy is increasingly fragmented, distracted, polarized, calloused, uncertain.
As a nation, 9/11 was, perhaps, our last ‘holy war’ moment. A final rallying cry uniting the world’s greatest nation and its broken, depraved, security-grasping people under a banner of united vision, a common cause. Broken and depraved as we were, we were one. There is something deeply human, relatable, secure about being one with your nation, your people. To do so requires only the sacrifice of your chief identity to the common cause of national integrity, coherence, survival. But, in this union and our sacrifice of ‘chief identity’, the church expressed a lack of coherence with its own narrative, one called to be set apart. Rather, we found ourselves deeply, utterly enmeshed. Alongside our countrymen, we were quick to anger, to scapegoat, to be indiscriminately violent, to find fault external, lucid only to imagined purity within. We showed our colors as Americans first and told the world Christ was synonymous, or subsidiary to a great nation. And the global church suffered immensely from this untruthful account of our deepest allegiance.
But, perhaps, in today’s fragmented, unsafe, unknown, forgetting world, we, as Christians, gain something immeasurable. We are again free to be our own people, as opposed to people of a human nation — even a great one. As a church, we must recognize the opportunity to shake free the centuries’ long watering down, humanizing, accommodating of our tradition as we grew comfortable wielding worldly power. What we cling to (a secure national identity and immense political influence within this identity) is crumbling visibly around us, so the ‘courage’ of our leap will not be a prideful distraction. But, let us leap nonetheless. Into the abyss. Into the unknown. Into the arms of our Lord and the great adventure to which we are called and this world (including America) so desperately needs.
