Mixed Feelings

Like most Americans born prior to the early 1990s, I can recall where I was and what I was doing when I first heard that an airliner had struck one of the twin towers in New York City. Now comes another 9/11, and people are remembering. My Facebook feed is filled with posts of pictures labeled "Never Forget," tributes to first responders and those who died, and calls for God to bless America.

I must confess that I experience mixed emotions as I remember. Some 9/11 memories are horrific and terrifying, but they are not the cause of my mixed feelings. It is important to remember failures and sufferings in order to prevent their happening again. My jumbled feelings are more about what happened in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.

Take the frequent refrain of "God Bless America." I hope God does bless America, but in a 9/11 context that request often seems to include an unspoken corollary. "And curse our enemies." We might well expect God to be against those who commit horrendous acts of terror, but that's different from God being pro USA. As a verse from this morning's psalm says,
         The LORD is good to all,
             and his compassion is over all that he has made. (Ps. 145:9)
The God becomes a flag-draped, star-spangled God, we have abandoned the God of Jesus, of the Bible, and embraced a tribal idol.

On a more positive note, many recall the days after 9/11 and wistfully remember the pause in the bitter partisanship that has come to dominate American politics and life. For a brief moment, the shared crisis overcame division. In similar fashion, the desire to help recent hurricane victims can momentarily bring disparate folks together in common cause for good.

Our coming together post 9/11 did feel good, but it had an element not found in response to natural disasters, an enemy. Having a common enemy can be tremendous unifying force. Osama bin Laden was as much the enemy of Democrats as he was of Republicans, of liberal as conservatives, and the threat he posed dwarfed the enmity between political parties, making it seem trivial for a time.

Sometimes we humans seem to need enemies. They provide an "against" by which to define our group, and enemies are often a more powerful, unifying force than anything our group is "for." Fear is a powerful motivator, and enemies merit fear. But fear is also a great manipulative tool, especially when used to inflate a true enemy or even to create one where none exists.

Following 9/11, some felt the need to make an enemy out of all Islam. It made things simpler, neater, and for Christians it had the added benefit of making our group the "good guys" and theirs the evil enemy. Creating such an enemy proved so compelling that many embraced the idea despite a complete lack of logic of facts to support it.

Enemies, especially those deemed mortal enemies, lose their humanity to some degree. Their deaths become necessary, even a good thing to be celebrated. When all of Islam becomes the enemy, the death of civilians ceases to matter so much. The same thing happened with Nazis and Japanese during WWII. Wholesale slaughter of civilians was seen as acceptable.

I wonder if Jesus' commands us to love our enemies because he wants to undermine our ability, our apparent need and desire, to demonize "the other." If we took Jesus seriously and truly saw our enemy as another neighbor to love, how might things look different? Put another way, if America actually were a Christian nation, how might our post-9/11 response have been different?

And so, on 9/11, I will engage in somber remembrance and reflection. I will mourn for those who died, for those who continue to die from terrorist attacks, and for the many more civilians who have become "collateral damage" in our war on terror. I will hope for lessons learned that may prevent future 9/11s, and I will pray for peace in the world. And I will wonder if the world, or Christians for that matter, will ever actually embrace the way of Jesus.