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EDITORIAL
Terrorist attacks

Jim Coggins

As I write this, it is the day of the massive terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. A student/faculty prayer meeting on the lawn of Columbia Bible College has just ended, and my flight to the Canadian MB Conference executive staff retreat in Manitoba has been cancelled.

This is certainly a momentous day, which will have a great impact on future world history. These events are also quite simply evil. Yet in another sense they are scarcely unique. They impact us because they happened close to us, to “people like us”; because we have been able to watch them on television; and because they have made changes in all of our lives, even though for many of us those changes are only relatively minor inconveniences such as cancelled flights and cancelled TV programs. But the people in New York are no different in God’s eyes than the thousands of other people who suffer and die every day in Sudan, Colombia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Congo, Northern Ireland, Palestine and many other places.

Impact

The events of today will have very significant and, to some extent, predictable consequences.

There will be retaliation, perhaps massive retaliation, by the United States. Like Pearl Harbor, this could be the beginning of a war, or a major escalation of a war that already exists. (The assumption today is that the attacks were the work of “Muslim fundamentalists” from the Middle East.) If the US government does retaliate, it is likely that more innocent civilians will be killed and injured. If that happens, that will not be the end of it. There will no doubt be terrorist retaliation for the retaliation, and then more retaliation for the terrorist retaliation. How far such a war could escalate is difficult to know. There will be an upsurge in general terrorism. Other terrorists will be encouraged by the success of these attacks to stage attacks of their own, even on targets other than the United States. As violence spreads, revolutionary groups all over the world may try to take advantage of the general chaos to further their own causes. The psychological effects will be severe. The surviving victims and the loved ones of the victims have suffered great trauma. Their lives will be scarred for years. There has been and will be a significant rise in feelings of insecurity and anxiety among virtually all North Americans, and many people in other countries as well. There will be fear of flying, fear of being in tall buildings and a hundred other fears that will limit people’s peace and freedom. There will be considerable economic dislocation. War always devastates economies. Considerable wealth has already been lost, including billions of dollars worth of buildings and airplanes. There has already been considerable disruption of airplane travel and commerce, and the disruption in the commerce directed by those who worked in the World Trade Center will be even more massive – to the point that it may throw the North American and world economies into recession. Suspicion of foreigners will disrupt world trade. Depending on how far the conflict escalates, there may be shortages of oil, and oil prices will certainly increase. There will be an increase in suspicion, and many innocent people will suffer. Arabs and Muslims in the US will face suspicion, discrimination and violence from their neighbours. So will Westerners in the Middle East, including Christian missionaries. So will minorities around the world. As often happens in wartime, there may well be a decrease in tolerance, freedom and democracy. There will be some misguided “Christians” who will welcome these attacks and the subsequent increase in violence and suffering because they will see them as signs of the Great Tribulation and the end times. This speculation is probably wrong and will prove counterproductive. Evil is evil, whether it is part of the Great Tribulation or not, and it should be resisted, never welcomed.

Alternatives

What should we be doing?

We should not lose our Christian perspective. In times when great events are transpiring on the world stage, we should not give up on our Christian faith, feeling that church does not matter. What is happening today is evil. It is sin. It demonstrates that our theology is right; we live in a sinful world, and Christ is the answer. We should resist the temptation to seek revenge or to encourage revenge. While those who planned the attacks deserve just punishment, this should not be confused with retaliation. What would happen if the United States government, instead of retaliating on a massive scale, killing and injuring perhaps thousands of innocent people on the other side, chose instead to seek the legal arrest and trial of the terrorist leaders, with the cooperation of Muslim governments? Would that help to break the cycle of retaliation and escalating violence? We should not lose sight of the importance of individuals. On a day when thousands of people have died, we may get the feeling that what happens to us or to any other individual human being does not matter all that much. Yet, the terrorist attack in New York is evil precisely because it snuffed out the lives of individual people and caused other individual people to suffer. Two thousand years ago, when the Roman Empire was promoting pagan worship and enslaving many nations, Jesus spent three years discipling 12 men, healing people one at a time and talking to a single woman at a well. We should take the occasion to seriously repent of our corporate sins. These terrorist attacks came partly in retaliation for US and Western actions which have killed and injured thousands in other countries. The attack on the centre of American wealth reminds us that we have often become rich at the expense of other parts of the world. At the very least, these attacks should remind us of the general sinfulness of humanity and lead us to genuine repentance. On this first day of the tragedy, our Canadian prime minister has called on the Canadian people to pray for the victims in the United States, and many Canadian churches have opened their doors for special prayers. However, we should not confuse these immediate reactions with genuine repentance. I have been reading lately in the Old Testament book of Jeremiah. Twenty-six hundred years ago, when the Babylonian armies were at the gates of Jerusalem, the king called for prayer, and the people freed their slaves. When the Babylonian armies temporarily withdrew, the people re-enslaved those they had freed and returned to their pagan worship. We should be alert to other spiritual impacts. God is constantly at work in the world, bringing good out of evil. While some Muslims in the Middle East might rejoice in the successful attack on the United States, might others not see the evil of violence and the futility of a religion that teaches only justice and can offer no forgiveness for sin? Might they not reconsider the need for mercy when they realize that they are not only people who are sinned against but also people who sin? We should fight distractions. Today, there has been a tendency for many of us to focus on watching the events south of our border. It has taken an effort to focus on my work, in this case the preparation of an issue on church planting in cities. Yet that is precisely what I should be doing. I cannot save lives in New York, but I can fulfill my responsibilities here. Someone was once asked the question: If you knew the world would end tomorrow, what would you do? The answer: Plant a tree. While others around us are destroying things, we should focus on building. We should redouble our efforts to love our neighbours, love our enemies, teach our children, help the needy, preach the gospel, build churches, do good and serve God. We should pray. While others focus on earthly wars, we know that what we are really engaged in is a spiritual battle. The enemy is not a particular set of people but evil itself. We should pray that the victims will find healing, that God will restrain evil, that justice and peace will prevail and that many will be converted into followers of the Prince of Peace. We should reaffirm the truth of the gospel. People are sinful. We are sinful. We need to recognize that what we need above all is mercy. May we remember that Jesus, the Prince of Peace, sacrificed His life in order to save those whose sins nailed Him to the cross. May we remember that in Jesus we have forgiveness and reconciliation. May we offer that forgiveness, peace and mercy to others.

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Last modified October 6, 2001.

© 2001 Mennonite Brethren Herald.
Published by the Canadian Conference of MB Churches.
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