Light Brings Salt
Volume 3, Issue 28 July 10, 2005
Iron Range Bible
Church
Dedicated to the Systematic Exposition of the Word of God
All
That Terror Teaches: Have We Learned Anything?
Dr. Albert Mohler
We are living in
dangerous times, but far too many Americans seem to have forgotten this
unforgiving fact. How can so many forget the unforgettable?
Terror is a tragic
teacher, and the memories of
More than three years
after 9/11, what have we learned? The immediate aftermath of the terror attacks
in
We know so much more
now than we knew then. But have we really learned anything? We must hope so,
but lessons learned in a moment of urgency have a way of fading into memory.
What lessons must remain?
First, the terror has
taught us to accept reality. This is a dangerous world. Towers we thought to be
sound were attacked in a nation we thought to be safe, hit by airplanes we
thought were no threat. Reality has a way of interrupting our dreams, and
Americans have dreamed ourselves safe from the dangers
that threaten the rest of the world. Those dreams came to an end on September
11. Americans now routinely accept levels of
scrutiny and screening that would have baffled previous generations. We line up
for airport security checks, taking off shoes and coats, while we send our
earthly goods through x-ray machines and walk through metal detectors--all the
while talking with friends and family as if this were normal, for now it is.
How can people who board airplanes fail to remember that we live in a dangerous
world?
Second, the terror has
taught us to distinguish between good and evil. Our age has grown ever more
reluctant to make moral judgments. Moral cowardice has denied the inherent evil
of immoral acts. Moral relativism has denied any objective judgment of right
and wrong. A naive non-judgmentalism often masquerades as moral humility. A
refusal to make moral judgments is not humility--it is insanity.
The American university
culture has embraced this false humility as a basic worldview. Speaking of morally
disarmed college students, journalist David Brooks explained: "On campus
they found themselves wrapped in a haze of relativism. There were words and
jargon and ideas everywhere, but nothing solid that would allow a person to
climb from one idea to the next. These students were trying to form judgments,
yet were blocked by the accumulated habits of non-judgmentalism."
These "accumulated
habits of non-judgmentalism"
are very much in evidence on
These accumulated
habits were of no use on September 11. The attacks on
Third, we learned once
again that God is ultimately in control, or else we are lost in a cosmos of
chaos. Tragedy breeds theological tremors. Is God really in control? Could a
good God allow such pain and loss? Can we really know anything about God at
all?
Christians were called
upon to answer with the calm confidence of biblical truth and genuine faith.
God has revealed Himself in the Bible, and He has shown Himself to be both
omnipotent and loving. Both truths are non-negotiable, and each complements the
other. We have no choice but to affirm both truths as two sides of one great
truth, and to affirm that God's sovereignty and His moral perfection are
established in His own revelation and in His own terms.
Fourth, we learned that
the Gospel has enemies. We should have known this all along, for the Apostle
Paul described the Gospel of Christ's cross as a stumbling block and scandal.
The cross has its enemies. The attacks of 9/11 were made in the name of
Islam--not in the name of secularism. Moslem and non-Moslem alike argued
whether Islam is at war with
Those who love the
gospel learned again that Islam rejects Christ as the incarnate Son of God and
the cross as the atonement for our salvation. There can be no reconciliation
between the claims of Christianity and the claims of Islam. The enemies of the
cross know this full well.
Secularism raised its
head in the aftermath of 9/11 to warn that anyone who takes truth claims
seriously is a potential terrorist--the Christian as well as the Muslim. Claims
that Jesus is the only Savior and that salvation is found in His name alone
were dismissed as "theological terrorism" and religious extremism.
For this the early Christian martyrs gave their lives.
Fifth, we learned that
spirituality is no substitute for Christian faith. Churches were filled to
capacity in the weeks following September 11. Some observers predicted a period
of national revival and openness to the Gospel. That did not happen. Within
just a few months church attendance had fallen to pre-9/11 levels. The national
trauma produced flutterings of
"spirituality" but little evidence of renewed Christian conviction.
Spirituality is what is
left when authentic Christianity is evacuated from the public square. It is the
refuge of the faithless seeking the trappings of faith without the demands of
revealed truth. Spirituality affirms us in our self-centeredness and soothingly
tells us that all is well. Authentic faith in Christ calls us out of ourselves,
points us to the cross, and summons us to follow Christ.
The lessons terror taught us are still
fresh for those with the will to remember. The gaping hole in