Be it the chaplain in Manhattan, the pastor in Pittsburgh or the farmer in Kentucky, Christians across the country searched for answers to explain what happened Sept. 11 and offer a God-centered approach to personal healing and the country’s response.
From the Oval Office to the pulpit, one word came up consistently to describe the terrorist hijackings and crashes of four commercial airliners: evil.
But charting a Christian response to such evil requires prayer, pause and purpose, according to theologians, ethicists and others who wrestle with such issues.
“You have what Paul called the ‘mystery of iniquity,’ and evil is there,” said Henlee Barnette, professor emeritus of Christian ethics at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. “It’s everywhere, and the challenge to the Christian is to respond in an intelligent, reasonable way to evil in his or her own life, in the lives of others and in the life of our nation.”
All crises bring out basic questions of meaning and purpose, but a number of Christian observers outlined three major questions that Christians must answer in the wake of recent events:
— HOW COULD THIS HAPPEN?
“I have been asked hundreds of times in my life why God allows tragedy and suffering,” evangelist Billy Graham said during a prayer service at the National Cathedral. “I have to confess that I really do not know the answer totally, even to my own satisfaction.”
Understanding the human potential to cause such destruction leads Christians back to the basic doctrines of their faith, including sin and the freedom to choose right from wrong, said ethicist David Gushee.
“Why this happened is really in a sense the same answer to ‘Why did Adam and Eve sin?'” said Gushee, professor of moral philosophy at Union University in Jackson, Tenn. “It happened because we have the freedom to make bad choices.”
Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, agreed. “We need to be very clear that the problem behind all of this does not come down to a lack of security in an airport,” he said. “Ultimately, we still have to deal with the reality that God has allowed a sinful world to exist and for some time he is allowing sin to take its toll.”
Mohler and Gushee said Christians should avoid answers about the existence of evil that either are simplistic — such as “God will always protect me” — or outright heresy, such as “God must have caused this to happen.”
Romans 8:28 often is cited in times of suffering, proclaiming “that in all things God works for the good of those who love him.” But Mohler said that doesn’t imply that God causes tragedies. The Bible consistently insists God does not cause suffering, Mohler added.
“No way can we dignify these murderous acts by proclaiming in a glib way that some good is going to come of it,” he said. “The biblical affirmation is that even in the face of such awful evil, God’s grace will triumph.”
But God’s ability to redeem a tragedy doesn’t eliminate the challenge for Christians to insist that God is loving and powerful even though he permits sin to cause terrible consequences.
Theodicy, the branch of theology that seeks to vindicate God’s permission for evil to exist, is nothing new.
Evil is a major theme in both Psalms and Job, according to George Klein, an Old Testament professor at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas.
But while both books contain agonizing petitions to God in the face of evil, neither holds God’s answer for why he allows suffering, Klein said.
Many psalms that lament evil have a common structure, Klein noted. Rather than staying focused on the evildoer or how God will judge him, the psalm reviews one of God’s previous great acts, such as creation or protection during Israel’s exodus from Egypt.
“They jump fast-forward to their conclusion, and their conclusion is that the Lord is righteous, the Lord is powerful and he should be revered even in the midst of uncertainty and trouble,” he said.
“The Psalms do emphasize God’s role as king and righteous holy creator. But the way they function is to help God’s people lift up their eyes, to look on the Lord to realize that he is good. The fact that somebody appears to do well even though they are evil does not undercut God’s righteousness. He will deal with them in his own way,” Klein added. “It’s not a nice bumper-sticker theology, but it really is a hope, a confidence.”
Likewise, the book of Job never defends God for allowing the central character to suffer.
“It just doesn’t. Instead it just quickly jumps and says that God is worthy of worship, … God is good and in his way, in his time, what is mysterious, unknown, troubling to us will be seen in a different light. But for now, our responsibility is to accept the painful mysteries and uncertainties and to trust in God wholeheartedly and his righteousness and his power and his knowledge, his providence.”
— WHAT SHOULD AMERICA DO?
Christians dare not shrink from their responsibility to influence a government’s response to evil, several theologians and ethicists said.
From “just war” theories of combat to an introspective view of American policies, Christians must lead the country to develop a moral response, they said.
“When the public discourse turns from grief to retaliation, the community of faith must offer a different language and articulate different solutions,” said Robert Parham, founder and executive director of the Baptist Center for Ethics.
Beginning with St. Augustine 1,600 years ago and modified since, a “just war” doctrine requires that government military action be measured and appropriate, said Chuck Colson, a Christian author and former adviser to President Richard Nixon.
“Augustine’s formulation was that it has to be, obviously, a just cause,” Colson said on his BreakPoint radio program. Military action also must be a last resort and intended to prevent more evil or damage than it will cause.
“There’s got to be a good chance of success, and, most importantly, civilian casualties have got to be limited. You cannot target civilians,” he said.
Mohler said Romans 13 outlines government’s responsibility to maintain order and punish evildoers. Biblical admonitions to turn the other cheek do not apply to a proper response to last week’s attack, Barnette added.
“As Christians we should respond with love, even to our enemies,” he said. “Jesus taught us to love our enemies. But let me add, love without justice is pure sentimentality.”
“Now personally, I’m a man of peace, but this is a defensive war against a destructive evil. As a Christian ethicist, I believe that the most loving thing to do is to seek out the evil perpetrators and their supporters and bring them to justice,” Barnette added. “If someone comes up and strikes me on the right cheek, I turn the other one. But if someone comes to destroy my family, love becomes justice.”
But Christians also must lead the country in controlling its emotions, Gushee added. “We may be setting ourselves up for a deep sense of national rage if we are not able to achieve the kind of perfect justice that we appear to be looking for.”
Like the Jews around the world who lost a more massive 6 million lives in the Holocaust, Americans might have to come to terms with an inability to balance the scales of justice in this life, he said.
“The theme that there is an eternal Judge and that we don’t have to hinge all of our future hopes on achieving some earthly justice is very important right now,” he said.
“The most powerful nation in the world, unable, perhaps, to get the full and perfect justice that it’s looking for, could be a pretty dangerous nation,” Gushee said. “Let’s hope we have more wisdom and sobriety and realism than that.”
The Christian command to love one’s enemies also dictates a willingness to understand the motivation of perceived injustice behind such hateful acts, he said.
“That doesn’t make the decision any less evil,” he quickly added. “But I think a distinctively Christian response says there is humanity in the image of God, even in the adversary. And you seek to recognize that even while you deal with appropriate responses to protect yourself from being harmed like this in the future.”
— AS A CHRISTIAN, WHAT SHOULD I DO?
A Christian personal response to evil begins with a willingness to base one’s actions on something other than simple human nature, Barnette said. “We should respond and not merely react.”
Part of that response begins with a simple decision to engage in the experiences and suffering of others, said Vicki Hollon, director of the Wayne Oates Institute, an agency in Louisville, Ky., dedicated to Christian-based ethics and pastoral care.
More than just showing compassion or being a good civic person, a Christian’s involvement in assembling care packages, donating money, giving blood or praying for victims should be based on God’s instructions and be intended to help others find God, she said.
“We have … a framework out of which we do what we do very clearly, very intentionally with a purpose of serving as a light that points back to God,” she said.
Prayer is a basic response to any tragedy, many noted. “I heard one person say all we can do is pray, but you know that’s not a little thing,” Mohler said. “Prayer is one of the most important ministries that a Christian can perform in order to reach out to those we cannot see, we do not even know.”
Individual Christians also should recognize that evil is not entirely an outside force, Barnette noted. “I have to say this: The more optimistic theologians overlook the evil within,” he said. “Wherever there is an overwhelming desire for power, for the accumulation of things for self or for a nation, you’re going to have this kind of evil.”
Christians leaders also must be prepared to interpret events through the lens of the Christian faith, Gushee added.
During his address at the National Cathedral, Billy Graham noted that victims entering the World Trade Center, the Pentagon or any of those four planes probably didn’t think it would be their last day.
“That’s why each of us needs to face our own spiritual need and commit ourselves to God and his will now,” he said.
Likewise, all Christians have an opportunity to offer a distinctive moral vision and spiritual presence, Gushee said.
“I cringe when I think about the inevitable Sunday school classes that will mainly consist of ‘We need to go nuke those guys’ kind of response. We can do, and must do, so much better than that.”
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David Winfrey is news director of the (Ky.) Western Recorder.