I had planned to write something last week to commemorate and hopefully come a few steps further towards understanding the greatest tragedy of the country within which I find myself planted has ever encountered. To be honest, I don’t really even remember what direction I had planned to take that writing in, but I remember watching a minute-by-minute documentary of The World Trade Center’s collapse last Tuesday night long after I had planned to go to bed; tragedy and suffering, you see, are very hard to ignore.
And now I find myself still thinking about this great modern day Babel, writing about it, but four days too late. Isn’t that how it always happens, though? When confronted with the horrific aftermath of all our idolatrous ways, aren’t we always just a bit late in remembering how to blush? Perhaps these words are perceived as harsh; with that I would agree. Such words are abrasive even (or perhaps especially) to the one who writes them.
The truth of the matter is man was meant for two things and two things alone: to love God and to love fellow man. Anything — any thing — that takes the place of either of those commandments takes on the form, function, and power of an idol. Pathetic little man-made gods. I have mine; you have yours. Still somehow tethered to those strange foreign shrines — even in the reality of the Kingship of God — I find myself confused, hurting, and lonelier than ever I ought to be. And to think, it’s all because I adamantly refuse to live up to the potential we were all given: to love God and love others.
None of this, though, comes close to answering the question at the forefront of many of our minds — even seven years and four days too late: why does calamity find us? Where is God when the lights are out, when the towers fall, when evil and heartache seem to hold reign? Where is God then?
The truth of my beliefs is that God remains a constant force in a world seemingly ruled by chaos and variable. The pain of September 12th, 2001; the day after the loss of something cherished, something coveted; the first April morning of a new life in shambles and casual disarray — all of these are like the moments after home-made stitches have been ripped out: the wound — that infected gash we’ve been carrying around for years — reopens, pouring blood down, down onto our surface-polished life. The stitches, the foreign things upon which we made ourselves dependent, fall in tatters and we are crushed beneath the bloody, opened pain of being revealed for what we really are: pathetic little physicians trying in vain to heal ourselves. But still, where is God as we weep, as we bleed?
If these things that fall upon and crush us beneath their weight are idols brought low, then there is only one logical place for God to be: upon his rightful throne. You see, with judgment comes grace; through the storm comes the first ray of brilliant sun to warm the faces of those who survived the night. But do I believe God causes these storms to rise or actively brings about the circumstances by which the idols are shattered? I surely hope not; such a belief would be incongruent. I believe that the fall of Babel, of the Towers, was inevitable and only a matter of time; even at the height of their power, all idols are still bound by a shelf-life. It is merely the natural course of things for such foreign gods to come back to the earth from whence they were fashioned.
As I think back to all of the horrors of September the 11th (or, feel free to supply your own personal, selfish tragedy here; I know I will), I cannot help but feel the desire to tear at my shirt, to roll around in ashes, and don the sackcloth I’ve so long neglected. With my idols, I, too, have been brought low. In the wake of such calamity, my idols’ mouths have been found shattered, never to speak again. My own tongue, though, has somehow retained its function through the storm and with it I will weep and I will wail, albeit four days late; for the first time in far too long, I will feel the warmth of a face flushed red: today I will remember how to blush.
Jeremiah 3:21-4:1
(21)A cry is hear n the barren heights, the weeping and pleading of the people of Israel, because they have perverted their ways and have forgotten the LORD their God.
(22)”Return, faithless people; I will cure you of backsliding.”
“Yes, we will come to you, for you are the LORD our God. (23)Surely the idolatrous commotion on the hills and mountains is a deception; surely in the LORD our God is the salvation of Israel. (24)From our youth shameful gods have consumed the fruits of our fathers’ labor — their flocks and herds, their sons and daughters. (25)Let us lie down in our shame and let our disgrace cover us. We have sinned against the LORD our God, both we and our fathers; from our youth till this day we have not obeyed the LORD our God.”
(4:1)”If you will return, O Israel, return to me.”
