It has been eight years since the horrific attack on the World Trade Towers. If all you had to go on was our typical left/right tangled discussions of the event, you would conclude either that Obama struck the right note on his international apology tour, assuming in the background of his speech that America somehow had it coming because of our international hubris or, on the other hand, that America was fully justified in the Bush policy of kicking as much Islamobutt as we could.
But there is another option, one that I think American Christians need to meditate on more. This is something the “never forget” commemorations of 911 have thus far left out. Those who refuse to commemorate 911 also leave it out. The left wants to blame America first in our horizontal disputes, and the right wants to defend America first in our horizontal disputes. And, as far as that goes, I am happy to defend our nation in these horizontal disputes.
But the problem is that there is another dispute that is ongoing — and this is a vertical one. In the eight years since 911, about 10.4 million Americans have lost their lives through the atrocity of abortion. This was about 1.3 million a year — over 3,000 a day. Those who perpetrated 911 killed 3,000 in one day, and they perished at the same time. But the ghouls in charge of our judicial system, and the one we elected to appoint new justices to the top of that system, preside over 3,000 deaths a day, every day, non-stop. Just since 911, we have conducted over three thousand 911s ourselves. And just like the terrorists, we have a cloak of self-justification. The only difference is that we need a much bigger cloak.
But keep the distinction between horizontal and vertical in mind. Agreeing that Yahweh had a judgment to bring against Israel, one that He justly brought by means of the wicked Assyrians, is not the same as saying that the Assyrians had the right to do what they did (Is. 10: 1-19). We are a stiff-necked people, and it is only through the mercy of God that we are not consumed.