Why the Terrorist Attacks?
Why didn't God stop the September 11 attacks from happening?
The best source of information about God is the Bible. It tells us that evil prospers for three main reasons.
1) Our choice. People have been given the ability by God to freely choose what they will do. People are not just obedient robots. While some choose to do good, and to seek and pursue peace, others sadly choose not to resist evil. Likewise, some choose to develop their relationship with God, others do not. God wants us to do good, but does not force us to do so.
2) "The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy..." This is a Bible description of Satan, whose fingerprints are etched in the World Trade Centre terrorism. Aircraft stolen, countless lives taken, buildings destroyed, families destroyed, people left with trauma. Satan is called the "father of lies." He promised wonderful things, but delivered destruction. He promised the suicide pilots a free ticket to heaven (they believed that those who die in a holy war automatically go to heaven). The Bible, however, tells that suicide breaks God's law because our lives are God-given, and not ours to take away.
3) God may allow evil to occur to attract our attention to our woeful condition. We have been woken from our sleep by the events in the USA. The challenge is for us to call out to God, and admit that without God we have a horrible mess in the world, and it's getting worse.
Many societies today break most if not all of the ten commandments every day, and it shows in the crime statistics, the family breakdowns, the divorce rate, the front page news. We see the fruit of a society that has turned its back on God.
Anne Graham said, "I believe God is deeply saddened by this, just as we are, but for years we've been telling God to get out of our schools, to get out of our government and to get out of our lives. And being the gentleman He is, I believe He has calmly backed out. How can we expect God to give us His blessing and His protection if we demand He leave us alone?"
Solzhenitsyn said that if we were to draw a line and put good people on one side and evil on the other, in order to destroy the evil ones, there would be no-one at all left alive - because "the line between good and evil runs through the heart of every person."
How should I respond to terrorism? Again, the Bible is our guide:
- Pray for healing of people involved in the tragedy.
- No involvement in any retaliation against innocent Moslems. In fact, actively discourage any oppression against anyone.
- Our guiding principle is to show love, not hate. Only forgiveness can break the cycle of revenge, of eye for eye and tooth for tooth. Only God can give us the ability to find forgiveness for so great an evil as this. We know this because God first found forgiveness for each of us, through Jesus Christ.