When Towers Tumble – 911

This being the 10 year anniversary of the Twin Towers disaster we are once again brought to the emotional heart wrench that was 911. It all comes back, the stunning memory of the towers beginning to sink, the anger over the terrorists who bayoneted our sense of safety, and our fellow citizens leaping from eighty stories to their certain deaths. We cannot forget the not-so-everyday heroes who ran up those stairways to save whom they could. Some of those guys received absolution from their priests before running in because they believed they would never come out alive. The fury, the deep held sense of injustice, the sorrow for families and their losses, it all comes back.

 Today I read about a different tower falling. This was not a current event. It was brought into the stream of historic consciousness by none other than Christ Himself. This is of course His not quite passing mention of the tower in Siloam. The reference is found in Luke 13:1-5

          ‘Now on the same occasion there were some present who reported to Him about the Galileans, whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. And He answered and said to them, ‘”Do you suppose that these Galileans were greater sinners than all other Galileans, because they suffered this fate? I tell you, no, but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. Or do you suppose that those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them, were worse culprits than all the men who live in Jerusalem? I tell you, no, but unless you repent you will all likewise perish”.’

 And, do you suppose that those 3600 on whom the twin towers fell were worse sinners than all the rest in the nation? I tell you, no, but unless you repent you will all likewise perish. And, do we suppose that the thousands killed in Katrina, and the wild fires, and the spring tornadoes were worse sinners than the rest of us? The answer is, no, but we had best repent lest we likewise perish.

 I was noticing some things about the words of the Savior. For one, He never said anything about the ‘innocent’ or the ‘victims’. No, He, rather, lumped those who perished with those who escaped into a single group who He assumed might all perish unless they repented. So, in this scenario, all of the people deserved to perish but some were spared. This is not how we paint these kinds of events. We unconsciously talk of the innocent victims and how they did not deserve what they got. Jesus instead talked of everyone deserving an early demise and the need for repentance. Men are fallen and deserving of death. They are not innocent. The meaning He derived from the fall of the tower in Siloam was that men at all times need to repent. We need to live in a state of repentance.

 There is a corresponding message about God’s grace that may rightly be inferred from this Scripture. For, if all are going to perish except those who repent we are forced to understand that the ones who repent are a unique group. The common demise is for the unrepentant. Some few do repent. It is by God’s grace this happens at all. We all deserved to be in the hell of the tower but by His grace some were not. The intended lesson for us here is that our only salvation from certain death is God’s grace working repentance in man. We will live only by God’s grace and we will die by His hand. If we wish to escape, if we do not want to ‘perish’ then we must repent. This is the message of the twin towers. We need to repent.

 As a nation we have not gotten the message. We watched the towers fall but we learned nothing. Repentance is not on the national consciousness. We continue to murder over 3500 babies in the womb every day. We continue to rear our children godless. We invade countries that have not attacked us, killing their civilians as ‘collateral damage’. Sure, we had hurried gatherings in stadiums back ten years ago. We prayed a few words skyward, and held our hands up to God. But when the initial emotion was blown past we trotted back to those same paths we had come to love. It is not in our souls to live repentant lives. We care not a wit for God’s law or the building of a righteous society. Hence, we ought not expect the mercy God might give. Rather, we ought to expect justice. Thomas Jefferson said, ‘I tremble when I think that God is just…’ as should we. Justice, Biblically defined, is equal treatment. Biblical history, all history, shows the pain a nation suffers when it receives justice. As a nation we have murdered millions. If we do not want to receive justice then pray we may learn and not perish. Let us learn from the tumbling towers.

 For Christian Culture,

 Don Schanzenbach 9-10-11