I am writing this on September 11 in a donut shop in Great Barrington in the rolling old hills of western Massachusetts. This, of course, is a day no one will ever forget. I was in Manhattan the morning the towers were attacked.
I could see the smoke rising downtown from the Guideposts office windows on 34th Street, and later I watched as the ash-covered survivors staggered uptown towards Grand Central Terminal, stunned but unbowed, stopping to help the weary and the shell-shocked, sharing water and cell phones, compassion overcoming panic.
Later at sunset, I wandered the deserted streets wondering how an atrocity like this could happen, especially in my hometown, and realizing that things would never be the same again in my lifetime.
I wondered where God was in all of this suffering and chaos but knew in my heart that he was with the hurting and not the haters. Today was one of those days when faith is profoundly tested, battered by the unthinkable.
Great Barrington, too, is a touchpoint. The hijacked plane out of Boston, the first to hit the Towers, flew right over this little Berkshire town, diverted by the terrorists who picked up the Hudson river 20 miles west, and followed it all the way into New York on a murderous tragectory. They didn’t need a map or navigation. They just followed that ribbon of blue.
Folks here in the donut shop are discussing that terrible day. There is a man who says religion is to blame. "More people throughout history have killed in the name of God than for any other reason. We’d all be better off without religion.
"It kills more people than it helps, including 3000 people 13 years ago. Look what’s happening in Iraq! Jews and Christian are no better. It’s this God thing that causes all these problems."
No, I want to tell him, man has used God as a justification for evil acts. All religions have, at one point or another throughout history, attempted to usurp God for ungodly purposes–power, territory, wealth, the subjugation and even the extermination of other human beings.
God is not the reason. He is the excuse, an excuse that makes cowards bold. This is not faith. This is profanity. When war and terror and killings are done in the name of religion it is simply politics by another name. Politics, not faith. Man, not God.
All major world religions have at their spiritual core love, and none more so than Christianity despite its own sordid periods of persecution and bloodshed. Faith focuses on love, not hate, peace not war.
Only when faith is perverted and debased does it fill a believer's heart with hatred. God is not to blame. Faith is not the culprit. Religion is not the problem. Human beings are.
No, this man in the shop is misguided. Maybe I should buy him a donut and tell him what I saw on September 11. I saw people of all faiths turning to each other and to God, to love, not hate. Where would we have been that day without our faith? Where would we be today? I doubt we’d be better off.
