Douglas Wilson's Letter From America

In the Thousands

Liturgy and Worship - Exhortation
Written by Douglas Wilson
Saturday, September 10, 2011

Today marks the tenth anniversary of 9/11, the horrific attack on our nation that caused the collapse of the World Trade Towers, and significant destruction at the Pentagon. On a horizontal level, on its own terms, this was an act of war which fully justified a military response, and with that we have no quarrel.

But we serve a God who providentially governs all things in line with, through, under, and contrary to the intentions of the human actors involved, as He pleases. This means His providential actions are not to be taken as an instance of Him taking up sides, the way a man would take up sides.
If 9/11 was a judgment from God on America, the fall of Baghdad was no less a judgment from God upon Iraq, and as the fall of Kabul was a judgment on the Taliban.

When we say that God intends something, we are not saying that He intends whatever presidents or terrorists intend. One-way horizontal interpretations of “God’s judgment” are quite foolish. The intentions of the Father in the death of Jesus were quite distinct from the intentions of Judas, the Sanhedrin, Herod and Pontius Pilate.

As Christians, we must function with a different calculus. In the ten years since this terrible event, have we become a godlier people? Have we heard the message of Scripture, which tells us that we are to interpret all things as a summons to return to our God? This is true of blessings and hard providences both. Have we done so? To ask these questions is to answer them. This means that we are commemorating 9/11 as a people, but we are still not understanding it.

Three thousand Americans died in the 9/11 attacks. Approximately three thousand Americans die every day in our abortion mills. It has been ten years now, and that means we have gone through 3,650 9/11s since that horrific September attack. We have had the equivalent of more 9/11 attacks than there were original individual victims in that first attack.

Also since that attack we replaced an ineffectual pro-life president with the most pro-abort president we have ever had. Does this look like a spirit of repentance to you? Does this look like the stirrings of reformation?
The Navy SEALS dispatched Osama bin Laden, and he discovered immediately afterward that Allah is not the true God, and Muhammad is not his prophet. We shed no tears for him. But we cannot but note that compared to the bloodthirstiness of our secular ruling class, that man was a piker. Osama’s central problem is that he would not worship the true and living God. If we would heed the voice of God, within the Church we must lead our nation in how to repent of our form of that same refusal.