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The day the world changed

FaithWorks asked several Christian leaders, as well as people directly affected by 9-11, to reflect on faith after the tragedy.

"To many in the West, he would be considered a

terrorist. To us, he has become

an incredibly loyal friend who would give his life

to protect our family."

Around 7:30 p.m. CNN images were piped into Pakistani television just as a burst of flames spewed from the glass buildings. I was alone with our house worker and his daughter in our small town in northwestern Pakistan. In shock we held hands as I tried to translate the events to my friends, an effort complicated by the new vocabulary required. Hijack? Terrorism?

My husband and I are the only foreigners and only Christians in this area of Pakistan. At the time of the attacks, he was way out on a Himalayan trek doing research for the guidebook we are writing. I went to sleep late that night wondering how I would get in contact with him in the isolated mountains.

By mid-morning the news had spread and neighbors came by to offer afsos, condolences for the bereaved who have lost family. Soon afterwards a call from the U.S. embassy warden made it clear that we needed to get out of the country immediately. "Is this that serious of a matter?" I asked. The warden's response was grim. We needed to get out quickly while the airport was open. With a one-bag limit and uncertain about the details, I tried to pack as though we were never returning. In disbelief I closed up our home and prayed that my husband would somehow know to come back from trekking early.

Try as I might to explain, the neighbors could not understand why I was leaving. "What do these acts of violence have to do with our community, our country? You are completely safe here," they said. I love them as family and was afraid that any problems aimed at us could injure them as well.

I asked Roshana, my devout neighbor who had been teaching me about Islam, what she thought about Osama bin Laden. I will never forget her response. "Muslims are like the fingers on my hand. We are not all the same, but we are still held together in unity," she responded. "I might not agree with what has happened, but he is a Muslim and therefore my brother. What can I say?" We hugged and held back tears as I sat in the van and drove down the dusty road.

Freedom fighter

When my husband stepped off the back of the jeep in our town the next day, the local men invited him to sit and drink tea before they tried to explain what had been taking place back in New York and Washington.

Saleem, customarily dressed in army fatigues, was the first to greet him. Saleem is part of the jihad whose struggle has kept the death toll at around 15 people per day over the past 20 years in Kashmir. When we first moved into our community, men like Saleem who frequented local training camps and hung banners reading "Jihad is my career" were a bit intimidating, to say the least. To many in the West, he would be considered a terrorist associated with the same mindset that orchestrated the events of September 11. To his community he is a freedom fighter for Muslims living under tyranny. To us, he has become an incredibly loyal friend who would give his life to protect our family.

Most Pakistanis and Afghans we know had good or ambivalent feelings towards the U.S. before September 11. Even Saleem dreams of joining his brother in Seattle and making some extra money to send back to his family. The economic opportunities in the U.S. offer a rags-to-riches fantasy for those who dream.

Yet in Saleem's eyes, the West has been granted power and money in order to shame Muslims for their lack of zeal and fidelity, but eventually God will establish a united Muslim kingdom over the world. The desire to see society in all shapes and forms observe the complete shari'a, religious law, creates support for groups like the Taliban that strictly enforce their sectarian interpretation. He also holds deep grievances toward the West for supporting Israel and India, countries that in his perspective are oppressing Muslims in Palestine and Kashmir.

Face of Christ

My husband caught up with me in Thailand just a couple days after our emergency evacuation from Pakistan. We watched the rest of the plot unfold on the television from the safety of our hotel room. Just before the coalition bombings began, we spoke to our trusted friend Mohamed in Pakistan. He said that most people in our town thought the Taliban and bin Laden were scapegoats for American anger, since there was no proof offered of their guilt. He agreed that we made a good decision to leave, as tensions were running high, with local religious leaders speaking out against the U.S. military action.

Although the geographic distance between Muslims and Christians has become smaller, are the two communities closer to understanding one another? There are Muslims, and in fact mosques, in virtually every mid-sized community of the U.S. Yet, since the attacks, Osama bin Laden has become the quintessential face of Islam for Americans. As one religious commentator suggested, bin Laden and his followers "have hijacked Islam." And who represents the face of Christ for Muslims? Today the legacies of the Christian crusades, European colonialism and current U.S. foreign policy are as present in the Muslim mind as the paranoiac Hollywood images of Muslims are in the American mind. In this time of gripping fear, the world needs a courageous church that will break these stereotypes and reflect Christ's countenance.

Despite the unrest, Mohamed told us that when he thinks of Christian America (two words that unfortunately he has trouble differentiating), the image that arises is not the bombs or soldiers in Afghanistan. Instead, he pictures my husband and me living in our little yellow house down the street from him. Likewise, when we see the angry riots, the anthrax warnings, the pictures of starving refugees in tents, we think of our Pakistani neighbors and friends.

- Name withheld by request. (sojourn@pobox.com)

Leonard Sweet

What the terrorists know that we don't

"The hardest organizations to bring down are the decentralized, self-organized, bottom-up ones."

For decades, our churches and our government have been preparing for everything but the real world we face. How much more waking up do we need? In the aftermath of the 9/11 massacre, and the colossal failure of our institutions to ready us for the world that is actually there, I can only conclude one thing: the terrorists "get it" better than our churches or our government.

First, the terrorists understand the power of an image and the nature of symbolic systems. The use of airlines named "United" and "American" to bomb the twin "centers" of "world trade," and to stutter-step the attacks so that the world's one-eyed-lens king had sufficient time to get enthroned, bespeaks an understanding of the power of image that most in our word-fixated churches have yet to comprehend. One symbolic image -- a plane threading a concrete needle -- shook up and shut down an entire planet.

Second, the terrorists understand complexity theory and nonlinear sciences. The hardest institutions to take on and bring down are those instrumentalities self-organized from the bottom-up, not top-down. One of the greatest self-organizing, decentralized entities in the world today is Al Queda. Our weapons cost hundreds of millions. The terrorists' weapons budget was less than $100. Our bombers cost billions. Terrorist "bombers" cost the price of a couple of first-class tickets.

Third, in a global, interconnected world, of which the terrorists proved masters through their Internet-coordinated schemes and globally integrated financial services, "the power of one" has never been greater. The notion that governments and generals have more power than super-charged individuals and cells is what Osama bin Laden calls the "myth of the superpower." Futurist John Naisbitt has been pounding this paradox into our skulls for the past 30 years: "The bigger the global economy, the more powerful its smaller players." The military fury of the most powerful nation on earth has been unleashed on what? A state? No, a teacher and his network of students.

Finally, the terrorists comprehend and portend the implications of the end of an age of representation and the rise of an age of participation (i.e. "priesthood of all believers"). All boundaries are blasted. There are no more categories of professionals and amateurs, of learned and learners, of products and services, of soldiers and civilians -- only professionals and learners, services and soldiers. Each one of us has now been deputized by our president and our pilots to be police officers or sky marshals who can intervene personally to abort terrorism.

Thankfully, for a historian, history seems to matter again -- not just a focus on the instant, the moment, but the past as it intersects with the future. What theological capital will the church bring to one of the hurricanes of history? We can't fudge the FUD factor (fear, uncertainty, doubt), which is at its highest in my lifetime. But we can address it in a way that offers hope and joy and a way through the FUD . . . all the while acknowledging the sin that doth so easily beset us, the sin that lurks inside every one of us. Just as "evil" is the obverse of "live," and manure is the end-product of human nature, there still is Atta hidden in Manhattan.

- Leonard Sweet is a professor at Drew University and George Fox University

and an editorial advisor for FaithWorks. His most recent book is Carpe Manana. (lenisweet@aol.com)

Lauren Winner

Spiritual lessons amid the fear

God gave me a month of my life that he didn’t owe me. To spend it hysterical is to commit the sin of ingratitude.

Since Sept. 11 I have been so tense and even hysterical that yesterday I thought, Maybe I need to go beg a doctor for a prescription, not for Cipro but for Xanax or some other anti-anxiety pill. I look around New York and wonder what we’re all still doing here. We’re sitting ducks, I think. Surely we’ll be dead in a month. I ask my friends why they haven’t fled to the hills, hills terrorists are less likely to blow up or douse with anthrax. They all tell me not to worry. They tell me I’ll live to ripe old age. I worry anyway.

The statistics my friends quote me — that I’m more likely to get hit by a car than get anthraxed — don’t do much to calm my nerves. The only moments I have felt anything approaching calm are the moments I have forced myself to think about Sept. 11 through a spiritual scrim. In those moments, I start to learn two lessons.

First, I am learning something about Christian fidelity to the city. When I wonder what I’m still doing in Manhattan, I hear some Augustine-inflected voice tell me that I am still here because Christians don’t leave. We are the very best citizens of the city of man because we are citizens of the city of God. We stay, in the words of the collect, to tend the sick, bless the dying, and soothe the suffering. That is why we don’t flee to safer hills.

And I am learning something about gratitude. When I wandered through the Metropolitan Museum last week, when I helped my best friend edit her dissertation prospectus, when I said the morning office in church on Tuesday — in those moments, I realized that God just gave me a month of my life that he didn’t owe me, a month of my life I might not have had if I had been just five miles south of my apartment the morning the World Trade Center collapsed. To spend most of that month hysterical is to commit the sin of ingratitude. I can bring on the calm if I think in small, 15-minute units, if I think about spending the next 15 or 20 minutes loving and reverencing the Lord, instead of spending it reading the 83^rd Internet report about bioterrorism. True love, after all, drives out all fear.

- Lauren Winner is a writer and doctoral student at Columbia University in New York City. (lfw5@columbia.edu)

Brian McLaren

Showing love to our Muslim neighbors

The Cross reminds us that the greatest triumph comes from neither violence nor argument.

Our church, just north of Washington, D.C., held several prayers services in the days after Sept. 11. One evening as we were praying, I felt strongly moved to reach out in some way to our Islamic neighbors. The next day, I wrote a letter expressing my desire to be of help or support if there were any acts of violence against Muslim people. I delivered it to the three mosques and Islamic community centers in our area, which has a high concentration of Muslims. I was able to hand deliver my letter to one of the imams, and we had a good talk. He was very moved by the act of friendship.

The youth group at our church wrote expressions of friendship and concern on a big piece of poster paper and delivered it to this mosque. They posted it in their foyer area where all the men could see it (the women enter by a different door).

The imam came and visited me, thanking us for these expressions of support and inviting me to an interfaith service the following Sunday afternoon. About 40 people from my church went as well. It was a very meaningful time. We had the opportunity to show love to our neighbors in a very tangible way.

Two weeks later, I was invited to another interfaith service at the mosque. I had a funny feeling about this one, and didn't pass the word on to my church. I was glad I didn't, because the guests who came were "treated" to a two-hour experience of what you might call "Muslim evangelism." One quote from the Quran nearly sent shivers up my spine. It was about all infidels being destroyed. I thought, Do they realize how this sounds to a guest like me? Is this intentional? Accidental? One of the speakers affirmed that their sect of Islam rejects all violence. But his next sentence wasn't all that comforting: "We will triumph by argument, not by violence."

There are so many important things to be said in the wake of this tragedy. One of them is that we must show love to our Muslim neighbors. Another is this: The world will be a very different place if Islam, whether moderate or extreme, "triumphs" -- by violence or argument.

I come away more grateful than ever to be a follower of Jesus, and to bear his message of hope and love and peace to this world. His example says it is better to suffer than to inflict suffering. His cross reminds us that the greatest triumph comes from neither violence nor argument, but from saving love and personal sacrifice. May these difficult days deepen our love for Jesus, our appreciation for his Way, and our commitment to his kingdom of peace. And may his gospel somehow shine through true Christians to our Muslim neighbors, who need it, just as we do.

- Brian McLaren is founding pastor of Cedar Ridge Community Church in Spencerville, Md., and author of A New Kind of Christian. (brianm@crcc.org)

George Mason

Justice requires passionate peacemakers

Desire for retribution is an earnest yearning for evil’s defeat. The principle “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth” is suddenly popular again after Sept. 11. Biblical though it is, it was meant to severely limit the vengeance cycle, not to sanction violence as sacred rite or secular right. Punishment must fit, not exceed, the crime.

Jesus sought to undermine violence entirely. “You have heard it said, ‘an eye for an eye …,’ but I say unto you, do not resist (do not war against) an evildoer.” Further, “love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven.” Jesus showed he was his Father’s Son when, in the hour of his unjust death, he prayed, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

Everything in the Bible requires us to account for its place in our ethics. But everything in the Bible does not have equal standing. The judgment of Jesus is final, both in that he will judge all at the last day and in that we must judge in these days in light of that last day. Severe mercy and costly justice call for passionate peacemakers. Leave vengeance to God, protect innocent lives by holding accountable those who have taken innocent lives, seek new conditions for just relationships and lasting peace. These are hard steps that follow "in his steps."

- George Mason is pastor of Wilshire Baptist Church in Dallas. (gmason@wilshirebc.org)

David Anderson

The spirit of reconciliation is alive

I am a pastor of a multicultural church in the Washington, D.C., area. In the past I've seen many Puerto Ricans in our area sporting their country's national flag. Sept. 11 has altered this. Our church’s Puerto Rican operations manager said to me a few days later, "I'm now thinking of something I've never thought of before. I'm thinking about buying an American flag." Wow!

My African-American office administrator speaks of her neighbor's African flag in front of his house. "This morning he replaced it with an American flag."

A couple days after 9.11, a few black sisters were overheard saying with much grief, "I feel like America understands us for the first time. Now all Americans are victims of outside perpetration. We're all brothers and sisters now. I feel understood."

The spirit of reconciliation is among us.

- David Anderson is pastor of Bridgeway Community Church in Columbia, Md., and president of the BridgeLeader Network. (www.BridgeLeader.com)

Erwin McManus

The power of passion

"It is far more important to change what people care about than what they believe."

September 11 is a hinge point in history. It will be remembered as the end of postmodernity and the beginning of an era of divergent histories.

Globalization is forcing us out of our Western perception of reality. We have yet to realize that the rest of the world is not on Western time in regard to history. A great part of our world still lives in what we would call pre‑modern times. A critical part of our world is only now entering the modern world. The ideologies of postmodernism thrive best in the luxury of peace and freedom. Whether we like it or not, passionate conviction about something is far more powerful than postmodern ambivalence about everything.

In practical terms, what this means for the church is that it's time to get serious. There is a difference between beliefs and convictions. For years we have focused on changing what people believe while ignoring what they really care about. We are soon going to discover that it is far more important to change what people care about than what they believe. Webster's No. 1 definition for passion is "the sufferings of Christ on the cross." Somehow Daniel Webster understood that you're not passionate about something unless you're willing to die for it.

I think many of us are in danger of losing our trust in God because we've been trusting him for things he has never promised us. As we are stripped of the security and safety that we have become so accustomed to, will we become embittered toward God? When God doesn't keep the promises that we've attributed to him, will we lose our confidence in him? One of the most corrupting ideas that has permeated our culture is that "the safest place to be is in the center of the will of God." We want that to be true, but it certainly isn't biblical. Many who follow God face severe suffering, hardship and even death. The very word for witness is from the Greek word martyr. God's promise has been that if we give up our lives for his sake, we will find life. That life is a promise of his presence, not a promise of safety, comfort or certainty.

September 11 has ushered in an era with unprecedented opportunity for the church to become an unstoppable force God always intended her to be.

- Erwin McManus is pastor of Mosaic, a multicultural church in inner-city Los Angeles, and author of Unstoppable Force. (erwin@mosaic.org)

Andy Crouch

The revealing truth of Sept. 11

"September 11 was important not so much because it changed everything as because it revealed something."

Not everything changed on 11 September, but it was still an apocalypse. That grand, old Greek word brings to mind pictures of raving, sign-waving fanatics announcing the end of the world. But its original meaning is simpler. An apocalypse is something that reveals, unfolds, discloses.

The original apocalypses (like the biblical books Daniel and Revelation) were written to encourage embattled religious communities that the imposing state systems (Babylon, Rome) that surrounded them were not, after all, as powerful as they seemed. Those seemingly impregnable empires would themselves soon fall, and those who trusted in them would be sorely disappointed.

If an apocalyptic event discloses or unfolds what is real, upending the usual structures of perception, I suggest that 11 September was indeed apocalyptic. To use an apt image suggested by Paul O'Donnell of Beliefnet.com, it was like a flash photograph, catching us unawares and capturing truths that had been hidden.

Had firefighters run into burning buildings before? Of course. But never had so many firefighters run into such tall buildings so clearly devastated and probably doomed. Flash. Were 30-odd-year-olds capable of great heroism before? Sure. But not many 30-odd-year-olds had previously had occasion to voluntarily choose their own fiery demise and tell their loved ones about their plans by cell phone. Flash. Did fathers and mothers love their children before? Absolutely. But who didn’t hug their kids more tightly on 12 September? Flash. Was a nearly naked pop star dancing with a snake a desperate play for the attention of a bored public on 8 September? You betcha. Did it seem even more pathetic and empty on 12 September? Flash.

11 September was important not so much because it changed everything as because it revealed something. It was an apocalypse, not in the sense of bringing the end of a world, but in the sense of revealing that world’s true structure. And part of what it revealed is that much that we take for granted in our culture — and much that the church has assumed it must be “relevant” to in order to thrive — is in fact contingent, temporary, and embarrassingly insubstantial. No one really wants to be caught in the apocalyptic flash photo dancing naked with a snake, much less ogling the dancer.

Christians live on eschatological tenterhooks — suspended between a world that seems to go on very much as normal and an earthshaking resurrection that, we believe, has already given away history’s surprise ending. What is remarkable in North American Christianity is the extent to which we have become seamlessly interwoven with a culture which we appease, flatter and imitate under the guise of “relevance,” forgetting our faith’s own insistence that history is not as it seems to be, that the world itself derives its meaning and being not from the past but from the future.

If Christianity is true — if every empire eventually will fall, if a slain Lamb will turn out to be the key to history, if power and wealth are no more secure than, well, a building designed to withstand the impact of a Boeing 707 — then 11 September was a tragic but fortuitous snapshot of the real future and thus the real present. Love matters. Courage matters. Faith matters. Being entertained, being comfortable, the next promotion, the nice house — not to mention the luxuries of latte-soaked cynicism and terminal irony — they all wash out in the glare of the apocalyptic flash.

True enough, the after-flash image gradually fades and the so-called real world comes quickly — surprisingly quickly — into focus. Perhaps nothing did change on 11 September after all. But if that’s true, it means that we have truly, finally, tragically, gone blind. It’s happened before. Met any Babylonians recently?

- Andy Crouch is editor-in-chief of re:generation quarterly. (crouch@regenerator.com)

Stanley Grenz

Faith in a God of history

“Is it possible to be a people of faith in “the post-Twin Towers world?”

Contemporary historians routinely declare that we entered the 20^th century not when the calendar changed to Jan. 1, 1901, but a decade later on June 28, 1914. On that day Serb nationalists assassinated the heir to the throne of the Austrian empire, and the First World War, which changed forever the face not only of Europe but of the entire world, began.

It is possible future historians will say the 21^st century began Sept. 11. Like the bloody killing that occurred 87 years earlier, the terrorist attacks may well invariably alter our world. These events vividly revealed that there is no longer any haven that lies beyond the pale of the potential for mass destruction precipitated by hatred.

Is it possible to be a people of faith in what some have dubbed “the post-Twin Towers world?” In my attempt to cope with the unparalleled realities unleashed by the terrorist strikes, I was drawn to a biblical text, a hymn and a movie.

The text: Psalm 46 has taken on new meaning for me. “God is our refuge and strength.… Therefore, we will not fear, though the earth give way.… Be still and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations.” These words offer a needed reminder that God alone is the one to whom we must turn as the ultimate resource for living through perilous times.

The hymn: I sing with far deeper appreciation the lyrics to an old hymn, “Grant us wisdom, grant us courage, for the living of these days.” That prayer encapsulates the groaning of my own heart. I have come to see more clearly that for us not only to cope with perilous times but to serve the present generation in the name of Christ requires that we be the recipients of the twin gifts the hymn-writer pinpoints: wisdom and courage. These are crucial, as the hymn rightly declares, “Lest we miss thy kingdom’s goal.”

The movie: The Sunday evening after that fateful day, I was drawn to watch in solitude Thirteen Days, which depicts the events surrounding another potentially world-altering event that occurred during my childhood -- the Cuban missile crisis. As I viewed the video, I was struck with a sense that God had graciously provided leaders at that crucial juncture in world history who had been divinely prepared to cope with a situation that could possibly have led to the annihilation of humankind. This led me to a deeper sense of the presence in the current crisis of the God who is sovereign over history. And it planted in my heart the reassuring hope that perhaps God has placed in leadership today persons whom he has similarly providentially prepared for the grave challenge of navigating these stormy days.

As Christians, we are called to live as lights in a dark world. The events of Sept. 11 came upon us as a stark -- and unwelcome -- reminder of just how dark our world is. But God is greater than the darkness. This God is still at work in human history. He still grants wisdom and courage to all who ask. And he remains forever our only sure refuge. Armed with these truths, we can discover -- even in the changed world that was born Sept. 11 -- that faith in the God of history truly works.

- Stanley Grenz is a professor at Carey Theological College in Vancouver, B.C., and author of A Primer on Postmodernism and Renewing the Center. (sgrenz@interchange.uc.ca, www.stanleyjgrenz.com)

Tom Bandy

Recovering true spiritual passion

"Can we connect spiritually hungry hearts with a deep experience of Jesus?"

The truth is that Sept. 11 did not change our world. Our world has already been dramatically changing for some time ... more dangerous, more polarized between victors and victims, more hungry for real hope and faith. Sept. 11 revealed powerfully what had been true for some time. As the hymn says, "Sleepers Awake!"

North American Christians need to awaken to two things. First, awaken to true multicultural sensitivity. President Bush has rightly discerned that terrorism and Islam are contradictions. Muslim people of all nationalities feel pain and love peace as much as any Christian. Second, awaken to true spiritual passion. The real meaning of jihad is not war but the constant passionate struggle of faithful people to be virtuous through an experience of Quran.

That spiritual passion in North America has slumbered among too many for too long. Perhaps our Muslim kin can help Christians recapture the desire for truly spiritual living. Can our churches seize the opportunity to flexibly connect with the spiritually hungry hearts momentarily flooding our sanctuaries ... and take them deep into the experience of Jesus?

- Tom Bandy is vice president of the church consulting firm Easum, Bandy and Associates and author of Kicking Habits. (TGBandy@aol.com, www.easumbandy.com)

Elizabeth Rios

Nothing matters. Know God.

As a New York resident and an eyewitness to the attacks, at first I felt angry, afraid, shocked and insecure. Today, as I sit in front of my TV set hearing newscast after newscast of the damage done and lives lost, I can think of only one thing: Nothing matters except knowing God!

I got to work early that September morning because my son had to be at his new school by 8:20 a.m. Had he been going to his old school where he could arrive later, my husband and I would have been right in the area where the Twin Towers collapsed. I didn’t see the first plane hit because, as New Yorkers, we take for granted the many monuments in our great city. So while I have a great view of the Towers from my office window, I wasn’t looking at them when a person ran into my office. “Did you see it? Did you see it?" he said. “There's a fire at the World Trade Center.”

We all walked to the school’s auditorium, from where we could see the large holes a plane had created in the Tower. We immediately prayed for the families of those who were injured or killed by this “accident.” After our prayer, we all walked back to our offices, where I continued to stare at the Towers in unbelief. My phone rang. It was my husband worried about me. As I spoke on the phone, I kept my eyes on the Towers. To my horror, I saw another plane heading toward them. “Oh my God! There's another plane! It’s going to go into the Tower!” The plane was moving as if in slow motion. And then it hit! Then came the explosion, the debris flying in the air. I was scared. I knew then it was no accident. Could this be war? I thought.

We were told to evacuate the area. As we walked out the door, we saw others running. We saw stunned faces, dazed looks, people covered with dust and debris. It was like a scene from a war movie. Only this was real. This could not be happening! This is New York City! I thought.

But it did happen! It was not a nightmare we woke up from. What does this mean to us spiritually? From my perspective, it brings home one important message: Nothing in life is more important than knowing God on a personal, individual level. Before this national crisis, I was battling with a host of personal problems, from family illness to personal betrayal. In light of Sept. 11, none of that matters. It would take something of this magnitude to remind us that there is really no security but in God. It would take something of this proportion to catapult us into the reality that we spend our time worrying and speculating about things that have no eternal benefits.

While people have already begun to formulate many theories, including the possibility that this is the beginning of the final war written about in Revelation, I choose to focus on one thing. If this is the beginning of the end, if we know God we have nothing to worry about. Nothing else matters. Know God, New York!

- Elizabeth Rios is assistant professor and executive director of the office of advancement at Nyack College and Alliance Theological Seminary in New York City. (LATINALIZ@aol.com)

Rudy Carrasco

We work it out together

It's difficult to teach what we don't know. In my ministry context, it's difficult to teach the young leaders under my authority how to react to the attacks on America and our new security state when I myself don't know how to react. It always feels odd not to have all the answers, and now more than ever.

What we have are processes. We have experience letting processes work themselves out, experience that our 19-, 22-, and 24-year-olds might not. The process we at Harambee are clinging to most is discussing, debating and researching issues together. We are arriving at responses to Sept. 11 by talking them out, by living them out together. Mark Driscoll at Mars Hill Fellowship calls this midrash, from the Jewish tradition.

In this respect I am grateful that so many people around Harambee Christian Family Center have chosen to live in geographic proximity to one another. Many live on the same block, in the same apartment complex. That makes it easier to continue the midrash about terrorism and the Christian response. It's not a once-a-week gathering or strings of emails back and forth. It's a matter of going to the corner store, walking to someone's house, driving with someone to the store.

I'm grateful because some of the most important things I've learned since Sept. 11 came while I was with someone from my community running an errand, helping with a chore, or watching television together.

- Rudy Carrasco is associate director of Harambee Christian Family Center in Pasadena, Calif., an inner-city youth tutoring program. (www.harambee.org )