When truth slammed into our buildings on September 11, 2001, the unmistakable realization that people could hate our country and the values we represent so much that they would gladly train those who would kill themselves to commit such a horrendous crime, we saw an immediate outpouring of unity and patriotic pride.
People who had for years tugged and torn at the fabric of traditional family values, attacked evangelical Christianity, and sought to substitute so-called freedoms at the expense of traditional values were singing “God Bless America” with feeling. Having experienced the undeniable truth of fallen buildings and the loss of thousands of American lives, they found solace in the American flag and America’s God. I’m sure many doubted their own secular world view and started to question their own foreign policy approach during the decade preceding the attacks. Failure to defend the nation and its people will do that to you.
But, that feeling didn’t last long.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, while in prison awaiting his death at the hands of the Nazi’s was puzzled by this “memory loss” so soon after an air raid attack near his prison. “While allied bombs rocked the prison cells, nonbelieving men would cry out to God for salvation; but as soon as the bombs had passed and the dust had settled, the prisoners went back to playing cards and passing time, forgetting all about their supplications to God. Bonhoeffer writes:
. . . But the good things of life—truth, justice, and beauty—all great accomplishments need time, constancy, and “memory,” or they degenerate. The man who feels neither responsibility towards the past nor the desire to shape the future is one who “forgets,” and I don’t know how one can really get at such a person and bring him to his senses.”[1]
We are a nation without sense when we forget about the God we turned to the night after the 9-11 attacks. We are a nation without sense when we fail to assess the danger Satan presents to us after an attack so blatant, so arrogant, that no one could alter or change the truth even if the most absolutist of us wanted to.
And now, we’re about to lose our moral memory again.
The liberals are so quick to remind us of one candidate’s moral past, as if there were gradations of sin. Look, all have sinned. Especially me. Let he who is without sin cast the first stone. Our first freedom, religious liberty, has already been trumped by so-called social rights for a vocal and wealthy minority. As I write this from Hawaii, my mind turns to the history of “annexation” of this kingdom by a vocal and wealthy minority. Native Hawaiians still lament the loss of their culture and identity. Does that same fate await conservatives, and evangelical Christians?
Traditional family values have already been trumped by social constructs the liberals have championed to secure their own power. Military readiness has already been trumped by social engineering. And what commander-in-chief would sacrifice military readiness for sequestration? Our current president did. And, we’re to forget about all of that?
The moral memory of a Christian nation needs to be re-awakened. Our nation can survive a Hillary or Trump presidency but not a permanent loss of moral memory. This is not a good time to be a nation without sense.
[1] Special thanks to Gary Thomas, Sacred Pathways, (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1996), p. 82.