Job 1.1-22, 1 Timothy 1.7
September 16, 2001
For God hath not given us the spirit of fear;
but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.
2 Timothy 1:7
This is the new face of war…the invisible enemy can attack anywhere…without warning…safety is a thing of the past.
I…looked over at the Twin Towers and felt like I was dreaming. I was in shock and the image is still crystal clear in my mind…I am scared…
(Two AOL message board postings)
We have all been very deeply affected this week. (Or has it been a month of years?). Many years ago another man felt this way. His life, like many of ours, was going along as the successful American dream. Then, in one hour, everything changed:
Job 1:1 through Job 1:22 (New Living Translation)
In the aftermath of Tuesday’s horrific terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York, the Pentagon in Washington, and the fourth plane that was diverted and crashed near Pittsburgh, we are left to fight the impact in our lives, and the lives of our entire country - and freedom-loving people everywhere.
Job helps us today in the sense that we know we are not alone. This has happened many times in man’s history. Evil is not new. However, we must deal with our feelings now, and come to grips with our changed world.
I listened to the TV like you did. I researched the Internet for other reports. Every counselor quoted suggested we attempt to talk to each other - deal with our fears, anger and sadness corporately. Let’s put a name on what we are feeling:
¨ Shock Numbness, bewilderment…this is the I can’t believe this is happening which is so normal when tragedy of this magnitude strikes. Elizabeth’s cousin, John Michaels witnessed the second Boeing jet crash into Tower 2 from his office window only a block away. He exited his office building and ran nearly 3 miles. He is in shock, traumatized by the immensity of the devastation.
¨ Rage often sets in when the shock comes down. There is an overwhelming desire for revenge - to strike back. Don’t imagine people of faith never want to get even. We have human emotions - which include striking at the evil with blind rage. People of faith attempt to control that…but we do have the feeling.
¨ Fear I have half-seriously said to some of you this week that Thomasville is, relatively speaking, a non-issue in terms of terrorism. After all, there is not much military incentive to destroying furniture. But, still, in the 1950’s we did A-bomb drills in the little Quonset huts in my hometown school. Little children don’t fear based upon military strategy. And, we are all prone to fear that the next plane will come down in our yard.
¨ Defeat/Humiliation In the first grade, the class bully jumped me from behind while I was playing at recess. He got me on the ground, sat on me, and punched me in the back. I never saw him…even after the teacher pulled him off my back. Even though the cowardice was his, I felt humiliated. I still don’t like to lose.
¨ Violation We are connected. We are North Carolinians, but New York is part of America. We are more like the circus elephants in a parade, when it comes to this - we are tied, trunk-to-tail, trunk-to-tail. As it was in my family so many years ago, my own older brother would tease me, sit on me and tickle me till I cried - but nobody else in the world had better try it! Attack New York, Washington? You are pushing the wrong envelope in North Carolina, and 49 other states!
¨ Loss Who can tell the magnitude of loss we feel? My body feels like I have been crying for a month. My soul feels emptied, like I’ve preached a dozen funerals back to back. My mind is on overload with the images of death. My heart, that pastor’s heart I got from the Lord, is attempting to take-on more of other people’s grief than I can imagine, let alone bear. "Loss" hardly begins to scratch the surface.
What now? What about the future?
It is nearly impossible to look beyond today at the moment. The images of suffering, dashed hopes of rescue, and the unfolding investigation are about all my mind can take in at one time without exploding.
But we must always consider what we do. We must always look to the future. The question is, how? How shall we look? With what eyes shall we see that which is unfolding before us? I give you Paul’s advice to his young disciple, Timothy, the next generation. Timothy was to pick up the baton, the torch of freedom, and carry it on while Paul went home, his battle done. I give you the eyes of God for the next generation, as spoken through the pen of a broken and battered old disciple.
7For God hath not given us the spirit of fear;
but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.
2 Timothy 1:7
Paul says, NO! to any spirit of fear - no timidity about what comes next! Carpe Diem…Seize the day! And he tells us how:
SEIZE THE COMING DAY
WITH POWER,
LOVE,
AND A SOUND MIND
We have our Biblical examples. Jerusalem got clobbered in 587 BC. Jeremiah had warned them, and they did nothing. It was worse than New York or Washington. They got conquered, and their best young men carried off to captivity.
Jeremiah stayed behind, but was soon thrown in prison; he was an imprisoned captive in a defeated country. In jail, citizen of a nation that had no rights, Jeremiah did the strangest thing - he bought a piece of property (Jeremiah 32).
Why did he do that? It was a statement that land - to the Jew the visible symbol of God’s blessing and gift - land would be bought again. A statement of the power of God to bring forth deliverance. A statement uttered in the bleakest of moments by the seeming weakest of men. But that’s God!
Abraham got news similar to Job one time. His nephew, Lot had been taken captive, along with his family and the wealth of Sodom (Genesis 14). Abraham pursued the terrorists into the desert. Abraham’s 318 servants against an invading king and his army. The battle wasn’t even close. Abraham brought back his family, and took the king’s marbles home to boot!
What about us? I cannot speak with authority about how we will respond. I believe our president will make a godly decision - I pray so.
What kind of power do we have?
Leonard Pitts of the Miami Herald has said it better than I could possibly express, so listen to him:
"It’s my job to have something to say. They pay me to provide words that help make sense of that which troubles the American soul. But in this moment of airless shock when hot tears sting disbelieving eyes, the only thing I can find to say, the only words that seem to fit, must be addressed to the unknown author of this suffering.
You monster. You beast. You unspeakable (expletive deleted). What lesson did you hope to teach us by your coward’s attack on our World Trade Center, our Pentagon, us? What was it you hoped we would learn? Whatever it was, please know that you failed. Did you want us to respect your cause? You just damned your cause.
Did you want to make us fear? You just steeled our resolve. Did you want to tear us apart? You just brought us together.
Let me tell you about my people. We are a vast and quarrelsome family, a family rent by racial, social, political and class division, but a family nonetheless. We’re frivolous, yes, capable of expending tremendous emotional energy on pop cultural minutiae -- a singer’s revealing dress, a team’s misfortune, a cartoon mouse.
We’re wealthy, too, spoiled by the ready availability of trinkets and material goods, and maybe because of that, we walk through life with a certain sense of blithe entitlement. We are fundamentally decent, though -- peace-loving and compassionate. We struggle to know the right thing and to do it.
And we are, the overwhelming majority of us, people of faith, believers in a just and loving God. Some people -- you, perhaps -- think that any or all of this makes us weak. You’re mistaken. We are not weak. Indeed, we are strong in ways that cannot be measured by arsenals. Yes, we’re in pain now. We are in mourning and we are in shock. We’re still grappling with the unreality of the awful thing you did, still working to make ourselves understand that this isn’t a special effect from some Hollywood blockbuster, isn’t the plot development from a Tom Clancy novel.
Both in terms of the awful scope of their ambition and the probable final death toll, your attacks are likely to go down as the worst acts of terrorism in the history of the United States and, probably, the history of the world. You’ve bloodied us as we have never been bloodied before. But there’s a gulf of difference between making us bloody and making us fall.
This is the lesson Japan was taught to its bitter sorrow the last time anyone hit us this hard, the last time anyone brought us such abrupt and monumental pain. When roused, we are righteous in our outrage, terrible in our force. When provoked by this level of barbarism, we will bear any suffering, pay any cost, go to any length, in the pursuit of justice. I tell you this without fear of contradiction. I know my people, as you,I think, do not. What I know reassures me. It also causes me to tremble with dread of the future. In the days to come, there will be recrimination and accusation, fingers pointing to determine whose failure allowed this to happen and what can be done to prevent it from happening again. There will be heightened security, misguided talk of revoking basic freedoms.
We’ll go forward from this moment sobered, chastened, sad. But determined, too. Unimaginably determined. You see, the steel in us is not always readily apparent. That aspect of our character is seldom understood by people who don’t know us well. On this day, the family’s bickering is put on hold. As Americans we will weep, as Americans we will mourn, and as Americans, we will rise in defense of all that we cherish.
So I ask again: What was it you hoped to teach us? It occurs to me that maybe you just wanted us to know the depths of your hatred. If that’s the case, consider the message received. And take this message in exchange: You don’t know my people. You don’t know what we’re capable of. You don’t know what you just started. But you’re about to learn."
(Leonard Pitts, Miami Herald)
That is one kind of power. Americans have that; we have that untellable power - that substance of faith within - which, when summoned will overcome! We are used to being able to win with resources placed at our disposal by the Almighty.
But there is more. We have the power of God…not because we’re Americans, but because this was an act of terrorism. An evil assault upon civilization, and all that is just and right. And the power of God is always against evil. We have that kind of power which will help us overcome.
I take only one exception with Mr. Pitts’ article. He says The…attacks are likely to go down as the worst acts of terrorism in the history of the United States and, probably, the history of the world.
That is not true. The worst act of terrorism is not even Hitler’s holocaust of six million Jews, or the ethnic cleansing of late. It isn’t even the murderous persecution of untold millions of Christians over the centuries. The worst act of terrorism ever perpetrated is the sin in my own heart which caused Jesus Christ, the Son of God, blessed spotless Lamb of God to be put on a cross and executed for me. What could overcome my own act of terrorism? The Scripture informs me that I have a sin nature which is just as capable as any Middle East radical. We call it total depravity. And admission of that fact - that you are, indeed totally, sinfully-depraved, and calling on mercy from Jesus - is the only thing that makes you fit for heaven.
Be careful in your pain and anger that you do not judge, placing yourself in God’s position. He has said it clearly enough,
Vengeance is mine, I will repay.
Romans 12.19
We have love
Elsewhere Paul said that love bears all. In a sense we have no choice about that. We must bear what is thrust upon us. But the word describes bearing that brings fruit in others. It means our suffering will mean something.
The worst final result of a tragedy is to not learn - and change from that which you’ve experienced.
Another AOL Internet message board posting from a thoughtful individual who has learned something already:
"I cried today and still don’t feel relieved….Be strong people. We will survive and thrive. But let this help us to care for one another again and stop the carelessness that has become so predominant."
We have a sound mind
In all of Job’s troubles he did not (according to scripture) sin. He pled his case before God with questions, but he held fast his faith in God. It is easy to begin imagining that God is out of town, asleep, or not even there when such unimaginable horror is paraded across our TV screens.
In The Message New Testament, "sound mind" is rendered, self-discipline. Paul urges Timothy to understand the power to which he is connected, and exercise the love he’s seen flower before, and use self-discipline - stay by the stuff!
That’s the word for us today.
¨ Keep connected to the power - from both within, and above.
¨ Don’t stop loving, that’s where living begins.
¨ And keep worshipping, giving, and sharing the gospel. He will do what’s necessary to balance the books.
