After September 11: Four Things to Tell Our Kids
[I wrote the following for a column I have in a local chain of suburban Cincinnati newspapers right after the horrific events of September 11, 2001. It has also appeared on the web site of recording artist Carolyn Arends, http://www.carolynarends.com/911/index.html.]
The morning after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, my barber, Vickie told me about a conversation she'd had with a young mom the day before. "What," this mother wondered, "do I tell my child?"
In the face of such incredible evil, what do we say to our children? What do we tell each other?
I don't have easy answers to those questions. But let me share a few things I'm saying to children of all ages.
First, we live in a world in which people consumed by evil do evil things. The Bible's New Testament tells us that all of creation groans under the burden of human sin. While most of the time, we're likely to be safe, bad things can and do happen.
One day, God will put all things right. In the meantime, it's the call of Jesus-followers everywhere to share the good news about God's love in the hope that people's hearts, minds, and lives will be changed.
Second: We are loved and helped even in the midst of evil we can't understand. Children need to know that there are people who love them and are doing everything they can to protect them. Hugs and kisses from parents, goodnight prayers, and time spent just talking together are all important means by which we can make children feel safer and more secure.
But even more than having the assurance that people love them, children need to know that God loves them. They need to know that God is bigger than all these horrors and that through Jesus Christ, all who believe in Him can live with a hope that goes beyond death.
Third: We need to give our children a clear picture of Who God is. Some believe that the perpetrators of these attacks were acting "in the Name of God." But if they did, it is a twisted, evil version of God. Martin Luther said that if you want to know Who God is, look to Jesus hanging on the executioner's cross.
The God Who has revealed Himself to the world in the Person of Jesus is a God of infinite love Who, as He was being wrongly condemned and executed, prayed for His enemies. He taught us to love as we have been loved by God. He sacrificed Himself to give us eternity. A God like that would never sanction a plot in which passenger jetliners were turned into bombs, taking the lives of thousands. "God is love," the New Testament tells us. Children need to know that.
There's one other thing I feel is important to share with children right now. Midmorning on
September 11, I got a telephone call from our son, a student at a Christian college. As we were sharing some of our feelings about the day's events, I could hear a rising din behind him. Phil looked out into his dormitory hallway and was told, "We're all going to give blood!" "I gotta go, dad," he immediately said. The entire college community took off for the Red Cross to donate blood they hoped would help people in New York City and Washington, D.C.
While at the blood center, my son was approached by a TV news reporter. Why, the reporter wondered, were Phil and his fellow students doing this? "I'm a follower of Jesus Christ," Philip said, "and He calls us to love our neighbor as we love ourselves. That's what I'm trying to do."
Here then is the fourth important thing I feel that we need to share with children today: God specializes in retrieving good from evil. In the face of evil, God inspires His followers to undertake acts of love and compassion. God also helps people who have turned a hardened heart to Him to understand how much they need Him. And God causes people to embrace those who are hurting.
This is the way God works. Two-thousand years ago, the world conspired to snuff out the life of Jesus of Nazareth. His followers, who had felt certain that He was the Savior of the world, were inconsolable. Their world had come crashing down. But Jesus wouldn't stay dead! He rose to life again on the first Easter Sunday and because of that, all who follow Him have a hope that will not stay dead, no matter what happens.
God retrieves good from evil. He will do it again. You can count on it.
