Secular Religion

This page is being written in 2011, and edited in 2018.  On this date in 2001, clever and vicious terrorists flew high-jacked airplanes into the Twin Towers in downtown New York City.  Soon after the first plane struck the first tower, I was following the on-site human responses on television, when I saw the second plane circle around and strike the second tower.  The second tower collapsed before the first one fell.  The devastation was unbelievable, and the loss of life was in the vicinity of 3,000 persons.  One is unsure what the collateral damages have been.  In the hours of this holocaust, another plane, likely bound for the White House in Washington, D. C. was aborted by brave persons on board the plane, and crashed killing all on board in Pennsylvania.  A fourth plane succeeded in crashing into the Pentagon, the central office for the American military in Washington, D. C.   On the tenth anniversary we are visited with old and new stories about the context of the day in the United States.  These include the story of a woman, recently commissioned as a pilot in the military, who was ordered to crash the plane headed for the White House.  She had no gunnery, and would have to give her life to prevent the greater tragedy designed by the terrorists.  She prepared herself to follow her orders.  The actions of the passengers on the flight saved her life.  In the lapse of ten years the bravery of the New York firemen has become legendary, and a model for other young idealists, especially among the families of the firemen, who in serving lost their lives, to give themselves to purpose in the care of others, and what is felt to be moral (spiritual) duty.

Date 9/11 has become an idiom and icon.  There are stories about children born on this date.  Out of it all there appeared, in a number of reports, that the event changed America.  According to the reports, the nation, meaning the people, are not the same.  There is said to be a kind of redemption related to both large and small influences in our lives.  The story is too lengthy for a page, but leads to my point for this purpose.  If there is change, what kind of change is it?  The stories are such that there must be some kind of religion of values, worth, wisdom, improvement, and concept of evil.  If so, this is a sect of human religion, perhaps, for some, an act of faith.  The only change I detect is sadness about secular life context. 

Prophets foresaw similar events.  The world, not just eighteen persons, was pictured at the Siloam Tower by Jesus.  How are the tragic events any worse than the Indian Trail of Tears in a forced migration from Florida to the West?  How is it worse than the killing of the Archduke Ferdinand that led to World War 1, costing millions of lives, including thousands of Americans?  How much greater influence than a Hitler, and a Holocaust that took between ten and twenty million lives in the pogroms alone, and tens of millions in World War II?  The stories are many.   Did they change us forever?  Humanity persists.  We will not learn enough in any of these unspeakable horrors, unless mankind’s nature is curbed.  We lose more lives from a few weeks of drunken driving or drug abuse than were lost at the Twin Towers.  The tiny holocausts for lives add up to far more than the dramatic events of September 11, 2001.  If I were privileged to interview the dead who have been honored by the monuments, especially at Ground Zero where the Twin Towers once stood, what would they say we should do?  They would likely say: In the time you gave for my contribution on that day, would you give it to the improvement in the general conduct of mankind?That means you will take on the larger and more difficult task of prevention through teaching values and self-control, of our duty to the good of others, of good will, and clear/clean thinking about life, living, and world solutions.  Show that freedom is best because it is earned in every generation through love, peace, and what may be summarized in the word righteousness (right).  It is likely that we would not proceed to follow this ephemeral proposal without God’s prodding.  It will not be achieved through humanistic religion, and that is not to fault-find humanism – except as God is left out.  Humanism is too pluralistic to gain consensus.  It may be that God is too authoritative to gain consensus from free societies.  We may be sure that we will again have Twin Towers’ incidents and holocausts of World proportions – unless God.