by Rev. Eric Folkerth

Saturday is the 20th Anniversary of September 11th and the first anniversary that our nation has not been at war. With all else that’s going on in our world, I have the confluence of these events on my mind today.

For many years now, I have kept in my heart the phrase: “Never Forget.”

This, as you may recall, was what so many of us were urged to do in the wake of September 11th, 2001.

But as a Christian pastor, my question is always: “What is it that we should ‘Never Forget?’”

Obviously, the victims. Those who died. September 11th, even 20 years later, is a date of horrible tragedy, and our primary unifying calling is to remember and honor the lives of those who were lost.

But…over the years “Never Forget” became twisted and turned into a rallying cry for vengeance and war. On the ten year anniversary of 9/11, I wrote the following words that still seem like important theological questions for us today:

“Do we never forget…..the Trauma? Shock? Fear? Anxiety?
Or do we never forget….the repeated challenge of the Bible to “Fear Not?”

Do we never forget…the desperate search for personal and national security?
Or do we never forget….God’s Golden Rule? Jesus’ challenge to “love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you?

Do we never forget….Pain….Anger…Revenge?
Or do we never forget…the spiritual truth that violence often leads to more violence?

What is it that we “Never Forget?””

——————-

Unlike some, I am not a pure pacifist. In a very uneasy and limited way, I initially understood that there was a limited argument to be made for the pursuit of those responsible for 9/11.

Having said this, I was incredibly skeptical that war was the answer and incredibly concerned about the overwhelming sense of *vengeance* that seemed to hang in the air in those years just after 9/11.

America was hurting and America wanted *someone* to pay.

Maybe only *now* we can look back at the entirety of the War in Afghanistan and see its totality.

I know this: “Violence begets violence.”

The problem with vengeance is that it can never truly satisfy us.

Once we start down a path of blind vengeance, there is almost never a good way to turn around. And by the time you wake up to see what you’ve wrought, it’s often challenging to even try to make things right.

So it is that Osama Bin Laden and his leadership fled Afghanistan within months of the 9/11 attacks…

He was finally killed ten years later…

And at that moment —now ten years ago— you can make a very credible argument that any possible “just” rationale for War in Afghanistan had evaporated.

But…the war continued. Presidents of *both* parties continued it. Trillions of dollars were spent. Close to a million have died in causes associated with our Middle Eastern wars. Tens of millions of human beings have been displaced.

And now, the war has ended. And while the end was filled with some chaos, it is also true that 120,000 souls were airlifted to safety…and that is a remarkable achievement.

But, friends, make no mistake, there is a horrendous cost to our world from all of this.

The generational violence and suffering which shall yet be born by our own veterans, and by civilian families across the globe, is immeasurable.

As a pastor, I personally believe the harmful moral decay of this war is a part of the thing that had caused our world to turn so harsh these past ten years.

That is not to say anything about the valiant ways in which much of our military conducted itself. But it IS to say, as our Bible teaches: “Without vision, the people perish.”

There was almost *no* vision for this war for the last decade. And the feeling of vengeance that drove our nation in the first place had faded.

Wars are sometimes necessary, under Christian Just War theory. But the justifications of war must always be weighed against the costs:

The costs in human misery.
The financial costs.
The anticipated *future* costs in suffering and continuing cycles of violence.

I fear, friends, that we have not yet borne the full cost of this war. I shudder for the future cycles of violence that might still come from our vengeance-driven war.

Pray, friends, that future leaders might find more peaceful ways to lead our people through conflicts and toward justice. Jesus teaches us that love of the “enemy” is the greatest…and most morally difficult…of all our loves.

Therefore, I am moved by the stories of 9/11 survivors who talk of how they have achieved some level of forgiveness and how they have rebuilt their lives. They “never forget,” but they show us how to live with grief and trauma and without vengeance.

We must urge our society to do the same while also acknowledging and owning the suffering our wars have cost.

When we say “Never Forget” on September 11th, I hope we acknowledge how difficult it always is to do this with love instead of vengeance; peace, instead of war.

Our faith is what makes the difficult task for “Never Forgetting” even possible.

Blog