Skip to main content

No Greater Love




As our country reflects on 9/11 this week, like many others, I have spent time thinking about where I was and what I was doing when I first realized we were under attack. Eleven years have passed, but it seemed like only days as my mind began to go back to that day of infamy over a decade ago.

As a sophomore in high school I remember being a little nervous. As a self-proclaimed history buff I knew full well the accounts of the Greatest Generation that dealt a fatal blow to Hitler’s tyranny, just after responding to the only other attack on US soil following Japan’s bombing of Pearl Harbor. This was also on the heels of the War to End All Wars, another decisive victory and display of American military strength.

But I also knew of the more recent missions into Korea and Vietnam; these were campaigns that we did not technically lose, but still made us wonder if our military had not taken a step backwards*. Desert Storm, the only war in my lifetime up to that point, was short and decisive, but obviously not decisive enough since it was the same enemy resurfacing almost a decade later.

Knowledge of these events left me wondering how America would respond to this new face of evil. Would we cower and run? Would we wave the white flag of surrender? Or would we embrace our role as protector of all that right? Would we stand up once again to evil, telling it that it has no place in our world, and that freedom is a universal human right?

You know the answer. And that is why we can look back on 9/11/01 as a day that strengthened America’s core. President George W. Bush, a man who was later assassinated by the media, understood that these terrorists were not to be treated as bank robbers or even serial killers, but as enemy combatants. Bin Laden waged war on our country, and the President chose to act as a peacemaker—peace made by bringing a cowardly mass murderer to justice.

On September 14th, standing amid the rubble at Ground Zero, President Bush tried to address the crew of rescue workers, and a man yelled out, “We can’t hear you!” The President was handed a megaphone, and his non-scripted response was, “Well I can hear you. The whole world can hear you. And soon the people that knocked these buildings down will hear from all of us!”

Years later, President Bush’s successor and polar opposite, President Barack Obama, gave the order that finally took out bin Laden once and for all. Two very different men both understood the same concept: this act of war must be drawn out to its conclusion.

We have our brave men and women to thank. President Bush called on “all who wear the uniform” to be ready, and because of the bravery and service of our men and women, no draft was ever instituted. These soldiers bravely fought, shed blood, and many laid down their lives. I am reminded of the words that Jesus shared with His disciples in the Upper Room in John 15:13. He said, “Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.”


Soldiers show their love for their country and fellow countrymen by laying down their lives, but Jesus was referring to something even greater than that. He knew that within a matter of hours He would be betrayed, illegally tried, and crucified for us.

If you ever doubt God’s love for you, look no further than the cross. It is there that Jesus laid down His life, showing the greatest act of love in all of history.


*This is not suggesting that our soldiers were incapable. The blame lies both with the Administration’s execution and with the media’s goal of turning popular opinion against the war efforts. The same criticism of the media can also be made in their Bush-era coverage of the War on Terror.  

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The “Christians Hate Gays” Myth

During these Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) hearings before the Supreme Court I keep hearing how much Christians hate gay people. This was news to me since I am a Christian and I don’t hate gay people. I also go to church with over 1000 other Christians, and if any of them hate gay people, they sure haven’t told me. Before moving to South Carolina I worked at or attended several churches in Texas; prior to that I spent a decade going to church in Florida. Guess what? No one hated gay people. In fact, I don’t know any Christians who hate anybody. The very uniform of a believer is his love, and if a person does not show consistent love, then he is not actually a believer. Are there non-believers who hate gay people and claim to be Christian? Of course. But that doesn’t represent Jesus or His church. Equating  hateful sign-wavers with Christianity is like equating a kindergarten baseball team to the New York Yankees. They may claim to be playing the same

Famous Frauds in Homosexual Science Part 2: Twin Studies

A second piece of shoddy science has been heralded as proving people are born gay. This time, instead of cadavers, living twins were studied. This study compared male identical twins to male fraternal twins; in each set of twins, at least one man was homosexual. 22% of the fraternal twins showed both brothers to be gay, compared to 52% of the identical twins. Since identical twins are closer genetically than fraternal twins, this study claimed that genetics play in to homosexuality, or that people are born gay. But an obvious question that arose from this study is, why did 48% of the identical twins only have one gay brother? If they are so close genetically, then 100% of the identical twins should have two gay brothers. This study does more harm than good to the argument from genetics. There are other factors to be considered. One is that the men doing the study (Richard Pillard and Michael Bailey) could have intentionally picked fraternal twins that the

The Rose of Sharon and Lily of the Valley

If you have spent much time in church you have probably sung some songs with lyrics like these: “He leads me to his banqueting table, his banner over me is love… Jesus is the rock of my salvation, his banner over me is love.” “Sweetest rose of Sharon, come to set us free.” “He’s the lily of the valley, the bright and morning star…” But are those songs biblical? They come out of the writings of the Song of Solomon, but are we to understand those lines as describing Christ? The Song of Solomon is a collection of love poems that were written between two people who were deeply in love and about to be married. While we know that King Solomon is one of the writers, the other’s name has escaped us, and we know her today simply as the Shulamite woman. Some people believe that since this woman is not named then she never existed; some teach that this book is pure allegory, only existing to serve as symbolism. King Solomon, they say, represents