HAS EVERYTHING CHANGED?(aftermath, September 11th, 2001)(Brief Article)

As we are coming to grips with the events of September 11, we often hear that "everything has changed"E that we have a new appreciation of what is important and what is not; that, after such horror, we have a clearer perception of right and wrong.

We have come face to face with willful evil, and its very existence has shocked us. Temporarily at least, moral relativism has lost much of its false appeal. And being "non-judgmental" in view of the atrocities appears plainly absurd.

People can and do act in evil ways. With the temptation to do evil comes the diabolically inspired hope that we become defiantly powerful when we follow the temptation. Beyond any immediate pleasure and short-term gain, it is the promise of acting with power that makes evil so tempting, especially "big" evil. Being able to consider other people not just mere mortals but mere things; being master over life and death; defying God Himself by destroying those made in His image, by the thousands--that is the intoxication born of doing evil on a grand scale.

Fortunately, most of us shrink from it. It is true that we are constantly doing wrong on a small scale, out of weakness and for the sake of petty satisfaction; but mostly we are too much in awe of God to stand before Him in complete and willful rebellion and say, "I shall defy you!" And thank God that is so, because it is good and wise to fear God. It is also good and wise to know the difference between right and wrong and what the consequences of doing wrong are. The proper motivation, though, is to do right because that is what the children of God do and not because we fear punishment for doing wrong.

Given all this, we naively tend to consider truly evil acts unlikely. And if they occur, we don't expect them to affect us. Yet the genocidal persecutions and the wars incited by nihilistic regimes in the 20th century ought to convince us that this is a miscalculation. And the terrorist attacks of recent years and of September 11 remind us that the nihilistic impulse to destroy has not disappeared.

Sometimes this nihilism manifests itself in a godless ideology such as Naziism, Stalinism, Maoism, and down the line of murderous ideologies. And sometimes it hides under the pretense of "doing God's will"--as in the case of the terrorists who attacked us on September 11.

In all its manifestations the result is the same: the planned and willful killing of the innocent in order to "exterminate" and terrorize. That is so because the nihilist is intoxicated by power. Power exercised in defiance of God, power wrenched away from God--at least so he thinks. The ultimate manifestation of power is to kill. The nihilist would like to kill God, but God is not within his reach (though he may presumptuously declare God "dead"). Thus he must kill other human beings to feel his power. And they must be innocent human beings.