Military Chaplain: Our Divided Nation Needs God

On the week of the five-year anniversary of 9/11, a pastor and retired military chaplain whose son fought in Iraq says our nation needs God — and a new administration. 

It hardly
seems possible that September 11, 2001 was five years ago.  My oldest son, John, a TV satellite uplink
engineer, arrived in New York four days after the towers fell,
spelling a tired operator who had been there from the beginning.   Having worked in the East before, John later
told me he was amazed at how well New Yorkers were pulling together.

Following the
collapse of the twin towers, I called local TV stations in Reno, Nevada, and told them the Church of which
I was minister would remain open all day if anyone wanted to come and meditate
or pray.  All day long, in ones and twos,
people came and quietly sat.

That day, I
saw how deeply people hunger for God, especially in times of peril and
need.    Five years later, well into the
"war on terror," I see as clearly that our need for God remains great.

As a
retired military chaplain, I buried two young men killed in action in Iraq and assisted the families of two others
killed in Afghanistan. 
My youngest son, Philip spent a year in Iraq as a combat soldier. Twice,
vehicles he was driving were hit by Improvised Explosive Devices. 

Five years
after 9/11, for me, the "war on terror" is up close and personal.  I know the toll that it takes on the families
of those whose loved ones serve, and I've seen the pain and grief it brings to
those who lose a family member.

Yet instead
of pulling together as we did in the days following the collapse of the World Trade Center, we are now a deeply divided nation.
Some of us argue that the "war on terror" is a fiasco while others cling even
harder to a President who urges "staying the course" — even when the course ahead
resembles what the lookout in the crow's nest saw on the iceberg-filled night
that the Titanic sunk.

We, as a
nation, are deeply divided, and we, as a people, need God more than ever.  Theologian Reinhold Niebuhr once said that
religion is "a citadel of hope on the edge of despair."  It's a wonderful image for where we are today
— near, if not on, the edge of despair.  We
need faith.  In prayer, we need to take a
hard look at where we are as individuals and as a nation.    

People
living in a French village destroyed during the First World War agreed that the
first thing they would rebuild after the armistice was their church.  Yet disagreement came over whether they would
keep the old statue of Jesus damaged in the war, missing its hands and feet, or
purchase a new one.  One villager made a
compelling argument for keeping the old one. 
"Every time we look at it," he said, "we'll realize that we must be his
hands and his feet."

Today, five
years after 9/11, the French villager's assessment is still apt.  We must be the hands and feet that change our
world for the better.  Not only must we
strive to be people of hope and prayer; we must also work to change the things
we can.

German
pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, shortly before he was executed for
participating in the plot to rid Germany of Adolf Hitler, was asked how he, a
pacifist, got involved. "When you see a drunk driving down the road it's not
enough to bury his victims," Bonhoeffer answered.  "You've got to jump on the running board and
get the wheel out of his hands."

Dietrich
Bonhoeffer's observation is the reason I write today. 

Please join
me and let's be God's hands and feet, both by supporting our troops in prayer
and by offering them and their families all kinds of tangible aid.   And
let's do everything we can to bring a new administration into office — one that
understands the limits of military power and knows the strength of diplomacy
and international unity to achieve just ends.

NYC photo by Linus Gelber