COLUMN

Achieving Redemption Through 9/11

By JIM HARNISH

Published: Aug 30, 2007

No one who experienced 09/11/01 will hear those numbers without remembering the pain - a voiceless pain that ached with every person who posted the picture of a missing loved one on the walls and shop windows of Manhattan; a universal pain that, for all-too-brief a moment in time, bound us together with the human family around the globe in the face of almost incomprehensible evil.

We will remember the pain and will be forced to decide what to do with it. How we will respond, and how it will shape our lives?

William Sloan Coffin once said that the greatest tragedy is not that we suffer but suffering that never gets redeemed; suffering that never finds the way to call forth new life.

Suffering and injustice can make us bitter or it can make us better. It can harden our hearts with hatred, or it can soften our hearts with compassion. It can cause us to withdraw into the basement of our own anger, or it can open the doors to wider understanding in a larger world.

One response to pain is revenge; the desire to lash out at whatever has caused our pain; the anger that wants to strike back; the longing to hurt whoever and whatever has hurt us.

The problem with the law of "eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth" is that when it works, we all end up blind and toothless. Shakespeare was correct when he had Macbeth say, "We but teach bloody instructions, which, being taught, return to plague the inventor."

Revenge, as satisfying as it may seem for the moment, becomes a bitter diet that turns sour in the soul of those who feed on it.

Is there an alternative to revenge?

Leaders in South Africa confronted that question with the end of apartheid. Instead of revenge, they chose a daringly different way through the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Desmond Tutu tells the story in his book, "No Future Without Forgiveness."

With its imperfections, it modeled a different way of dealing with injustice that models a creative alternative to revenge.

It's worth hoping that as the years pass, we may find ways to redeem the suffering, injustice and pain of 9/11 by breaking the deadly cycle of revenge and death and moving into the way of reconciliation and life.

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Jim Harnish is pastor of Hyde Park United Methodist Church.