September 11, 2001 is the day America stood still. The terrorists crashed four commercial planes after being hijacked into the twin buildings of the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington. This day remains the bloodiest day in American history during the peace time.

From the depth of our sorrow, confusion and anger, we continue to ask the questions why evil besieged this nation. Why did God allow this to happen? Why did the US. government not take more precautions after so many warning were received from all the multi-billion dollars of secret spying and satellite operations all over the world? If I could answer these questions correctly, I would not be writing this article.  I was having this same conversation with a female co-worker and she explained with a plain face that, life has to go on after her passionless explanation for what happened. I was very emotional and consumed with so much passion perhaps clearly displayed on my face. Later, she said, "Yinka, when this incident happened on Tuesday and I was listening to all the explanations being given, your name came to my mind and I knew you would have serious problems in dealing with this incident." I quickly denied her claim. Later, inside the secret box of my inner passion, I knew she was right. Perhaps, my greatest weakness like few others is feeling deeper into the depth of human emotions more than other people. I have never stopped thinking about the incident since my wife ran into the bedroom on Tuesday yelling, "Yinka wake up, the U.S. is under terrorist attack!" We both glued to the television for days and watched the developments. I personally became consumed in the whole story as if intoxicated with a drug. In the middle of all these there are confusions of emotions. Many times, I question why I have to feel this pain in my heart for the victims I never knew. Is there something innately wrong with me to develop teary eyes over the incident as it is replayed over and over on the television? I saw myself going through a period of catharsis while watching the stories on the television. It was the first time I valued my television more than my car.

No way can anybody forget about the attack. I saw the US. flag decorations all over the highways, buildings, cars and people are even wearing the flag. I was overwhelmed with so much emotions to see how America as a nation joined together to express patriotism in one voice. I stayed up till 4 am in the morning watching the church service at Christ Church Cathedral from Washington as President Bush declared Friday Sept. 14 as the national day of prayer. Yet, there was something missing in all these patriotic activities. Despite all the military academy talk of revenge, we did not plant the seed of love in the first few days after the tragic event. As wonderful as the celebration of patriotism, it would have been even more wonderful if we do the same with the expression of love for our neighbors, coworkers, church members, those we hate, those we dislike and those we sometimes want to kill out of anger. We can express love and affection to others by doing a random act of kindness to others or even strangers. Let us think less of ourselves for a minute and think about the suffering of others. I saw a worker who discussed so passionately about the event, then I watched her as she left her department, left all the work for her coworker and engaged in social discussion with her friends for over two hours abandoning work. I questioned myself, did she realize the pain she left her co-worker for those hours when she was socializing and leaving work undone? Abandoning work is a habitual behavior of this person, she would always find some crazy excuse that she was doing some paper work. Yet, some of her friends would support her and even find excuses for her. I find it difficult to understand why this individual person and her friends cannot see the callousness of their behavior and their lack of compassion for others. If it was one of their friends working in such a department, she would not hesitate to jump in to go help so they can enjoy the negative nurturing power of gossiping. Where is the evil? How can they see the evil in their own behavior to others that are different from them?

The Evil Within

It is easy to define "us versus them" because we have the so called invisible enemy. Do we? How do we extrapolate what happened to our own life? What lesson can we learn from this incident? With careful evaluation of our conscience and history, we will realize that the people who committed this act are no different from us because they belonged to the human race. At a point and time, we have all felt cheated, hurt, abused, taken advantage of, oppressed or felt being violated in any kind of ways and we feel the need to strike back at the world to get even. Yet, what happened on Tuesday Sept. 11 is detached from us as if not a part of our being as people during the act of madness or the unthinkable action out of anger. Amazingly, people go to church on Sunday sing song to praise God, sit in church like regular human beings devoted to the worship of God as angels. But, on Monday, they become transformed to gutless creatures dishing out pain to others on the job. Even to some of us who are Christians, we have not been able to transform the religious part of us on Sunday to our everyday life. Otherwise, we would not worship God on Sunday and worship the god of power, money, hate, prejudice, anger, intolerance, bigotry, divisiveness and arrogance on other days. Sometimes, those who professed to be the most religious beings on Sunday comfortably transformed themselves to be servants of the devil on other days. When I experience divisiveness on the job with one group against another, I also observe hate, prejudice and intolerance in the same people especially in a place with very poor leadership. Yet, the same people who are the driving forces championing such a movement are the first in church on Sunday. At the same time we do not see the similarities in our behavior fueled with hate and intolerance compared to what we experienced on Sept. 11, 2001.

We have politicized the hate of divisiveness as the right thing to do to win votes. The voices of attack against the government is one of the most lucrative enterprises in the news media today. They are the voices of political agitation through the media. So, our radio airways are filled with anger and hate rhetoric of political intolerance. Yet, we find it difficult to understand the relevance of these voices of hate and the high school shootings, Oklahoma bombing and that of the terrorists. Do we need more voices of anger on the radio and television, or we need more voices of rational thinking, tolerance, understanding and love?

Why God Allowed This Evil?

This was the question that was being debated throughout the days after the terrorist bombing. Some ministers admitted they do not know why God allowed this to happen. One minister mistakenly said, "Anger against God is justified at this time." When I heard that statement, I knew human being are so full of themselves and garbage! One thing we forget is the "human will power." God is not our servant and neither is Christ our servant. God is our Creator and our father, Christ is our savior and redeemer. When God created man, He also created two remote controls. He gave one remote control called "human will" to us with instructions. He took the other remote control called "divine intervention" with Him to heaven. The human will power defines "freedom of choice."  So, after we choose to do stupid things with our self righteousness, arrogance, greed and hate, we then start blaming God who has nothing to do with our choice except if we seek His advice and place Him in the cockpits of our lives.

Think about it this way. When we build up this giant ego, we some times think we are bigger than God. Don't we? We use our power to hurt others and justify such behavior. This is the same way the Arabs Americans are being attacked in the street because we are always looking for a convenient targets to release anger. We create divisiveness  within the races and gloat about it because it makes us feel so good to abuse and punish other people that are less fortunate, less powerful or just because they are different. We brag about how greed is so good and why it is important to deny other people opportunities, just because they are not like us. So, when we do all these God forsaking acts of cruelty against other human beings, we still want continuous blessing from God. And because He did not set His own remote control of protection on automatic, we got angry. Why should we blame God for human's satanic acts? Actually, the first time God created man, His remote control of divine intervention was on automatic function to protect our existence. The automatic remote control worked for so many years until we start sinning so much and we broke it. It was the act of our sinful ways that broke His automatic remote control for our protection. Once we broke it, we disconnected the automatic control with God. The truth is, God did not leave us, it is us who left God because our our sins. Our next choice is to actively seek God intervention by prayer after we have intentionally do all these bad things and broke His automatic remote control. We all know that mighty fortress is our God and a help that never fails. How many parents will continue to buy the same toy for the same child who continues to break it? After a while, a sensible parent will stop buying toys, and let such a destructive child grow up and buy his or her own toys and break them. Perhaps he will understand the value of money if he has to buy his own toys. Similarly, it is our responsibility to seek God because He made it clear, "From the sweat of they hand will thou eat," ....... with your bad self!

Did God cause the plane to crash? Absolutely not! Was there a divine message from the incident? Absolutely! We should seek God and change from our wicked ways. For the most part, we need to express unconditional love for others. Today, develop the need to be nice to a stranger, perform a random act of kindness. The greatest gift Christ gave to us is the gift of love because we should learn to love our neighbors and even our enemies as ourselves.

The event of September 11, 2001 when terrorists attacked American at multiple fronts reminded us about human mortality, the fragility of life and the preciousness of our existence. Today, plant a seed of love and not that of hate.

Yinka Vidal, Managing Editor, OUTCRY Magazine