Last night, I insisted that we watch the 2006 movie, “United 93”, together. It’s the only major motion picture made about 9-11 that attempts to chronicle the events of that morning as they actually unfolded, without embellishments.
It succeeds.
Maggie and JoJo, for whom “9-11” is some murky historic event – as indistinct as Pearl Harbor or JFK’s assassination – were spellbound.
They learned a lot that they had somehow missed until now – basic facts that it’s easy for those of us who lived through the real thing to forget we know.
For instance, they hadn’t realized that the terrorists used domestic passenger airline flights as weapons – they had always assumed “jihadist jets”.
And the specific story of United 93 – ordinary people, rising to extraordinary heights of courage in excruciating circumstances – was altogether new for them.
Twenty Years
It has been twenty years since 9-11 happened. A generation has been born and come of age since. After talking with my daughters about it last night, some hard questions kept me awake:
At what point does an event transition from “news” to “history”?
Image of “Newspaper Rock” ancient monument
And how is “history” preserved – especially in an age of revisions, cancellations, and indifferent ignorance?
What is History?
History is comprised of the narratives of our collective past. History gets curated and interpreted and filtered, inevitably, in the telling. Historians promulgating the fiction of wickedness that is Project 1619 are no more agenda-driven than the historians who once promulgated the fiction of the “noble savage” and Manifest Destiny.
But history – real history, as distinct from ideological propaganda – is rooted in facts. Dates, times, people, things that actually happened. (Important to note, in this present age of emotions-are-everything: how people felt about the things that actually happened is a nuance of the telling of history, but it is not history itself.)
Without facts, there can be no history, only opinion… and Proverbs spells out the timeless truth that fools and opinions are cut from the same cloth.
For us to avoid foolishness – and all the death and destruction that Proverbs assures us inevitably accompanies foolishness – we must learn the facts. We must resist the urge, so affirmed in our culture, to jump straight to “how we feel” about something – we must spend time investigating what the “something” actually is.
To spell things correctly, to be clear about details – names, places, sequence — to accurately pinpoint chronological order – these are basic requirements of history. Interpretation only matters when it begins with facts. Without a factual basis, “history” is not history.
9-11 History Matters
As we mark the 20th anniversary of 9-11 today, I pray that we will get our story straight. I pray that we will remember accurately, that our emotions will have basis in reality and not take center stage. The facts of that day speak for themselves.
A gift to us: the facts of that day point to truths that apply every day. Every day!
Consider these few of many examples:
- 9-11 demonstrates the unequivocal importance of what we believe about God, life, and purpose. Pretending such beliefs are “irrelevant” to world events is willfully naïve, stupidly self-deluding.
- 9-11 demonstrates the truth that genuine heroes live “ordinary” lives that are oriented around serving – and saving – others. The first responders who rushed into the conflagration from which everyone else was fleeing embody a modern-day example of Jesus’ definition of love, “Greater love hath no man than this, to lay down his life for his friends.” (John 15:13)
- 9-11 demonstrates the truth that love is more powerful than hatred. Three of the four hijacked airplanes crashed as the result of hatred so ferocious it compelled mass destruction. But United 93 crashed as the result of love so powerful it paid the ultimate price to save the lives of strangers. There were 16 jihadists trained for and focused on mass murder; there were 40 “plain people” who sacrificed themselves to save lives.
As we reflect today on all that happened twenty years ago, we should prioritize prayers for those who lost family members and friends in the attacks. To honor them and those they still grieve, we should also commit ourselves to telling the story – to preserving the history – of 9-11.
And those of us who are followers of the One who is the maker of all things – even time, even the facts of history – should also commit ourselves to claiming the larger story of which we are a part. No event, no season, no epoch can contain that story that God is telling… and no matter how dark or evil the day, the certainty of Light and Goodness sustains us as we live it out.
