Hope for an uncertain future – Part 1

During the bombing raids of World War II, many children in Europe were orphaned and eventually placed in refugee camps. Though they received food and medical care, they could not sleep at night, afraid of waking up to find themselves again homeless and without food.

Someone then suggested giving each child a piece of bread at night. Not to eat, just to hold. The idea worked—the children could sleep, secure in the knowledge that they would have something to eat the next day.

More than ever before in our history, Americans need such “bread” to hold when we go to sleep tonight, a “tune without the words” that sustains us amid the cacophony of threats we face.

For example:

• Our nation marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of 9/11 with the threat of Islamic terrorism no more resolved than it was on that horrible morning.
• Many of the founders of artificial intelligence are sounding the bell of our collective doom if (or when) the machines take over and exterminate humanity.
• Medical experts warn that another coronavirus-like pandemic is a near certainty, adding the plausibility that the next virus will be far more deadly than COVID-19.
• China is playing the “long game” toward global dominance, with economic, military, and technological strategies that threaten America’s status and even our future.

We have faced individual threats akin to these dangers before, from world wars to threatening technological advances to pandemics and geopolitical enemies. But never have we faced such threats at the same time. Imagine that the United States was at war with Germany and Japan while locked in an escalating Cold War with the Soviet Union, facing a global pandemic, and on the threshold of an extinction-level technological advance. That day would be this day.

But there is still a hope that “perches in the soul” and “never stops.” We just have to know where and how to look for it.

Understand where we are

In his famous 1858 “House Divided” speech, Abraham Lincoln began: “If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could then better judge what to do, and how to do it” (his italics). The first step to healing a disease is identifying the disease to be healed. Before we can defeat an enemy at war, we must define the enemy.

To this end, let’s take a moment to explore more deeply the challenges we face; then we can take proactive steps into the hope that transcends them.

“Kill them wherever you come upon them”

Despite our horrified shock when it happened, 9/11 did not happen in a vacuum.

As I explain at length in my book, Radical Islam, and in numerous papers on our website, the perpetrators of this attack did so for reasons that are foreign to our thinking but central to theirs. To summarize their worldview:

One: The West has been attacking Islam since the Crusades and especially with our support for Israel.

Since all Muslims are part of the ummah, the global Islamic community, an attack on any Muslim at any point in history is an attack on Islam and all Muslims. And since the founding of Israel in 1948 was a “theft” of land from its rightful Palestinian owners, this event was an attack on Islam. Since America and many in the West support Israel, we are complicit in this attack.

Two: The Qur’an requires Muslims to attack those who attack Muslims in order to defend Islam.

Muslims are commanded to “fight in the cause of Allah” against “those who wage war against you” and to “kill them wherever you come upon them and drive them out of the places from which they have driven you out” (Surah 2:190–91). In the view of jihadists (but not all Muslims by any means), this means that Muslims are disobedient to their faith unless they are waging war against America, Israel, and the West.

Three: All Americans are complicit in this war against Islam.

We are a democracy where we elect our leaders, support our government, and provide for our soldiers. In the view of radical jihadists, therefore, you and I are as complicit in aggression against Islam as if we were on the front lines of a military invasion. They view us similarly to how we view Germans who supported Hitler.

As a result, Osama bin Laden and his supporters saw themselves not as “terrorists” but as “freedom fighters.” Those who died attacking our nation were “martyrs.” In their view, 9/11 was not an unprovoked attack on innocent Americans. Rather, it was an act defending Islam from its attackers—the Twin Towers representing the financial, the Pentagon representing the military, and the White House or the Capitol representing the political.

As C. S. Lewis wrote in The Screwtape Letters, “To anticipate the Enemy’s strategy, we must consider his aims.” The 9/11 terrorists intended to defend Islam by attacking America so violently that we would withdraw from the Middle East. They could then shove Israel into “the heart of the sea,” as many said, and clear the way for the dominance of Islam in the region and beyond.

A war that hasn’t stopped

We are still fighting this war against this strategy and these enemies today. Iran’s leaders have their version of this worldview, convinced that attacking Israel and the West will hasten the return of the Mahdi, their messiah. Hamas and Hezbollah seek the destruction of Israel so as to establish the nation of Palestine in its place. Other jihadist groups have similar aims.

Where they all agree is that attacking America by attacking Americans is central to their success. So long as the world’s greatest superpower supports Israel’s right to exist and flourish, their plans to destroy the Jewish state will be fruitless.

This is a battle of ideas before it is a battle of arms, a conflict waged against Muslims the world over who are convinced that the West is their enemy. No victories on the battlefield can win this war. The more Muslims who die in this conflict, in fact, the more Muslims become convinced that we are the enemy of all Muslims.

Imagine a war in which the more conflicts your army wins, the larger your enemy’s numbers become and the stronger their resolve. This is the war in which 9/11 was but a single, horrifically tragic battle.

Jesus warned his followers, “The hour is coming when whoever kills you will think he is offering service to God” (John 16:2; ESV throughout). What was true of Jewish authorities in the first century is true of Islamic jihadists today.

A call to prayer

In the next article in this series, we’ll take a closer look at some of the other threats mentioned above, and how to find abiding hope in the midst of ongoing trials. As we conclude for today, though, let’s take a few moments to pray.

• Pray that those who would seek to advance radical Islam and perpetuate the violence at its core would encounter Jesus and be saved. God has done it before (Acts 9), and he is currently at work in the Muslim world in ways that are nothing short of miraculous.
• Pray for the civilians and military currently in harm’s way across the Middle East and around the world. Pray for God’s protection over them and for a quick and effective end to the hostilities that put their lives at risk.
• Finally, pray that the Lord would not only help you to find a peace that transcends all understanding through your relationship with him, but that he would then use that example of peace to call others to salvation.

Throughout Scripture and church history, we see that the gospel has often advanced most powerfully when the world was falling apart, but God’s people were not. Will the same be said of us one day?

Find more of this Hope For An Uncertain Future series by clicking here.

 

 

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