This week-end will mark the 10th anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Centre that brought the twin towers crashing down and causing the deaths of nearly 3,000 people. Like so many I remember watching the news broadcasts with staggered disbelief that anyone could possibly hatch such a diabolical scheme that displayed such a callous disregard for human life. What sort of monsters were they? We know the answer now, and have had several other examples of the sorts of things they are capable of, except that we have learned that they were not monsters. They were people, just like you and me.
Now I realise that in several ways they were not like us: no one I know has hijacked a plane and crashed it into a building, for example. And I am not aware of any of my friends being members of an international terrorist organisation with a pathological hatred of Western society. But the hijackers were ordinary men in other respects, with family connections, with some quite well educated with friends who thought highly of them. Like so many of the 'monsters' of previous conflicts they turn out to be unremarkable inidividuals – think of Nazi concentration camp guards, Stalin's henchmen or neighbours in the recent Yugoslav civil war – who transform grotesquely when pushed, or when the opportunity presents. Studies have been done about the way that a uniform can give authority that goes to a person's head. Others show the way in which community hatreds can lie dormant for decades and resurface when new threats arise. Still others point to the effect of injustice (perceived or real) on the human spirit and how it can lead to extreme reaction. All of those have applied to one degree or another in recent conflicts, but they all have one uniting factor: it is ordinary people who change like this. And therefore it is people like you and me.
This is where the Bible's statements about human nature ring so true (and where secular views are so unrealistic): that sin twists human nature at its core, so that no facet of human personality, whether mind, will, or heart, remains untouched by sin. This does not mean that everyone is as evil as they possibly could be – after all, we live in a world in which God's general grace still operates and appears in the good that we also see all around us – but it does mean that none of us can claim that we are immune to committing such evil. If pushed, then we are capable of doing the same because the same root of sin lies in us. You only have to think of the horror of the community conflicts in Bosnia or Croatia to see this: neighbours who had got on well for decades suddenly turned against each other with frightening ruthlessness, ordinary people beforehand, yet suddenly commiting atrocities of unspeakable maliciousness.
It is humbling to have to face this, as it confronts us with God's assessment on what we are all like at heart and why we need God's salvation in Jesus Christ just as much as the terrorist or camp guard. It forces us to admit that, however good we think we are, we still need God's grace both to redeem us and transform us as well. Without this grace, we are all left at the mercy of our own nature. But the good news is that God holds out the redeeming grace of the Lord Jesus that changes all who trust in him, from the very worst to … well, it wouldn't be right to say the best, but you know what I mean: the rest of us. It is the power of Christ in his death and resurrection that transforms and gives power over sin that nothing and no one else can. And it is not just the terrorists who prove that; it is ordinary folk like you and me.
Now I realise that in several ways they were not like us: no one I know has hijacked a plane and crashed it into a building, for example. And I am not aware of any of my friends being members of an international terrorist organisation with a pathological hatred of Western society. But the hijackers were ordinary men in other respects, with family connections, with some quite well educated with friends who thought highly of them. Like so many of the 'monsters' of previous conflicts they turn out to be unremarkable inidividuals – think of Nazi concentration camp guards, Stalin's henchmen or neighbours in the recent Yugoslav civil war – who transform grotesquely when pushed, or when the opportunity presents. Studies have been done about the way that a uniform can give authority that goes to a person's head. Others show the way in which community hatreds can lie dormant for decades and resurface when new threats arise. Still others point to the effect of injustice (perceived or real) on the human spirit and how it can lead to extreme reaction. All of those have applied to one degree or another in recent conflicts, but they all have one uniting factor: it is ordinary people who change like this. And therefore it is people like you and me.
This is where the Bible's statements about human nature ring so true (and where secular views are so unrealistic): that sin twists human nature at its core, so that no facet of human personality, whether mind, will, or heart, remains untouched by sin. This does not mean that everyone is as evil as they possibly could be – after all, we live in a world in which God's general grace still operates and appears in the good that we also see all around us – but it does mean that none of us can claim that we are immune to committing such evil. If pushed, then we are capable of doing the same because the same root of sin lies in us. You only have to think of the horror of the community conflicts in Bosnia or Croatia to see this: neighbours who had got on well for decades suddenly turned against each other with frightening ruthlessness, ordinary people beforehand, yet suddenly commiting atrocities of unspeakable maliciousness.
It is humbling to have to face this, as it confronts us with God's assessment on what we are all like at heart and why we need God's salvation in Jesus Christ just as much as the terrorist or camp guard. It forces us to admit that, however good we think we are, we still need God's grace both to redeem us and transform us as well. Without this grace, we are all left at the mercy of our own nature. But the good news is that God holds out the redeeming grace of the Lord Jesus that changes all who trust in him, from the very worst to … well, it wouldn't be right to say the best, but you know what I mean: the rest of us. It is the power of Christ in his death and resurrection that transforms and gives power over sin that nothing and no one else can. And it is not just the terrorists who prove that; it is ordinary folk like you and me.
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