Today marks the 10th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks on America. For people everywhere, this day means something; everyone seems to know where they were and what they were doing when they learned of the unfolding attacks. I was sitting in a hotel in Tokyo and unable to call my wife. It was another 10 days before I could return to the States, and during that time I had ample opportunities to reflect on my life and my marriage. I realized that in many cases I had been putting my job before my marriage and I vowed to correct that flaw. That vow resulted in me taking a job that doesn’t require me to travel. Maybe you were somehow changed by 9/11 too. Many lost loved ones, and today is a day of remembrance for the heroes that died that day.
Since everyone has some memory of this event in our history, it’s a perfect conversation starter for witnessing. I went out to the park today to hand out tracts and talk to people about what today means. I talked to a few couples and told them that within a week of the 9/11 attacks, churches were filled to capacity across the country; within another month, things had gotten back to “normal” and there were empty pews again. I asked them why they thought this was. One lady said that she thought people liked to pray for those in need, or perhaps they were praying for the health of our country. Then she asked what I thought the reason was.
I told her that people seek God for all sorts of reasons, but the primary reason is for what He can give us. Just like the 9/11 church attendance phenomenon, you can visit hospitals and find people praying in the chapel that don’t regularly attend church. We go to God when He is the only one who can bail us out. Put bluntly:
We want what God can give us, but we don’t really want Him.
You see, He demands something from us. As our Creator, He has said that He will judge the world in righteousness; the problem is, none of us are righteous. So we go about trying to “do good” to make up for that. This isn’t anything new though. At one point in His ministry, Jesus had many disciples. In John chapter 6, Jesus told them that many followed Him not because of who He was, but because of the food that He gave them. He basically told them that they were a bunch of freeloaders and that they should save themselves the trouble of trying to earn salvation. At this point, many of them left Him.
What do you think? Did America’s Christian population explode for the month or two after 9/11? Or did the multitudes of false converts pour into the churches hoping to have their ears tickled and to satisfy the sinking feeling that all was not well with their salvation?
I met a couple in their 40′s who said that they attend a local Baptist church. When I got to this point in the conversation, the lady started getting pretty uncomfortable. She stood suddenly and said, “Well I think it might rain. We’d better go.” With that, she and her husband left.
Even after talking with as many people as I have, I am still amazed that people will claim to be Christian, but get very uncomfortable when you start talking about Jesus Christ. I guess even today, He still has freeloading disciples.
