I couldn’t see last night’s PBS Frontline show on the religious response to 9/11. Too bad since I remain curious about how people of faith see the event. I appreciate AKMA’s response to this question, and of course I agree that it’s a question raised not only by 9/11 but also by the Holocaust and the holocausts we have survived. Indeed, the question is raised every time a child dies of hunger or sickness. It’s called the problem of evil and it has been with us since the beginning.

AKMA faces the whirlwind and concludes that we can’t answer the question “Where was God?” when terrible events happen. And it would be unreasonable to expect AKMA to answer the question that has beset the greatest minds of our culture(s), the question every grieving parents asks.

My question is different. When a faithful person saw the World Trade Center collapse, what did he or she see? I saw a purposeful act of mayhem by humans. I didn’t see God and I didn’t even see God’s absence or His abandonment of us.

What did the faithful see?

(Put technically, I’m looking for phenomenology, not a theodicy. There, wasn’t that helpful?)

Categories: Uncategorized dw