Blog on the Lillypad
Wednesday, September 10, 2003
 When our world changed forever Part 6. Wednesday (Sept 12) an unexpected sound in the dark night outside caused me to jump awake. I listened for a moment, holding my breath. But it was unmistakable: a plane was flying overhead. But all commercial and private planes had been grounded.
I sat up in the darkness, then swung my feet over the side of the bed and onto the floor, and I listened. For a moment I thought the sound might be a distant truck that was too loud and coming too fast down the narrow highway a block from my house. But after a prolonged pause as I waited for some telltale sound of gears or brakes, I realized that it was certainly a plane. It was flying pretty low and was making a wide circle above, never going too far away before returning again. |
The moments ticked by in the darkness. I could feel myself breathing with a slight laboring in my chest, afraid of this unexpected and significant sound. I debated about getting up and switching on the television, then decided against it. Whatever was happening, nobody was equipped to report on it. Then the reality of my situation came back to me. A terrorist plane would not have a target in a suburb of Raleigh.
There had been rumors of crop dusters possibly being used to drop chemical agents or even biological agents on widespread areas, but I still doubted that a suburb of Raleigh would have the number of people per square foot to make an attack worthwhile. That was the moment, though, that I knew my life had changed forever. No more freedom from fear. Now I knew that the horrors that stalked the other nations of the world stalked my nation, too.
Finally, the sound of the plane became more faint. It gradually faded away. The next day, some people at work asked if anybody else had heard it, but the best we could guess was that it had been a military plane on reconnaissance.
By now rumors were flying fast of a possible second wave of attacks. I live in a hurricane-prone region, so I already maintained a few big Rubbermaid tubs of dried soups, powdered food, matches, emergency candles, a sterno stove and sterno candles, a propane stove and half a dozen small camp canisters, and--of course---a carton of bottled water. I looked into emergency preparedness for terrorism. To my surprise, there was no single, comprehensive guide to prepare for emergencies created by terrorism.
 | Non-stop since the morning before, I had been asking the Lord what He wanted me to do. And now I found at least one task. I was surrounded by brilliant people who knew about chemical interactions and medicine. And I had the whole internet. Work was hanging fire at Glaxo, and I asked my manager if I could create an Emergency Preparedness guideline in my spare work time, to give to people for free. He said yes.
This was another lesson in grace and graciousness. I went to the misc.survivalism newsgroup and read dozens of posts. These were hardcore survivalists. They'd been warning about an event like this for decades. And the newsgroup was being peppered by frightened newcomers. People wanted guidance and explanations. Everybody wanted gas masks. I felt sure that trolls would jump on me for my naivete, but I asked if the oldtimers on the newsgroup would help me compile a FAQ of Emergency Preparedness for domestic terrorism. To my surprise, nobody flamed me for my clear ignorance of these topics, and nobody tried to take over the project (which I would have allowed). Instead, the experienced and well read survivalists contributed lists of information and advice. |
After some thought about ways to classify emergencies, I organized the FAQ based on survival needs: Air, water, and food were the crucial factors in survival, and I arranged them in the order of what is most vital to life first--air. This, of course, included a long discussion on gas masks, which was the very hottest topic at the time. I followed with water, and then food. Then I realized that shelter would be a close fourth to the top three. After that, in view of emergency scenarios, medical treatment would be vital if people survived an initial attack by terrorists. And the survivalists talked a lot about "bugging out." We had seen this on 9/11: the masses of human beings stranded far from home when the towers collapsed. There ought to be a few handy, lifesaving items around to help a person. These are kept at the office, in the car, and at home. When you put these things together where you can get them quickly in an emergency, you have a "bug out bag." So the final outline was built on this structure:
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Then under each heading I described emergency requirements in order of ascending danger and necessity. Many of the regulars in the group offered me information. Geoffrey Hardin and Benjamin Klingler provided enormous support and information, and they were unfailingly kind about helping. And Benjamin represented a strata of survivalists I had never encountered before: the openly peaceful, cooperative type who believes that catastrophe is unavoidable in the long run but asserts that group cooperation, rather than tough, isolated individualism, is the likeliest way for people to survive in extreme emergency.
I worked day and night on the FAQ, e-mailing it home from work and compiling it into the late night hours. When the first draft was ready, I submitted it to the newsgroup ands asked for comments. I incorporated corrections and then posted the Emergency Preparedness FAQ for Domestic Terrorism. I adorned the top of it with a cross, a salute to the heroes of Flight 93, and an admonitory Bible verse, "The Lord is my portion, sayeth my soul; therefore will I hope in Him," reminding people that we must trust in God and not in ourselves. From the first day it was posted, the Emergency Preparedness FAQ was hit so many times that traffic stopped on my site. I had 6000 hits on it in the first month. It was a necessary work, and I was thankful that the Lord entrusted me to do it. And I was amazed once again at the work of the grace of God where I had not thought to see it.
Christian Fundamentalists actually teach that the grace of God is abandoning the nation, that the country is doomed because of the sins of the lost, that we won't find compassion, mercy, or generosity "out there." Now I was learning the real truth of the Grace of God. It is Christ who labored, and Grace is under His dispensation. The Holy Spirit moves where He wills, and though we can detect where He has been, we cannot identify where He goes or what He's accomplishing. The hard, bitter words of Fundamentalists, their suspicion of everything and everyone, their reluctance to yield, their rigid power structures, all show a lack of grace. No wonder they don't comprehend what Grace is or where it can be found. My heart is the heart of a rigid and cold Fundamentalist, but Grace began to abound to me.
 | On Thursday Sept. 13, Jerry Falwell made his astonishing declaration that "I really believe that the pagans and the abortionists and the feminists and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way, all of them who try to secularize America...I point the thing in their face and say you helped this happen." Yet Falwell very neatly missed the far more flagrant sins of Christian Fundamentalism, which claims to obey the Bible (unlike secular unbelievers, many of whom do not have a clue as to what the Bible teaches), yet has sheltered secret abortions, pornography, child abuse, and rampant sexual sin, including sodomy, behind a facade of self righteousness.
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Jerry Falwell preached for a Hyles Anderson commencement in the 1970's, and he preached at First Baptist of Hammond. Yet he has never confronted the gross sin there, the flagrant abuse of power, the young lives harmed, the doctrinal errors. He knew, just as we all knew, about David Hyles being thrown out of Miller Road Baptist Church in Garland Texas for gross sexual impropriety. And he had to know, as we all know, that there were Fundamental Baptist churches that welcomed Dave back into their pulpits, even after the evidence of child abuse in Brent Stevens and his mysterious death.
Yet Jerry Falwell has never said a word from the pulpit about any of this, and to this day while confronting the gross sins of those who don't even know the Gospel, he has never confronted the gross sins of those who profess Christ. Joe Combs was on faculty at Hyles-Anderson when Falwell preached the commencement service, and Falwell has never censured him from the pulpit for the repeated rape and vile abuse of the woman formerly known as Esther Combs, a pattern of abuse that began when she was a mere child. Does Jerry Falwell actually think that God will judge the lost for sins they don't even comprehend but spare the church for sheltering and hiding gross evils that it does comprehend?
 | When I heard what he said, with Pat Robertson grinning and agreeing (in spite of the later distance he put between himself and Falwell), I prayed for God to spare us from further indignation. But that deep horror of his trivializing of the just wrath of God has never left me. Who, in the day of judgement, can dare to point a finger at others and excuse himself? When God, Who prefers mercy to wrath, and declares Himself the defender of the widow and the fatherless, actually throws down the mightiest buildings in the world, what human being who fears Him can dare to do anything else but ask for mercy and be sorry over his or her own sin?
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Let the truth be clear. For though I do abhor the actions of those who would secularize our culture and reduce man to a descendent of apes, I know that God throws down the idols of those He judges. He did not destroy gay bars or the headquarters of the ACLU. He destroyed the bastion of middle class trust, the structure that stood for conservative, smart economics, and He struck a deadly blow at American military strength. Let's be clear whose idols were destroyed--not the idols of the gays, the liberals, the atheists. But our idols: the icons of investment and smart money and 401Ks and having money in the bank. And the icon of military strength. He threw down what conservative Americans believe in and trust.
 | On Thursday evening, the stress of interviewing so many people who were searching for their loved ones began to tell on the news reporters. A young woman for Fox News (as far as I recall), shed tears out on the street when a group of anxious people pleaded with her to let them show their pictures to the cameras. And Dan Rather, interviewing a young man who was looking for his brother, was suddenly unable to speak when the young man shook his hand and thanked him for letting him describe his brother and show his picture. In terms of journalism, I knew it was a situation that cynical journalists could exploit. On the other hand, it was not inappropriate for professional journalists to shed tears in the face of such sorrow and need.
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And later, when Dan Rather (defending himself for not wearing a flag pin on his lapel during news casts) said, "I wear the American flag on my heart," I believed him. I have seldom agreed with Dan Rather about politics or values, but I respected him with a new respect from our sorrow, in spite of the distance between us as human beings. And I prayed for him and the other journalists, for I realized that surely they were seeing horrors they could never broadcast. You reach a point where you realize that people you've been taught to distrust and despise are protecting you, and protecting your children, and protecting the vulnerabilities of the people of the whole country, from horrors that would demoralize all of us. In the way that they knew how, they were defending America too. And I was (and still am) very grateful to them for insisting on a certain dignity, even in the horrible tragedy.
