There are some things human beings should not have to see: planes loaded with passengers slicing into buildings like a hot knife through butter, or a young father of two, exercising his fundamental right to speak freely, shot through the neck by an assassin’s bullet.
This week America marks two somber anniversaries. Twenty-five years ago, on September 11, Islamic terrorists stormed the cockpits of four commercial jets, murdered the pilots, and crashed the planes into buildings in New York and Virginia and a field in Pennsylvania, killing everyone aboard and nearly 2,700 more on the ground at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. One year ago, on September 10, Charlie Kirk was murdered in cold blood as he sat conversing with students at Utah Valley University.
9/11 traumatized the entire world and set off decades of war that inflicted still more trauma on millions of families. Kirk’s killing traumatized a generation of idealistic young patriots only beginning to discover the nation’s founding and transcendent principles that Charlie fiercely defended and fearlessly proclaimed. Two events, a quarter century apart, are bound together by the same old hatred of the good.
For those of us old enough to remember, both events remain fresh. We can answer “where were you when…?” without pausing. The triggers are many: a clear blue sky, the roar of a plane, a young service member at an airport heading off to base, a blue suit with a red tie, an American flag.
Author John Eldredge says the human soul was “not meant to take on the tragedy of the world.” He understands the fragility of the human heart. Tragedies like these hit hard, and they break – indeed they shatter – our hearts. They also have the capacity to remind us of something else that involves the heart, something that is written into it: a core belief that it is evil to kill the innocent, whether one soul or thousands.
Immediately after these events, Americans turned to faith. In the days following 9/11, churches literally overflowed, spilling worshippers into the streets. Days after Kirk’s death, his widow Erika publicly forgave his killer because, in her words “it was what Christ did, and is what Charlie would do.” Tens of thousands mourned with her by attending vigils across the country.
The years since September 11, 2001 have brought little rest for America: wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, a global financial crisis, one tumultuous election after another, mass shootings, a pandemic that killed millions worldwide and shuttered the economy, a social-media revolution, riots that gutted whole city blocks, and continued legal and political battles over whether America will ever live up to the Declaration of Independence’s promise of securing the inalienable right to life. Charlie’s death was one more convulsion in a nation already shaking.
Through it all, Americans have kept searching for the “more perfect union” the Founders envisioned in Philadelphia in 1787. But with the country more divided than it was a quarter-century ago, that union feels as elusive as ever. Every generation faces its own test of whether it
will hold to the self-evident truths on which the nation was built, or drift from them. How do we get back on track?
When Ronald Reagan took the oath of office in 1981, he rested his hand on a Bible opened to 2 Chronicles 7:14: “If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.” Humility and repentance are hard for any of us. But they are also the road to reconciliation, national revival, and the fulfillment of the Founders’ dreams.
Charlie Kirk understood this path. He believed national restoration requires spiritual revival first, pointing to the Great Awakenings that helped birth America and later helped end slavery. Liberty, strong families, and founding principles, he insisted, depend on a culture rooted in biblical truth; strip away that foundation, and the nation risks losing both its greatness and its freedom. In that conviction, Charlie stood in the company of Washington, Adams, Tocqueville, Lincoln, JFK, MLK, and Reagan.
As we mark this week’s anniversaries, we would do well to sit with what that great cloud of witnesses can still teach us. Perhaps in their example we can find the humility to seek forgiveness, the resolve to recommit to our founding principles, and the faith to pursue revival and restoration so that we can, once again, become one nation, under God.
September 11