The Black Eye
September 11, 2022
I was too young to really understand September 11. It’s a real gift to be too young and innocent to understand tragedy and loss. But innocence has its perils as well. My understanding of 9/11 was mediated to me by culture. All I understood about it was taught to me by country singers Toby Keith and Alan Jackson. I wish I had learned more from Jackson, and less from Keith.
“Where Were You (When the World Stopped Turning)” calls us to embrace love in the midst of tragedy. Tragedy is a time to reflect on the fragility of life, reminding us to return to matters of first importance—love for neighbor (expressed in sympathy, mourning, gratitude, and service), family, and faith. It’s a simple response, but full of honest godliness and simple goodness.
I’m moved by those words now. I was moved by them, then, but in only the most sentimental way. Toby Keith had a much more appealing message—“Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue (the Angry American).” In short—you sucker punched us and gave us a black eye, so now we’re going to enact justice by destroying you. Liberty! Freedom! Justice! The American way! Now that is a message I can be moved by!
I wonder now what God expected of me. Did he expect me to embrace the message of love from Alan Jackson? Did he understand when I gravitated toward Toby Keith? Because I think gravity is a good description here. I didn’t choose one over the other, yes to violence, no to peace. I just moved the way everyone else did. Theoretically I could have chosen to buck the trend, but at the time I didn’t even see that as an option. It never even crossed my mind.
Knowing what I know now, I look back and see the “elemental spirits of the world” influencing me (Gal. 4.8, Col. 1.13). They blinded me, limiting what I saw as reasonable options. They instilled in me a set of values, so that some options seemed more “reasonable” than others. They taught me what to desire, namely, a particular understanding of “manliness.”
I would have followed Toby Keith (and so many others!) into Iraq. But my Mother (God bless her!) had a clearer vision of our God. Having been freed from the elemental spirits of the world by Christ, she did what she could to free me. I didn’t respect the vision of freedom she invited me to, but she kept me out of a slavery I may not have ever returned from. I don’t know what God expected of me (or of her, for that matter), and that fills me with a sort of timidity when it comes to inviting people to change. Our lives are not just the result of conscious choice; we are pulled and driven by forces way beyond ourselves. Bucking those forces is hard work. May we have compassion on ourselves and others dealing with that change, even as we are steadfast in inviting them to avoid a fate much worse than a black eye.
—John Coffey
