Back to business as usual

We often hear that 9/11 “changed everything.”

Well, maybe not “everything.” According to a recent study:

In the immediate aftermath of the attacks, half of all Americans said their faith helped them cope with the shock and uncertainty. The change most widely reported was a significant spike in church attendance, with some churches experiencing more than double their normal crowd on the Sunday after the shocking event. However, by the time January 2002 rolled around, churchgoing was back to pre-attack levels, and has remained consistent in the five years since.

The director of the Barna study, David Kinnaman, put the findings in context. “Many Christian leaders predicted that terrorism on U.S. soil would catalyze a spiritual awakening in the country. The first few weeks were promising. But people quickly returned to their standard, faith-as-usual lives: within a month, most of their spiritual fervor was gone. Within 90 days, surprisingly few people were pursuing important questions about faith and spirituality. Now, five years removed from that fateful day, spiritually speaking, it’s as if nothing significant ever happened. People used faith like a giant band-aid – it helped people deal with the ugliness of the event but it offered little in the way of deep healing and it was discarded after a brief period of use.”

This isn’t really surprising. Many churches in America have long been more about seeking good feelings than seeking God. The latter doesn’t always produce the former as fast as we’d like—dealing effectively with sin, grace, forgiveness and restoration takes a little longer than an hour on a given Sunday. A reordering of life priorities is required, and that gets a little messy sometimes. Thus, the rise of bumper sticker benedictions and church marquee platitudes. Is it any wonder true Christian faith in the country is at best a mile wide and an inch deep?

A sense of mortality focuses the mind in amazing ways. If anything good comes out of a tragedy like 9/11, it’s the realization of our own limitations in dealing with an evil, fallen world. Our need for God is no greater or less today than it was five years ago, or on Dec. 7, 1941, or July 4, 1776. We just haven’t had a spectacular reminder lately. May God grant us the wisdom to listen for Him daily, rather than wait for the network breaking news.