The attack on the World Trade Center was a rip in the fabric of time. It was two fiery jagged gashes through alabaster towers, bringing us to a dead stop. It was God acting.

This is not the view of the world. It’s not the view even of the Christian world.

Instead, the events of Sept. 11 are turned into a morality play between the forces of evil—conveniently led by a demonic burnoosed mastermind—and the forces of good, represented by Washington’s solemn ministers and centurions, carrying their big sticks and speaking not so softly.

And yet to live by faith means never being shocked by the powerful cataclysms of the world. To say “This shouldn’t happen” is to say “God is absent.” To say “There are evildoers” is to say “I am righteous.” To say “I fear these men” is to say “I don’t fear God.” There is a belief abroad that war has made the people more spiritual, but it has done the opposite. The terrorists were successful beyond their wildest dreams. After failing to convince Muslims that holy war was necessary, they convinced Christians . . . that holy war was necessary.

Our illusion takes a subtle form: we think that things must be put back together, rebuilt, made right. The past must be restored. The world must look like Sept. 10, not Sept. 12. That’s because the world, from time immemorial, in every civilization from the most primitive to the most modern, has believed that time is cyclical.

Men live by a calendar that endlessly repeats itself through the seasons and the centuries, and all men busy themselves to ensure that the seasons continue, the centuries march on, the living and dying follow a pattern that comforts and reassures us that things have always been thus and will always be thus. The sun will rise and set, men will live and marry and die, women will give birth, generations will endure.

And then God acts. God acted for the first time in the lives of modern men in the second millennium B.C. when He said to Abraham, “Go you forth from your land, from your kindred, from your father’s house, to the land that I will let you see.”

Abraham was a prosperous businessman in Sumeria, the New York City of its day, but, even more than that, tradition says he was the next in line to be the ruler of the wealthiest and most advanced civilization in the world. Up until that moment, he was a pillar of society, a worshipper at the massive temples of the Chaldees, with a household god who functioned much as a good luck charm, offering occasional rewards and advice as to how to make your way around the Great Wheel of Life and Death.

He was, in modern terms, a well-fed Presbyterian who had everything to gain and nothing to lose by remaining right where he was. And then a voice spoke, and Abraham moved, and all the sacred places of the world were cast away. Time began. The cyclical calendar was gone. Everything was now one way and irreversible. That disruptive movement from Sumeria toward a land that didn’t exist was apostasy and treason, but it resulted in a family, then a tribe, then a nation, then a messiah. The calling out of Abraham was outrageous in religious terms, implying that a single individual had value over all others, and that the god of the heavens would be so eccentric as to speak only to him.

But from that first moment, when Abraham heard the voice, when God first chose to intervene, it became impossible to ever again look at time as predictable, circular or comforting. Every intervention of God from that time forward was unique, shocking, disorienting and often appalling. Entire nations were wiped out so that Abraham’s seed could survive.

But because men yearn forever for the comfort of the wheel, our minds can’t comprehend it at first. It’s that gap between the endless cycles of life and the sudden violent hand of God where faith is born.

God acts by violence. He brings us into the world by violence. He snatches us out of the world by violence. He reveals His Son in a moment of extreme violence.

Our natural minds will never accept death, much less mass death, as having any divine sanction, and yet we know that He has numbered the hairs on our heads.

I saw the man who flew the second plane into the World Trade Center. I didn’t see his face, because I was four blocks away, but I saw every maneuver of his last twenty seconds on earth. He made two corrections. A half mile from his target he tilted his right wing up about 15 degrees.

He wasn’t satisfied with his course and wanted to veer left. Ten seconds later, he tilted again, in the same direction, possibly to get closer to the center of the building, possibly to make the explosion worse. This time his jerk of the rudder pushed him over at a 45 degree angle. He had let the plane glide. The engines were idling. His fuel had another purpose.

It would be impossible to do this if you decided to, say, put your hands over your eyes, or turn your head slightly in reaction to the building looming ahead. He flew the plane with purpose, determination, skill, precision, and he flew it until the end, the perfect agent of wrath. God numbered the hairs on his head.

And then the world gaped open. The great circle of life crumpled. Children of Abraham had murdered children of Abraham. The sons of Isaac grieved with the sons of Ishmael. You and I were called out of our Sumeria.

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