"Again I looked and saw all the oppression that was taking place under the sun: I saw the tears of the oppressed-and they have no comforter; power was on the side of their oppressors-and they have no comforter." Ecclesiastes 4:1

"'Also there are two olive trees by it, one on the right of the bowl and the other on its left.' I asked the angel who talked with me, 'What are these, my lord?' He answered, 'Do you not know what these are?' ... Then I asked the angel, 'What are these two olive trees on the right and the left of the lampstand?' Again I asked him, 'What are these two olive branches beside the two gold pipes that pour out golden oil?' He replied, 'Do you not know what these are?' 'No, my lord,' I said. So he said, 'These are the two who are anointed to serve the Lord of all the earth.'" Zechariah 4:3-5, 11-14

"These are the two olive trees and the two lampstands that stand before the Lord of the earth. If anyone tries to harm them, fire comes from their mouths and devours their enemies. This is how anyone who wants to harm them must die. ... Now when they have finished their testimony, the beast that comes up from the Abyss will attack them, and overpower and kill them. Their bodies will lie in the street of the great city, which is figuratively called Sodom and Egypt, where also their Lord was crucified. For three and a half days men from every people, tribe, language and nation will gaze on their bodies and refuse them burial. ... But after the three and a half days a breath of life from God entered them, and they stood on their feet, and terror struck those who saw them. Then they heard a loud voice from heaven saying to them, 'Come up here.' And they went up to heaven in a cloud, while their enemies looked on. At that very hour there was a severe earthquake and a tenth of the city collapsed. Seven thousand people were killed in the earthquake, and the survivors were terrified and gave glory to the God of heaven. The second woe has passed; the third woe is coming soon." Revelation 11:4-5, 7-9, 11-14

"God does not recover what has been stolen from Him by killing the people on Satan's side and taking back what is His. God, as the master of the universe, has the power to strike and take back what is His at will; however, He does not do this. Rather He lets His side be struck first. ... If you truly come to feel God's heart, how can you settle accounts with your enemy? On the contrary, what you should do is mobilize people to help your enemy. Wanting to embrace your enemy and to become one centered on love means that you will come to stand in front of the gates of the Kingdom of Heaven." "Women Who Will Take the Leading Role in the Ideal World" Mrs. Hak Ja Han Moon

There is a palpable holiness at ground zero, consecrated with blood. I can't explain why, but I consider the bottle of water that a Salvation Army volunteer gave me as I was leaving that place to be holy water. Everything I got while I was there seems holy to me. I in no way expected anything like that. The closer in I got, the more the love. I may have been because everyone was standing on the edge together, suffering, serving. The responses to death are either love or revenge. The reality there was love.

Ground Zero was like Hades, shrouded in smoke. The tops of buildings still standing disappear into the murky clouds. The top of the world has turned into the bottom of hell. We see how fragile our society is, how quickly it can slide into chaos. In the space of an hour, two buildings fell, shaking the national economy perhaps for months, perhaps for years. An American flag flies in front of the burned out "Millennium" on the front of the Millennium Hotel. That's the picture that is worth a thousand words: a fresh flag and a burned out Millennium. Ground Zero is the counterpoint of the millennial celebrations on Times Square, as Altamont was to Woodstock. The honeymoon of the new millennium is over. Now comes the hard work.

We want to win the war. We want to defeat the enemy. We want to see bin Laden annihilated through any means necessary. We would love to see a knockout blow pulverizing every terrorist and everyone who ever was a terrorist or might become a terrorist. We are entertaining a fantasy.

What is the enemy? How do we fight that enemy? From a strategic point of view, we should not launch a physical war. The terrorists want war. They want us to chase them, to flex our muscle, to attack someone, somewhere. They know we will botch a war, have much of the world will turn against us, and see our own society divide. An attack, while making us feel good for a few headlines, will sink us into a morass of conflict.

Bombs might kill terrorists, but bombs cannot kill terrorism. The battle against terrorism, physically speaking, is un-winnable; it is fighting an unholy ghost. The government of Israel cannot defeat terrorism when its perpetrators live across the street. How can we pretend to be able to root out terrorists when they are on the other side of the planet?

We can never disarm the terrorists, because they have no arms. They destroyed the World Trade Center by the use of plastic knives. We'll spend trillions of dollars to defeat people with plastic knives, and will fail. What are we going to do, cancel all air flights? What will happen when suicide drivers in 18-wheelers run amok on I-95? Are we going to close our interstate highways? And don't even talk about biological warfare. Using the military, we are fighting on the wrong battlefield, the battlefield of terror's choosing.

The real battleground is spiritual, and at this moment we have the spiritual high ground. At the World Trade Center, whites, blacks, rich, poor, Asians, Jews, Christians, Muslims and people of 80 nations died at the hand of terrorism. The nation that encapsulates the world in the city that encapsulates the world has made a sacrificial offering. We have shed the blood. If we go to war, we will kill civilians from day one.

As soon as the "enemy" body count starts, the media will display the destruction wrought by America's weapons. Our moral high ground will be lost. We will be on equal ground with the terrorists.

All praise to Allah, the beneficent, the merciful. I am not a Muslim, but I can say it and pray it with deep piety-All praise to Allah, the beneficent, the merciful. Islam is a global religion with straightforward practices and relatively clear values. The word, "Islam" means "submission." The spirit of Islam is one in which the power and glory of God overwhelm the individual. Every religion has problems, and the problem with Islam is that it can turn the person, who is seen to have no more value in and of himself than a grain of desert sand, into a glorious pawn in the hands of the all-loving chess player who insures the happiness of all who are his own.

Islam reflects the spirituality of the oppressed son. He is aware of his lack of power, not only in his relationship with God but in his relationship with his brother. He cries out for God's mercy more than does the more gifted son who, consciously or not, intentionally or not, has become the oppressor. There is something deeper, from a religious point of view, in the spirituality of the oppressed. But there is also the danger of envy and terrible anger.

Jack Wheeler, of the Freedom Research Foundation, writes that Islam must contend with the "demon of envy," which is called in Arabic al-Hasad. He views this demon as the seed of terrorism. He calls Muslims to exorcise this demon from the collective Muslim psyche.

This makes sense to me. But, quid pro quo, Christians should be ready to identify and exorcise their signal demon. That, in my view, is the demon of adultery, of sexual immorality. Call it Dionysus. I think that it is equally difficult for each side to perform the necessary exorcism. This sin of the sons in the archetypal family in Jewish, Christian and Islamic scripture was murder. But the ground, the sin of the parents, had to do with sexuality, the forbidden fruit.

Both demons, Dionysus and al-Hasad, are wreaking havoc upon the planet. September 11 was a window into chaos. Terrorism is dramatic, visible chaos. Sexual immorality is a gradual, invisible chaos. Divorce, family breakdown, the abortion holocaust and homosexuality create internal chaos, the deepest disorder wreaked upon the creation. America protects Dionysus and markets his ways to the world.

Let us consider but one facet, the $56 billion global market for pornography, now known as adult entertainment. Major companies participate in this trade-GM (DirecTV), AT&T (cable TV and phone connections), and Marriott (in-room TV). The U.S. adult entertainment market exceeds $10 billion, more annual revenue than the NFL, NBA and baseball combined. Huge amounts of capital are flowing into this industry, which promises profits of which "the sky is the limit." [Statistics and citations from "Market News Alert," Issue 1003, September 1, 2001.]

We cannot expect the Islamic world to erase their signal sin until we make an attempt to erase ours, beginning by acknowledging it. But I hear not one word from our side about America's moral condition.

Sexual immorality hides under the banner of freedom. Our President states that the terrorists are attacking freedom. That is an effective rallying cry, but it provides no foundation for fighting or defining the war. Any crime can be interpreted as an attack on freedom. This tells us nothing about the particular crime or enemy we are facing. We need to define the freedom that is under attack.

Many in this country for years have said that we have abused our freedom, that in the name of freedom we have tolerated far too much degradation of human dignity and denial of godliness. History teaches that the abuse of freedom in one direction can undermine freedom altogether.

Freedom has no meaning outside of consideration of its misuse, license. The difference between the American and Taliban societies is not that we believe in freedom and they don't. It has to do with where the line is drawn between freedom and license. Where the Taliban err by defining too much as license, surely we err by defining too little as license.

It is not a time to beat ourselves up, but it is a moment ripe for reflection on the moral state of our culture. If there are areas that are in need of improvement, this is the time to face them. This is the mark of a great people.

We hear calls for healing, but what is supposed to be healed? What is the wound? What is the disease? Taking revenge does not bring real healing. We should heed the words of Lincoln at Gettysburg. The soldiers in the hills of Gettysburg died for a new birth of freedom, for the principle of human equality, and for the vindication of the human spirit that takes responsibility to self-govern under God. The lesson of the cross, the lesson of Gettysburg, is that shed blood can bring reconciliation.

I'm going to leave the beaten path right now by saying that we should not follow either of the failed policies of Israel. One policy is to retaliate; don't retaliate. The other policy is to negotiate; don't negotiate. This means that we must change the playing field. Maintain the struggle, but redefine it as the struggle to build meaningful, lasting unity among the people of the world.

That unity is achieved by creating, together, a common cause based upon a shared moral vision. A global culture that is more than a global marketplace can come into being through a consensus on what is right and what is wrong, on what promotes true freedom and what destroys true freedom. I submit that the freedom our government should call us to give up is not that which allows short lines in airports, but that which allows the global justification and glorification of sexual immorality and family breakdown. Muslims don't like what American culture does to their children. Neither do most Christians, or Buddhists, or anyone of good conscience. Bring an end to this terrorism.

The first step is for the White House to work with Muslim and Christian leaders, and with leaders of all faiths, to build a moral consensus based upon the sanctity of sexuality, marriage and family life. We should note the one place where the wall between Christianity and Islam has come down. That is where Muslims and Christians work for a common cause in opposition to the American / UN global promotion and marketing of birth control and abortion. The sanctity of the family is the cause that unites people beyond race, nation and religion.

Second, these American leaders should reach out to build unity among the world's religious leaders based upon that family-centered, moral consensus. Third, with the same energy that we are now investing in unity and recovery, we Americans should employ our power and creativity to exalt and protect the family.

Terrorists will not attack an America that upholds this ideal. Their religion will not allow it and their communities will not protect them. The United States will win the war against terrorism in all its forms, or it will win the war against none of them.

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