The Gospel Coalition

Tim Keller on salvation outside of Christ:

This interview from three and a half years ago was the first public event like this I had ever done, and a number of my responses were less than skillful. One in particular—the one about whether there is any way of salvation outside of faith in Christ—was misleading and unhelpful.

Homeschool Blindspots:

After several years of examining what went wrong in our own home and in the homes of so many conscientious parents, God has opened our eyes to a number of critical blind spots common to homeschoolers and other family-minded people.

Wise Self-Control over Bodily Appetites:

Because of the Fall, my body wants more than it needs. Its goal is consumption. Its desires are insatiable. Hedonistic. Like the children in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, we will naturally want to eat, drink, and gratify all our appetites in excess. The question is really one of control. Who is in control? Is it me by the Spirit OR me by the flesh? “That each one of you know how to control his own body in holiness and honor.”(1 Thessalonians 4:4)

VeggieTales creator Phil Vischer is setting out to teach kids what’s in the Bible:

After Big Idea, the animation studio he started in his basement, went bankrupt, Phil Vischer had an epiphany. He looked back and realized that while his immensely entertaining VeggieTales characters delighted kids and sold by the millions, they only taught children how to behave Christianly—they didn’t teach them Christianity.

Scot McKnight believes that the most important question the church can ask today is: “What is the gospel?” If the church is “in a fog” about this question, we will not be a gospel people – a community of faith that lives according to the gospel and announces the good news to the world around us.

Scot’s new book, The King Jesus Gospel: The Original Good News Revisited (Zondervan, 2011), seeks to answer the gospel question by transcending the tired debates between Jesus’ gospel (kingdom) versus Paul’s gospel (justification by faith). Scot believes there is only one truly biblical way to think about the gospel, and it’s to see that the one gospel proclaimed by Jesus Himself, the Gospel writers, the apostles in Acts, and Paul in his letters is Jesus as the completion of Israel’s story. 

In December of 2010, Scot wrote the cover story for Christianity Today, laying out this new proposal. We had a blog conversation about his article here at Kingdom People. The King Jesus Gospel is a book-length treatment of the main point expressed in the CT article. Scot is undergirding his proposal by showing why he believes it makes the best sense of the Bible as a whole as well as the Bible in its individual parts.

The King Jesus Gospel deserves an award for being the “most marked up” book I’ve read this year. I’ve got all sorts of passages highlighted, with notes in the margins, question marks here and there, exclamation points (both good and bad!), and worn-out pages. Put simply, I agree with much of Scot’s proposal, and yet there are places where I think he presses us into making some false choices. Today, I want to highlight the points of agreement. Tomorrow, we’ll take a look at my concerns.

So, to start us off, here are four points that Scot makes and with which I am largely in agreement:

1. Evangelicalism has a problem, and the problem goes back to our conception of the evangel itself.

Like a skilled doctor, Scot’s diagnosis is right: we need to revisit the heart of Christianity in order to gain clarity on the gospel. The problem within many evangelical churches today is that we have a gospel-less culture. Why? Because the biblical gospel has not been at the center of our preaching and teaching. When people are fuzzy on what the gospel is, it’s no wonder they don’t live much differently than those who don’t know the gospel. And it’s really no wonder that they don’t share the message with others. To live according to the gospel, you have to know what the good news is. To proclaim the gospel, you have to know the gospel.

Pastors within the gospel-centered movement will resonate with Scot’s distaste for “decisionism.” McKnight may be an Arminian theologian, but he is as far from Charles Finney as you’ll get. He writes:

“Most of evangelism today is obsessed with getting someone to make a decision; the apostles, however, were obsessed with making disciples.” (18)

True enough. But Scot is going further than just critiquing an obsession with numbers. He believes this lopsided understanding of Christianity is actually keeping us from making disciples:

“Focusing youth events, retreats, and programs on persuading people to make a decision disarms the gospel, distorts numbers, and diminishes the significance of discipleship.” (20)

Tough words. But don’t assume that Scot is content with a decisionless Christianity that is not centered on personal conversion. He chides the state church tradition (whether in its Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, or Protestant form) for neglecting personal conversion:

“Making the conversion process automatic – and I’m doing my best to be dead-level honest in saying that – is disastrous for the vitality of faith and church life. This kind of gospel can deconstruct a local church, and I would finger this issue as one of the, if not the, origins of the demise of the church in European cultures.” (31)

Three cheers from this Baptist! Scot’s diagnosis is correct. Both extremes (automatic church membership and mere decisionism) usually fail to result in people becoming “The Discipled,” which according to the Great Commission, should be our goal.

Scot also points out the difference between “the gospel” and someone’s “method of persuading people to trust the gospel.” By canvassing the variety of evangelistic encounters in the New Testament, Scot is able to uphold distinctive methodologies in getting across the one message.

“Our preferred Method of Persuasion and the gospel are not one and the same,” he writes (42). “Methods shift and conform to the needs of the evangelist and the audience.” (32)

2. Going back to the Bible is the only way forward.

One of the hallmarks of The King Jesus Gospel is Scot’s looking to the Scriptures as our primary authority. Though he recommends studying the creeds, church history, and evangelical tradition, he clearly lifts up the Bible as the place where we will discover the biblical gospel and how it integrates the key themes of the Bible. In fact, “Back to the Bible” is one of the most common phrases in the book.

• “We need to go back to the Bible to find the original gospel.” (24)
• “… Our current answer isn’t biblical enough.” (24)
• “My plea is that we go back to the New Testament to discover all over again what the Jesus gospel is and that by embracing it we become true evangelicals.” (29)
• “We are in need to going back to the Bible to discover the gospel culture all over again and making that gospel culture the center of the church.”

Whatever one might think of the specifics of Scot’s proposal, it’s clear that sola Scriptura is a driving force in his work. So, naturally, he turns to the sections of the New Testament that most clearly lay out the basics of the gospel. In summarizing 1 Corinthians 15, he writes:

“To gospel is to announce the good news about key events in the life of Jesus Christ. To gospel for Paul was to tell, announce, declare, and shout aloud the Story of Jesus Christ as the saving news of God.”

In my opinion, the most helpful chapter in the book is “The Gospel of Peter,” in which Scot considers the oft-neglected sermons recorded in Acts.

“There are seven or eight gospel sermons or summaries of gospel sermons in the book of Acts… If we have any Protestant bones in our body, we want to know what they gospeled and how they gospeled, and we want our gospeling to be rooted in and conformed to this gospeling.” (115)

3. The words “gospel” and “salvation” are related, but they do not refer to the same thing.

One of the central contentions of The King Jesus Gospel is that the gospel should not be confused with its implications. It is somewhat odd to see someone outside of the Gospel Coalition stream making this case so forcefully, but that is what Scot is attempting. Readers will quickly see, however, that Scot is making the distinction between the gospel and its implications even sharper than his Reformed friends. The issue that will ruffle many evangelical feathers is that Scot thinks of “personal salvation” as an implication of the gospel, not the center of the gospel itself. Salvation flows from the gospel, but salvation is not the message of the gospel. Hear him out:

“We evangelicals (mistakenly) equate the word gospel with the word salvation. Hence, we are really ‘salvationists.’ When we evangelicals see the word gospel, our instinct is to think (personal) ‘salvation.’ We are wired this way. But these two words don’t mean the same thing…” (29)

From a lexical standpoint, Scot may be right. The word “gospel” does not specifically refer to “my personal salvation.” Yes, the gospel secures my salvation. Yes, it is the power of God unto salvation. But it’s the message of Jesus that brings personal salvation, not the message of personal salvation itself. (Interestingly enough, Scot finds allies for this position in both N.T. Wright and John Piper, particularly Piper’s book God is the Gospel, in which he makes the case that the Person of Jesus Christ Himself is the good news, not just the saving benefits we receive from union with Him.)

But from a pastoral standpoint, I have some concerns about making distinctions this sharply. I wonder if in our parsing of these closely related words we aren’t separating what should be joined together. The gospel is the “word of salvation” after all, and it is the instrument by which we are being saved. All this leads me to think that we might be overlooking the biblical authors’ hints that “gospel” and “salvation” are more closely related than some exegetes want them to be. More on that tomorrow.

For now, let me express what I like about Scot’s proposal: he is seeking to show that the one gospel we believe in contains justification by faith and the coming of the kingdom, but that the specific message is bigger than both. He sees the good news as the announcement that the story of Israel is being resolved in the story of Jesus. That’s great, as long as we remember that the announcement is about Christ’s death and resurrection for sinners.

In other words, when considering the gospel, Scot claims that the way forward is not to ask, “Did Jesus preach justification?” or “Did Paul preach the kingdom?” The better questions to ask are “Did Jesus preach Jesus?” and “Did Paul preach Jesus?” Over against Bultmann, who argued that over time, the proclaimer of the gospel (Jesus) became “the proclaimed” (early church), Scot helpfully demonstrates that the picture of Jesus we see in the Gospels is of a Savior “who unequivocally and without embarrassment nominated himself for Israel’s president.” (105)

4. The gospel needs the Old Testament story in order to make sense.

One of the central points of my work on Counterfeit Gospels is that to rightly understand the gospel announcement (Jesus Christ’s life, death, resurrection, and exaltation), one must have some knowledge of the worldview, or Story, within which that announcement makes sense. I am on the same page with Scot when it comes to our need to place the gospel announcement within the context of the story. This is a refrain that Scot echoes multiple times in the book.

• “This story is not the same as the gospel… The gospel only makes sense in that story.” (36)
• “One reason why so many Christians today don’t know the Old Testament is because their ‘gospel’ doesn’t even need it.” (44)
• “The gospel Story of Jesus Christ resolves or brings to completion the Story of Israel as found in the Scriptures (our Old Testament).” (50)
• “Any real gospeling has to lay out the story of Scripture if it wants to put back the ‘good’ into the good news.” (85)

Scot is also right to note that the grand narrative of Scripture is not just the backdrop for the gospel but also the forward-looking story that culminates in final restoration at the end of time, when Christ will come again to judge the living and the dead. When it comes to matters of life after death, final judgment, and hell, Scot doesn’t hold back.

“Gospeling must involve the Story of final judgment in order for humans to see that they ultimately will stand before God and not before a human tribunal.” (135)

He then quotes Jonathan Edwards approvingly, saying, “Perhaps we need more of Edwards today, not less.” (136)

Points of Concern

These are the four main areas in which I am largely in agreement with  The King Jesus Gospel. There are, however, a few points that cause me concern and may lead to unintentional confusion for the reader. I’ll elaborate on my concerns tomorrow.

Mark Driscoll has a new website that will provide a forum for him to speak personally about what’s going on with him and his family, as well as how the Holy Spirit is working in his life.

Are the cartoons your children watch harming their ability to concentrate?

Fast-paced, fantastical television shows such as “SpongeBob SquarePants” may harm children’s ability to pay attention, solve problems and moderate behavior, according to a US study published Monday. Researchers from the University of Virginia found that the learning ability of four-year-olds who watched nine minutes of “SpongeBob SquarePants” was severely compromised compared to four-year-olds who either watched the slower-paced TV show “Caillou” or spent time drawing.

 Why Christians Shouldn’t Be Jerks:

What is wisdom? Among the attributes James describes in chapter three is reasonableness.Sometimes translations render it “moderation” or “restraint.” It’s the simple attitude of being nice and easy to get along with. Now you’d think this would be natural for Christians, but James, a first-century pastor, knew it wasn’t. Actually sometimes it is Christians who are the crankiest people. They are not fun to be with. Sometimes Christian leaders are the people you’d least want to be around.

Russell Moore reviews a new book on James Dunn and soul freedom:

“Everybody wants a theocracy,” James Dunn famously said. “And everybody wants to be ‘Theo.’” I probably quote that at least once a semester in Christian ethics class here at Southern Seminary, not only because it’s pithy but because it is so true. Dunn, longtime head of the Texas Baptist Christian Life Commission and the Baptist Joint Committee on Public Affairs, was nothing if not quotable. The other famous (or infamous) quote from him that comes to mind is his one sentence defense of “soul freedom”: “Ain’t nobody but Jesus going to tell me what to believe.”

Love him or hate him, Dunn was a powerful force in Baptist life in the twentieth-century, and a new book seeks to set him in historical and theological context.

Notes on two books I’ve read recently:

When Helping Hurts:
Alleviating Poverty Without Hurting the Poor. . .and Yourself
Steve Corbett & Brian Fikkert
Moody, 2009
My Rating: *****

I have a love-hate relationship with books like this. On the one hand, I love when a book causes me to think hard, reevaluate my assumptions, and implement a more thoughtful plan of action. On the other hand, I cringe at the idea that my good intentions in the past may have led to misguided actions and harmful results.

When Helping Hurts is written by two men who want to see benevolence ministries, disaster relief, and community building done well. They want to see suffering alleviated, but not in a way that leads only to the activist feeling good, or the beneficiary receiving a temporary fix. Poverty is complex, which is why the best solutions are never the simplest. Furthermore, taking into account human sinfulness, Corbett and Fikkert remind us that we are all broken. Everyone – poor and rich alike – needs to be fixed.

One of the biggest problems in many poverty-alleviation efforts is that their design and implementation exacerbates the poverty of being of the economically rich – their god-complexes – and the poverty of being of the economically poor – their feelings of inferiority and shame. (65)

In the margin, I jotted down an “Ouch!” beside that sentence. And that’s just one of many “ouches” I felt while reading this book.

Thankfully, the authors don’t merely point out what is hurtful in the way we go about “helping.” The book spends much more time dealing with the subtitle: How to alleviate poverty without hurting the poor… and yourself. That’s why When Helping Hurts is the most practical and informative books on social assistance that I’ve come across. I wish this book had been available before I moved to Romania. Many of my efforts at poverty alleviation were good. Many were ultimately unhelpful.  Regardless, When Helping Hurts will greatly influence the way I think about and engage in social assistance and relief work in the future.

God Behaving Badly:
Is the God of the Old Testament Angry, Sexist and Racist?
David T. Lamb
IVP, 2011
My Rating: *** 1/2

David Lamb’s book begins like this:

“How does one reconcile the loving God of the Old Testament with the harsh God of the New Testament?”

Yes, you read that right. Lamb starts off by turning the traditional apologetic upside down. He contrasts the benevolent heart of the Old Testament God with Jesus’ warnings about hell. God Behaving Badly intends to show that, far from being a distant, capricious deity, the God we see in the Old Testament is fascinating, relational, and – above all – good.

So is God angry or not? Lamb engages in apologetics by redefining the terms. Going to the most difficult passages (like the Canaanite Conquest or the smiting of Uzzah), Lamb shows that anger and love are not mutually exclusive.

Unfortunately, Lamb’s chapter on sexism is disappointing. His method is to show that within the Old Testament context, God’s laws were actually progressive. The problem with this view, of course, is that “progressive” is an oft-used word that seems based on an idea outside of the biblical witness. Progression from what? Toward what? 21st century views on gender? To top it off, there are a couple of unnecessary quips to ruffle complementarian feathers: ”If it is okay for women to compose sections of the Bible, perhaps we should let them teach it?” (64). I was disheartened to see Lamb basically equate a complementarian view of gender roles as “sexist,” and then blame the historical church for not being as progressive as he believes the Bible is.

All in all, caveats remaining, God Behaving Badly offers helpful insights into one’s study of the Old Testament. Most of this book is a helpful primer on problem passages in the Bible and how to interpret them according to their canonical context. My differences aside, I sensed in my reading how much Lamb loves the Old Testament, especially the God we see described there.

Archbishop of Canterbury – Rowan Williams – will quit next year:

Dr Rowan Williams is understood to have told friends he is ready to quit the highest office in the Church of England to pursue a life in academia. The news will trigger intense plotting behind the scenes over who should succeed the 61-year-old archbishop, who is not required to retire until he is 70.

From Sojourn Community Church:

Lord as we gather,
celebrating your glory and goodness,
we acknowledge the shadow of today’s anniversary.

Together, we remember September 11, 2001.
We mourn for the lives lost in New York City,
Washington D. C., and on Flight 93.

We lament death’s reign,
the visible and invisible forces of evil,
the principalities and powers of this dark world,
and the evil that lurks in the hearts of all men . . . including our own.

With the Psalmist, we cry:

“How long, Oh Lord?
How long will your enemies scoff?
How long will you withhold your justice
from a world that is desparate to see it?”

We lament a world at war, and we ask you for peace

In Afghanistan
in Iraq
in Libya
in Israel and Palestine
in Egypt and Syria, and all of the nations of the earth that long for freedom from oppression.

We ask for protection over our loved ones and families who serve overseas,
we pray for the fatherless and the widow,
for the poor and oppressed.

We lift up our global leaders
that by your grace they might lead with wisdom and justice
and work for peace.

And we acknowledge that all such hopes and longings point us to one who will soon return and bring an everlasting peace and justice.

Together we proclaim:

Put not your trust in princes,
in a son of man, in whom there is no salvation.
When his breath departs, he returns to the earth;
on that very day his plans perish.

Blessed is he whose help is the God of Jacob,
whose hope is in the LORD his God,
who made heaven and earth,
the sea, and all that is in them,
who keeps faith forever;
who executes justice for the oppressed,
who gives food to the hungry.

The LORD sets the prisoners free;
the LORD opens the eyes of the blind.
The LORD lifts up those who are bowed down;
the LORD loves the righteous.
The LORD watches over the sojourners;
he upholds the widow and the fatherless,
but the way of the wicked he brings to ruin.

The LORD will reign forever,
your God, O Zion, to all generations.
Praise the LORD!

(Psalm 146:2-10)

Amen. Come Lord Jesus!

From Tim Keller’s 9-11 Memorial Sermon:

One of the great themes of the Hebrew Scriptures is that God identifies with the suffering. There are all these great texts that say things like this: If you oppress the poor, you oppress to me. I am a husband to the widow. I am father to the fatherless. I think the texts are saying God binds up his heart so closely with suffering people that he interprets any move against them as a move against him. This is powerful stuff!

But Christianity says he goes even beyond that. Christians believe that in Jesus, God’s son, divinity became vulnerable to and involved in – suffering and death! He didn’t come as a general or emperor. He came as a carpenter. He was born in a manger, no room in the inn.

But it is on the Cross that we see the ultimate wonder. On the cross we sufferers finally see, to our shock that God now knows too what it is to lose a loved one in an unjust attack. And so you see what this means? John Stott puts it this way: “I could never myself believe in God if it were not for the Cross. In the real world of pain, how could one worship a God who was immune to it?”

Do you see what this means? Yes, we don’t know the reason God allows evil and suffering to continue, but we know what the reason isn’t, what it can’t be. It can’t be that he doesn’t love us! It can’t be that he doesn’t care. God so loved us and hates suffering that he was willing to come down and get involved in it. And therefore the Cross is an incredibly empowering hint. Ok, it’s only a hint, but if you grasp it, it can transform you. It can give you strength.

From John Piper’s 9/11 Sermon:

The way I want to strengthen your hope this morning is not by glossing over how utterly vulnerable we are in our earthly existence, or by deflecting your attention away from the Biblical truth that God’s judgments fall on believer and unbeliever alike – purifying in some cases and punishing in other cases, depending on whether we repent and make Christ our Treasure instead of the idols of this world. I want to stare those realities of vulnerability and judgment square in the face with you and give you real, solid, Biblical hope. Not just hopeful feelings based on naive notions of earthly stability or escape from painful, purifying, disciplinary judgments.

So then, what is this hope and what is the basis for it? I’ll give you my answer, and then show you where I got it from the Word of God.

· Our hope is that nothing can separate us from the love of God in Jesus Christ, not suffering and not even death.

And the two foundations for this hope are the death of Jesus and the sovereignty of God.

· Our Savior and King, Jesus Christ, died and rose again to bear our sins, become our curse, endure our condemnation, remove our guilt, and secure our everlasting joy in the presence of the all-satisfying God.

· And the sovereignty of God over all persons and events guarantees that what Jesus Christ bought for us by his own blood will infallibly become our inheritance.

This is a fascinating 45-minute documentary that recounts September 11 from the eyes of President Bush:

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Links for your weekend reading:

1. Ed Stetzer’s three-part review of The Help has definitely struck a chord (or hit a nerve, depending on your point of view!) for his treatment of race issues, cultural Christianity, and expectations for women. Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

2. New York’s Post-9/11 Church Boom

3. How Evangelical Leaders Have Changed Since 9/11

4. Loving Muslims in Light of 9/11

5. The readers of Rachel Held Evans’ blog have posted a series of questions to Justin Taylor for her “Ask a Calvinist” feature.

6. Brett McCracken on 9/11: Expect Calamity, Believe in Hope

7. Steven Furtick: “How you perceive the person preaching will determine what you’re able to receive from them.” I don’t think this is true in every case, but it is certainly true in many cases.

This week, we’ve been reflecting on the terrorist attacks that took place ten years ago this Sunday. Two days ago, I wrote about some of the theological ramifications of this event. Yesterday, several well-known pastors weighed in, describing how ministry has changed in a post-9/11 world.

Today, I’d like to provide space for readers to reflect on 9/11 in their own words. Few (if any) of us were present at the scene, whether in New York or Washington, D.C. But all of us have recollections about that day.

Last week, I read Escape from the World Trade Center, the first-hand account of Leslie Haskin, a woman who escaped from her office on the 37th floor of the North Tower. Her recollections overflow with raw emotion:

I have lived and relived those moments at least a million times. A million times lost and searching for words to describe what happened on the inside—the torment and vulnerability, the confusion, the carnage, and the sheer visceral terror of it all. I struggle still in my description of witnessing the heart of humanity colliding with gravity and of dreams of the slaughtered Twin Towers covered in dust and blood while a somber last breath cries for justice.

Most intriguing to me was Leslie’s contrast between being inside the towers and then seeing them on television later:

My recollection was of a building defeated on the first blow and crumbling from the moment of impact. There was no pretense on the inside. Beams were contracting, walls were caving in, and floors collapsed seconds after the first impact. That building was coming down.

What I experienced was not a conspiracy or question of how many bombs went off and caused the fall. It was quite honestly a towering inferno, and its demise was like 110 stories of dominos, the first one tipped when an American Airlines weapon of mass destruction crashed into Tower One.

Every channel showed what they thought they saw, which was two towers after the initial attack with some damage from the crashes and a lot of smoke. What cameras saw from the outside was NOT what was going on inside. They showed the world the towers severely injured but standing strong and still fighting. It is no wonder the world was surprised when they fell. It is no wonder that the shock wave was so all-consuming that it left our president speechless. They never saw it coming.

If Leslie is right, and the people inside the building knew that the towers would collapse, then the actions of the firefighters were an even greater picture of self-sacrifice. They didn’t engage in their mission with the knowledge that they might not return, but with the knowledge that they would not return. What sacrifice!

Where Were You on September 11?

I’d like to provide some space here at Kingdom People for us to talk about where we were when the attacks took place. I’ll start us off, but I’d like to hear from others as well.

On September 11, 2011, I was 20 years old. My first year of Romanian education and mission work was behind me. I had been visiting my parents in Murfreesboro, TN and was looking forward to flying back to Romania on September 13 (through Washington, D.C. actually).

On the way into work at the family printing company, Mom called and told us to turn on the radio. It looked like a missile had hit one of the World Trade Center towers. Once I got to the office, I looked for information online, but found nothing except the disputed claim that a plane had flown into the building.

A few minutes later, Mom called again. This time, she was startled. She had seen the second plane hit the second tower. Dad went home to be with her. I gathered around the radio with my co-workers, and we listened to the news.

It seemed like every few minutes, the radio told us of another event. News about the Pentagon changed the atmosphere in the shop. Our first thought had been “freak accident.” After the second plane hit, we thought “terrorist attack.” Once the Pentagon hit, one of my coworkers looked at me and said, “This means war.” About 15 minutes later, we heard a report about the Capitol being bombed, although this turned out to be false. The minutes passed slowly. Everyone was huddled in the office listening to the reports on the radio, imagining the burning buildings in New York.

A little later, Mom called and told me she wanted me to come home. While I was on the phone with her, I heard a loud rumbling overtake the sounds on the radio. At the sound of that mighty building falling to the ground, everyone in the office gasped. We began to consider the loss of life that would be associated with this tragedy. A little while later, the reporter told us that the other tower was leaning funny. Then, the horror was repeated as the second building collapsed.

When I got home, I saw the reality on TV. This was a rare time when my imagination failed to completely capture the horror that was captured by the cameras. As we watched the towers fall again and again, we wept. I remember hearing the name Osama Bin Laden for the first time that day. I also remember hearing my dad (who never, ever cusses) call Bin Laden an SOB. The label seemed too light a description for a person capable of such weighty evil.

That afternoon, our whole family went to church. Where else could we go but to be with our church family? It was a Tuesday, and there were no scheduled services. But church folks were everywhere. We prayed and cried in the sanctuary. We processed the events together, and we surmised that the world had changed and wondered what the future would hold.

Needless to say, I did not fly back to Romania on September 13. It took me another week to make new arrangements. On September 18, one week after the tragedy, I passed through the same security checkpoint that five of the hijackers had passed through in Washington’s Dulles airport. By the time I reached the gate, President Bush was on television in the Rose Garden, asking for a moment of silence in honor of the victims who had perished at that precise moment one week before. Whereas the DC airport was usually roaring with hustle and bustle of travelers, there was an eerie silence on that day. As I flew back to Europe, I knew that the world had changed.

What About You?

Where were you on September 11? What do you remember? Who were you with?