Annie Deitz's Third Blog Post

A few days ago marked the fourteenth anniversary of one of the greatest American tragedies of the 21st century. As all know, September eleventh, 2001, terrorists from the Middle East hijacked four commercial airplanes, wanting to crash into two World Trade Center buildings, the Pentagon, and the White House. Their goal was to instill fear into the nation's heart, and it was achieved. The nation watched in horror as thousands of people were killed in the devastating collisions. The majority of Americans believe those individuals and their terrorist networks at home to be insane- and they probably were. They claimed to commit the atrocity in the name of their religion.

Religion is good, right? Religion supports a life of goodness and helpfulness and devotion, right? There is no way that their religion would actually allow this, right?

Religion is a fickle thing. It cannot be defined and never remains exactly the same across time, distance, or individuals. Everyone perceives it differently and everyone has their own opinions as to what it asks of them and what they are required to believe. So, technically, the terrorists responsible for 9/11 were motivated by religion. Their religion drove them to cause an event that would forever change life as we knew it.

So, are am I trying to argue that they did the right thing? That they were good people?

No. Of course not. But every situation has the unfortunate tendency to be complicated. We cannot see how those men thought of their actions as being anything but evil because we cannot think the same way as them. We do not interpret requirements of religion or issues of morality the same way, and therefore we cannot apply our way of thinking when making judgments about them. Those actions were evil. Killing thousands of people, scarring a nation for the rest of eternity, those things cannot be justified by religion. The extremity they were driven to was inexcusable and pure evil.  They may have thought that they were doing the right thing, but they were not. When blinded by personal motives and desires, it becomes almost impossible for people to notice when they have passed over to the dark side.

Then how can open our eyes enough to stay on the light side?

It's hard. Really hard. Between the white and black sides of the spectrum, there are many, many, many shades of grey. And how far is too far depends on each individual's personal beliefs. Say a poor man needs medicine for his dying wife, but cannot afford it, and steals it. Would that be acceptable? What if that man has the money but doesn't feel like paying? What if the wife could survive without it, but would be in pain for the rest of her life? What if the couple had children.

People can do bad things for the right reasons, or good things for the wrong reasons. It depends whether or not you believe that it was worth it. No one person can define the set of morals for all other people, and no one person's beliefs about good and evil are completely wrong.