Are we an evil nation?

Two days after the 9/11 attacks, Jerry Falwell went on Pat Robertson's program and suggested that God allowed them to happen because of gays, lesbians, abortionists, the ACLU and others. Robertson agreed. Falwell also said:

And with biological warfare available to these monsters; the Husseins, the Bin Ladens, the Arafats, what we saw on Tuesday, as terrible as it is, could be miniscule if, in fact, if in fact God continues to lift the curtain and allow the enemies of America to give us probably what we deserve.

I recall at the time being so completely overcome by anger at them for this, and wrote a regrettably intemperate column denouncing them. Now, I've got mixed feelings.

I thought about them the other day reading Bruce Bawer's review of Dinesh D'Souza's book. Bawer says that D'Souza, by claiming that America's wickedness brought the 9/11 attacks upon us by inflaming the Muslim world, is not only wrong, but guilty of treason. I think D'Souza is mistaken, but it's going too far to call him treasonous. In fact, as uncomfortable as it is to contemplate, no Christian or Jew can rule out the possibility that God will judge America, and judge it harshly. And perhaps is judging America. The Bible, particularly the books of the prophets, are full of examples of God calling Israel to repentance, and bringing her to ruin when she refused. That God used the Babylonians as an instrument of chastisement does not imply that He endorsed the Babylonian Way of Life.

Jim Kunstler, the "Geography of Nowhere" writer, in a speech delivered not long after the Columbine massacre, said:

I often joke that we are a wicked people who deserve to be punished. But the joke is, it’s no joke. I believe it with all my heart. I also often remark in my public utterances that when we succeed in creating enough places that are not worth caring about, that we will succeed in becoming a nation that is not worth defending, and a way of life that is not worth carrying on. We are guilty of foreclosing our own future, and we are evil because we don’t care.

I doubt Kunstler is any sort of theist, but he's talking about the same sort of things as those who adhere to the prophetic tradition are: that America is bringing judgment upon itself by its refusal to repent. Falwell has his list of the sins America is guilty of; the secular left has its own. And there is surely truth in both assessments. I believe strongly that God is furious at abortionists. I don't know why the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob would be any less furious at conservative business tycoons who grind the face of the poor.

When Bush 41 said "The American way of life is not up for negotiation," he was expressing what I think many conservatives (and liberals too) believe: that we Americans are not under anyone's judgment. From a Christian point of view, that's dangerous and wrong. We are under judgment. Humanity is. There is always reason to repent. That doesn't mean that we should become masochistic, blame-America-first self-loathers; that would be pathological. But it's also true that as we fight justly to defend ourselves, that we consider the things we oughtn't to have done that we have done, and the things we ought to have done that we've left undone, and get about the business of repentance, both personal and corporate. God is patient, but He won't wait forever. Something to think about on the eve of Lent.