There is no security apart from common security.
--Anglican Archbishop Rowan Williams

In God's Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It, Jim Wallis makes an interesting point regarding the United States and our reaction to the tragedy of 9/11. He notes that 9/11 "shattered the American people's sense of invulnerability". Since the Declaration, the U.S. has been fortunate to be surrounded by two oceans and two relatively passive nations and has therefore never suffered a foreign attack on our own mainland. However, with the events of September 11, 2001, we joined the ranks of the rest of the world--London, Paris, Sarajevo, Jerusalem, Baghdad, Manila, Cape Town and so on.

Wallis continues, "...September 11 could have been a teachable moment, the time when America joined the rest of the world in the inevitable vulnerability that comes from being human--accepting the truth that to be human in this world is to be vulnerable." It could have been a time similar to that of immediately after the Civil War, when President Lincoln urged his tattered and torn nation into a spirit of repentance before rebuilding. But rather, we have become fixed on somehow regaining that same sense of invulnerability through preemptive, unilateral war, strengthening missile defense, and whatever else it takes to remind the world of our dominance. Out of fear itself, the U.S. is driving fear into the rest of the world, including it's own citizens.

With our rush to war, we've taken a step in the wrong direction. We've sent the message to our neighbors, enemies, and even our allies that we're establishing our own security based on our military preeminence and superiority, regardless of the terror that it wreaks on everyone else. However, it isn't too late for change. We can still humbly turn to the world, in all it's scars, and approach them as one that's been injured as well. We must stop inflicting more wounds though. For security's sake, we must seek common security.

Biblically, this is a message found throughout the Gospels and Acts. However, the prophets hit on this as well. Micah preached that peace comes from a common security in which humanity traded in their weapons of war for tools to tend to their own plot of land.

We must remind ourselves that to be human is to be vulnerable--a message perpetrated by Jesus Christ himself, "who being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant." (Philippians 2:6-7)

But when all is said and done, GOD's Temple on the mountain, Firmly fixed, will dominate all mountains, towering above surrounding hills. People will stream to it and many nations set out for it, Saying, "Come, let's climb GOD's mountain. Let's go to the Temple of Jacob's God. He will teach us how to live. We'll know how to live God's way." True teaching will issue from Zion, GOD's revelation from Jerusalem. He'll establish justice in the rabble of nations and settle disputes in faraway places. They'll trade in their swords for shovels, their spears for rakes and hoes. Nations will quit fighting each other, quit learning how to kill one another. Each man will sit under his own shade tree, each woman in safety will tend her own garden. GOD-of-the-Angel-Armies says so, and he means what he says.

--the prophet Micah