As our nation approaches the 20th anniversary of the catastrophically well-coordinated September, 11 attacks, I’ve heard a few thoughtful commentators ask:  Do you remember what life was like on September 10th, 2001?

It’s a fantastically important question because life in these United States has not been the same since.

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I remember it all very well.  With a toddler and a baby, my wife and I began hosting a homegroup with the goal of planting a church in our town — a church in which I would later serve as Pastor for over a dozen years.

But on September 10, 2001, I was still a consultant for one of the world’s largest software companies and if life wasn’t full enough, I also wrung out every extra hour I could to continuously train for athletic endurance events at a relentless pace.

Motivation comes easy for a goal-oriented person if they have just one thing:  A clearly defined goal.

That April, I ran my fastest time at the Boston Marathon (I can still see my wife pushing the double stroller almost exactly where the terrorist’s bomb would explode just 12 years later).  In July, I completed Ironman Lake Placid in a time fast enough to qualify me for a spot at the World Championships in Hawaii that October.

September 10, 2001, was all about balancing the scales to achieve the goals of being a good husband, Dad, businessman, home church leader, and athlete.

Little did I know there was a gaggle of Middle Eastern men who were also training very, very hard. Tragically, they were motivated by very different goals.

The finish line you aim for means everything.

As I heartbreakingly reflect on life in America, 2021, I would gladly jettison back to September 10, 2001, to ask for a do-over.  Sure, George Bush’s impromptu couple of sentences atop the steaming World Trade Center rubble were epic.   But 20-years later, can we confidently conclude that those words embodied true vision and wisdom as we watch innocent bodies piling up on the streets and runways of Afghanistan today?

The Spirit which imparts true, divine, eternal wisdom rarely requires a bullhorn to be heard.

In March 2001, two of the terrorists embarked on an expensive, highly customized aviator training program in Florida.  Warning alarms should have sounded as these men had no intention of serving the public as highly skilled pilots.

As these two radicals demonically crashed our hijacked planes into the World Trade Center towers, the hellish nature of their training goals was revealed.

…the two men only wanted to learn how to steer planes, not how to take off and land — which some have suggested should have triggered suspicions at the school.

~Rudy Dekkers, owner of Huffman Aviation, Venice FL

Today, as we endure the endless fracturing of our social, cultural, and political landscapes, we have to ask:  What are the goals of our leaders?  Can you clearly restate them to others?  Are we being hijacked?  And, when is the last time you heard our media outlets, social activists or elected officials share with us the true nature of where they want to take us?

As we watch our country get ripped apart before our eyes, who is explaining to us precisely what a Reimagined America will look like?

Most of our leaders, elected and otherwise, seem to furiously clamor at the cockpit controls in a manner that only disrupts what was once a steady, on-time flight.  I don’t think the best time to reimagine avionics is when the plane is packed full and sailing at cruising altitude

As we are being jerked about the cabin and becoming more and more annoyed with our fellow passengers, we should all stop to ask:

Do our pilots know how to land this plane?

Malcolm Gladwell, one of my favorite authors, famously says in his Master Class about the art of writing:

Writers spend a lot of time thinking about how to start their stories and not a lot of time thinking about how to end them.  Knowing my ending makes the beginning super easy.  It’s totally clear what I have to do.  And, it’s totally clear what I shouldn’t do. 

It sure seems our millionaire marionette-navigators have no idea what the ending looks like.  Resultantly, the best (worst) they can do is hijack our nation in mid-flight and recklessly engage in maneuvers that display an utter lack of wisdom or preparation for a safe touch-down — let alone the immense disdain they spew for our miraculous take-off.

There is a recent groundswell that hurls great contempt for our country’s founding formularies.  Far too many are confidently bloviating that because some of our founding fathers owned slaves we should toss the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights on the woke bonfire.

To which I ask:  OK, and then what?

Just imagine; you are soaring along at full speed on a packed plane and the pilot comes on the loudspeaker and says,

Uh, good afternoon ladies and gentlemen, this is your…I’m sorry, I meant to say:  Good afternoon persons in chairs, this is your pilot speaking.  We have just been told by the tower that our take-off earlier today does not conform to current social standards.  Therefore, we will be shutting down the engines as this entire voyage is based on a lie.

Let’s do a quick perusal of some of the available in-flight entertainment before our plane runs out of fuel and we never reach these undefined destinations.

Afghanistan  After a 20-year investment of blood, money, and warfare, who along the way told us what a successful landing will look like?  Heck, it was only a week ago that Joe Biden assured us the Taliban could never take Kabul in the likeness of the North Vietcong taking Saigon.  Was that a lie, was he misinformed, or does he just have different goals than the rest of us?

On the same day we watch the beheading of Western sympathizers and the kidnapping of pre-pubescent girls branded to become “comfort wives” for the Taliban, our Pilot Presidenté stepped up to the world’s microphone and with great humanitarian empathy pleaded:

Put your mask on and get the shot.

Then he shuffled away like Tim Conway’s Old Man character, refusing to take a question.  Methinks our pilot doesn’t even know where the airport is.

Critical Race Theory  The rabid race hucksters have perniciously turned our universities, corporations, public schools and local governments against all manners of whiteness.  Wonderful — but to what end?  Can anyone from the CRT cockpit tell us the precise amount of white flagellation required to say we’ve “Completed the work”?

I cringed as I watched Jimmy Fallon’s woke audience gleefully cheer at a recent report:  For the first time in American history, the population of white people has declined.  What was especially funny?  Jimmy’s fuselage was jam-packed with a bunch of whities.

Gender  Now that we have been browbeaten to believe gender is a social construct and children taking puberty blockers against their parents’ will is akin to a First Class flight, can our non-binary pilots please communicate what the quantifiable drop in national testosterone levels should be before zir will turn off the fasten seat belt sign?

Climate  I have always marveled at watching people drive their carbon-neutral cis-electric cars to the airport, only to board a flight that burns more fossil fuel in one takeoff than they could offset in five lifetimes in their Smart Car.  So, as Green Joe vows to end all internal combustion cars by 2035, ask our leaders this: Has anyone checked the altimeter to determine where the required electricity to charge all these cars will come from?  (For truly informative insights on this topic, be sure to follow anything and everything from Bjorn Lomborg’s work)

Environmental Social Governance  If you’ve never heard of ESG, just save this blog in an easily accessible place.  As the trees begin to awaken again in the Spring of ’22, everyone will know about this authoritarian wrecking ball of a policy that has clandestinely passed as policy through our financial systems.  You may want to have your inflight barf bag at the ready.

Quickly said, financial institutions can now deny any customer or business the right to enact commerce on their platforms based on a number of woke measurements.  For example; if your carbon footprint is not quite green enough, you can be denied the ability to borrow money.  Or, if you were found to have contributed money to a republican candidate in 2020, your accounts can be immediately closed.

Think I’m kidding?  Just ask Pro-life motivational speaker and life coach, Nick Vujicic, what his bank did to him.

With no warning, all of Nick’s accounts were frozen along with his debit and credit cards.  Soon after, all his accounts were canceled and the bank denied Nick from conducting any financial interaction with their institution.

I believe this is merely reconnaissance for what ESG will soon inflict upon all those who are Christian, conservative or God forbid; a Trump supporter.

While you may think I’ve wandered off the farm, I am posing a very real question:  Do our leaders even know where the landing strip is at this point?

For me, the life-giving question is always:  Does the church know how to land the plane?  Or better said; does the church know how to land heaven on earth?

The ancient scriptures hold profound precepts about how a lack of goals, vision, and wisdom can lead nations of people into destruction:

Without a vision, the people perish.

~Proverbs 29:18

To unpack this phrase a bit more from the original language, it says:  Unless there is a prophetic, guiding, divine revelation, people will no longer restrain themselves and entire nations will be destroyed.

We only have to look to history to know this is true.

This is why the message of Christ unites all of creation to confidently know what the ending is.  Christians are not merely here on the earth as a connecting flight hoping to one day arrive at heaven’s gate.  No, the landing of this eternal plane is a far more glorious reality as described — at the end of The Book:

And I saw the holy city descending out of heaven from God, made ready like a bride adorned for her husband.  And a loud voice said, ‘Look! The residence of God is among human beings and He will live among them and they will be His people and God himself will be with them.

~ Revelation 21

Can you imagine a more glorious destination and landing?  We know the ending!  As Malcolm Gladwell says, once we know the ending, we know exactly what to do — and exactly what not to do.

Who among our public and corporate leaders today can clearly articulate the ending they are navigating us toward?  If they can’t plainly show it to us on a map — it’s time to get them out of the cockpit.  Now!

Do you agree with the author that we are currently on a crash course? Share your thoughts and prayers in the comments below!

(Reprinted with permission from The Wine Patch. Article by Keith Guinta. Photo Credit: Pascal Meier/Unsplash).