September 11 (2001)

In the horror of 9/11, Charles H. Featherstone turned from Islam to Christianity. In an issue of Christianity Today he shared his story:

Although both of his parents were raised as Lutherans, his mother never had much use for religion, and his father lost his faith in God in the jungles of South Vietnam. When his father left the army, the family settled down in Southern California where Charles attended school. He writes:

I had been on the receiving end of my father’s intense but sporadic violence for years. I learned to both fear and hate him. School quickly became unsafe as well: I was bullied, terrorized, and abused regularly. There was no one to trust. I was frightened, incredibly alone, and increasingly angry. Would anyone ever love and value me?

Searching for something to do with his life he began studying journalism at San Francisco State University. Charles said: “That’s where I found Islam. A friend introduced me to the Qur’an, and I was entranced by its words. The Muslims who first taught me welcomed me as no one else had before.”

But Islam also provided religious and political fuel for his anger. At one mosque he fell in with a group of jihadis. They discussed the texts of revolutionary Islam. One brother went to fight in Bosnia, and Charles wanted to join him. But there was Jennifer, whom he’d met at San Francisco State. There would be no one to care for her. He said, “I belonged to her, and she to me. This was a turning point. The anger that had burned in my soul was beginning to burn itself out.”

He started a journalistic career which eventually took him to offices in Lower Manhattan, right across from the World Trade Center. He was there on the morning of September, 11, 2001.

In the chaos and terror of the streets below, as I looked up at the burning twin towers and watched people tumble to their deaths, life-changing words came to me—words I suddenly heard inside my head: “My love is all that matters, and this is who I am.” I knew then that everything I understood about God, about sin and redemption, about the whole human condition, had changed. What happened was the kind of divine intervention that drove Abraham to leave home, trusting in God’s promises. The kind of force that struck Saul blind on the road to Damascus.

Charles and Jennifer began attending a church in Virginia.

The people showed me that it was the risen Jesus Christ who had spoken to me. They taught me the gospel, proclaiming the forgiveness of sins for the entire world. This is who I had met that horrible day in September. It was Jesus Christ who, in the midst of terror and death, assured me that his love is all that matters.

I belong to Jesus. He saw me and told me to follow. I left everything and obeyed. So, I trust God. For the first time in my life, I know who I am. I know whose I am. And that is all that matters.

Editor’s Note: Charles H. Featherstone is the author of The Love That Matters: Meeting Jesus in the Midst of Terror and Death .

In his book Jack Alexander writes:

From the time he was six years old, Welles Crowther wore a red bandana. His father gave it to him, explaining the clean white hand­kerchief in breast pocket was "for show," the red bandanna was "for blow." Welles took that red bandanna everywhere. When he volunteered with the Empire Hook and Ladder Company at age sixteen—joining his father on the force—he carried it with him. When he played lacrosse for Boston College, he tied it around his head and wore it under his helmet. Even when he took a job as an equities trader, working on the 104th floor of the World Trade Center's South Tower, he brought it with him.

In a culture of starched white handkerchiefs folded neatly in Italian-suit breast pockets, Welles kept his bandanna close. And it was with him on Sept. 11, 2001, when United Airlines Flight 175 exploded into the South Tower, cutting a fatal swath between floors 78 and 85.

Several floors below Welles, Lin Yung was blown back by the explosion and couldn't see anything at first because her eyeglasses were covered in blood. When she wiped them off, Lin saw a world of nightmare: mangled bodies strewn around her, dust and debris everywhere. Lin didn't know how long her luck would hold.

Then she saw a young man through the smoke and ash, seemingly more shadow than flesh. He said, "I found the stairs. Follow me." Welles led Lin and others down seventeen flights of stairs to where firefighters led survivors down another twenty floors to a set of still-working elevators. But Welles didn't follow them. Instead, he went back up, a red bandanna wrapped around his nose and mouth.

He found Judy Wein in the rubble–her arm was broken, ribs cracked. One of her lungs was punctured. Welles called out: "Everyone who can stand, stand now. If you can help others, do so." Welles led Judy down the stairs, again to a band of waiting firefighters. And then he went back up. Again.

Welles didn't make it out of the South Tower. Perhaps he never expected to. His body was found six months later, surrounded by the bodies of uniformed firefighters. It's said that he saved perhaps as many as a dozen people that day. He was twenty-four years old. Wein told CNN, "People can live 100 years and not have the compassion, the wherewithal to do what he did.”

Lin keeps a photo of Welles in her apartment. She says, "Without him, I wouldn't be here. He saved my life. And he will always be in my heart. Always be with me.”

Welles is gone, but his bandanna is not. It's part of the 9/11 museum now, and it's become a symbol of the man's heroism and self-sacrifice. Think mercy can't change the world? Take a look at Welles Crowther. Take a look at the people he saved. Think again.

Possible Preaching Angle:

The cross of Christ is the supreme powerful symbol of sacrifice for others. We should remember it and display it in His honor.

Naturalist Jane Goodall tells the true story about a Callery pear tree that had been planted near Building 5 of the World Trade Center. Since the early 1970s each year the tree's delicate white blossoms had brought a touch of spring into a world of concrete. In 2001, after the 9/11 attack, this tree, like all the other trees that had been planted there, disappeared beneath the fallen towers. But amazingly, in October, a cleanup worker found her, smashed and pinned between blocks of concrete. She was decapitated and the eight remaining feet of trunk were charred black; the roots were broken; and there was only one living branch.

Initially, many observers thought the tree was unsalvageable. But the cleanup workers at Ground Zero persuaded an employee with the Parks Department to give the tree a chance, so it was sent off to nursery in the Bronx. When a nursery worker first saw the decapitated tree he did not think anything could save her. But once the dead, burned tissues had been cut away, and her trimmed roots deeply planted in good rich soil, the tree survived. The tree was given a new name—Survivor.

In the spring of 2010 disaster struck Survivor again. The tree had been ripped out of the ground by a terrible storm with 100 mile per hour winds. Once again rescue workers worked together to salvage and redeem Survivor. At first they only partially lifted the tree, packing in compost and mulch so as not to break the roots. For a long while they gently sprayed the tree with water to minimize the shock, hoping she'd make it. A few weeks later they set to work to get Survivor completely upright. Again, Survivor was resurrected from the dead.

The next year Survivor was incorporated into the 9/11 memorial. She was planted near the footprint of the South Tower. The tree was planted so that the traumatized side faces the public. Some people weren't pleased to have the tree back, saying that she "spoiled" the symmetry of the landscaping, as she is a different species from the other nearby trees. Indeed, she is different.

On the tenth anniversary of 9/11, when the memorial site was opened to survivors and family members, many of them tied blue ribbons onto Survivor's branches.

Editor’s Note: As of 7/24 The Survivor tree embodies our nation’s spirit and strength, this one-of-a-kind tree stands out from the rest of the trees on the 9/11 Memorial. In the spring, it’s the first to bud and the last to lose its leaves in the fall.

Possible Preaching Angles:

(1) Redemption; Resurrection; Salvation; Rescue—This isn't just a story about survival or resiliency. Survivor's survival depended on the rescue efforts of another. She couldn't save herself. (2) Weakness—Notice how the tree's wounds (the scars from its past) became a sign of Survivor's glorious redemption.

In his book Free of Charge, author Miroslav Volf shares a personal story about the power of grace and forgiveness:

I was one then, and my five-year-old brother, Daniel, had slipped through the large gate in the courtyard where we had an apartment. He went to the nearby small military base—just two blocks away—to play with "his" soldiers. On earlier walks through the neighborhood, he had found some friends there—soldiers in training, bored and in need of diversion even if it came from an energetic five-year-old.

On that fateful day in 1957, one of them put him on a horse-drawn bread wagon. As they were passing through the gate on a bumpy cobblestone road, Daniel leaned sideways and his head got stuck between the post and the wagon. The horses kept going. He died on the way to hospital—a son lost to parents who adored him and an older brother that I would never know.

Aunt Milica should have watched him. But she didn't. She let him slip out, she didn't look for him, and he was killed. But my parents never told me that she was partly responsible. They forgave her ….

The pain of that terrible loss still lingers on, but bitterness and resentment against those responsible are gone. It was healed at the foot of the cross as my mother gazed on the Son who was killed and reflected about the God who forgave. Aunt Milica was forgiven, and there was no more talk of her guilt, not even talk of her having been guilty. As far as I was concerned, she was innocent.

Desmond Tutu is a bishop in South Africa who won the Nobel Peace Prize for his work against apartheid. In his book No Future Without Forgiveness, he shares stories and insights from his leadership role in South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission. South Africa had been plagued for generations by terrible violence between the white ruling minority and the black majority. Once the whites relinquished power and Nelson Mandela become president, the question in need of an answer was clear: How does a country with so much pain and violence and division in its past move forward? Tutu and others established the Truth and Reconciliation Commission as a way forward. The goal was for those who had committed atrocities in the past to come forward and tell the truth—both blacks and whites. But it didn't end there. After confessing the truth, the goal was to bring reconciliation and forgiveness—to break the cycle of hate so the entire country could move forward.

In one chapter of the book, Tutu recounts testimony after testimony of people, both black and white, who came before the commission to confess to torturing and murdering others. It was horrific—terrible stories in graphic detail. It's almost impossible to believe that human beings are capable of such evil. The horrors of the crimes makes one particular story especially moving.

Two people who came before the commission were Mrs. Calata and her daughter. Mrs. Calata's husband had been an advocate for black South Africans in rural communities. Because of his work, he'd been arrested, detained, and tortured by the police numerous times. But one day he disappeared. On the front page of the newspaper, Mrs. Calata saw a photograph of her husband's car on fire. She cried so loudly during the hearing, describing the autopsy's report about his torture, that the commission had to be adjourned.

When they reconvened, Mrs. Calata's daughter testified. Years had gone by, and she was now a young lady. She pleaded with the commission to discover who had killed her father. But she was not crying out because she wanted vengeance or justice. Instead she said to the commission, "We want to forgive, but we don't know whom to forgive."

Eventually members of the police confessed to the crime. Rather than continue the endless cycle of hatred, Mrs. Calata and her daughter forgave the men who tortured and killed their husband and father—because that's what Christ's people do.

Does forgiveness mean we don't care about justice? Does forgiveness mean there is no consequence for evil? No! What it means is that we leave justice and vengeance in God's hands. He alone can judge rightly. Our job, as agents of his kingdom on earth, is to break the cycles of hate—to move from a people of exclusion to a people of embrace, forgiving others just as God, in Christ, has forgiven us.

Editor's note: Though you might not be persuaded by the information below, it still has great illustrative potential. D'Souza's article might provide an intriguing way into a sermon that deals with why God allows bad things to happen. It might be something you want to contend with or elevate as a possibility. It might be a way to raise several other questions about why bad things happen. Or, taking a cue from the article itself, you might want to use the following illustration to interact with some of the thoughts offered by author and apologist C. S. Lewis, who believed that God possibly uses natural disasters to draw people to himself, draw people together, or even provide moral instruction to the survivors.

The problem of theodicy—why bad things happen to good people—predates Christianity. Writing around 300 BC, the Greek philosopher Epicurus framed the problem this way: God is believed by most people to be infinite in his power and also in his goodness and compassion. Now evil exists in the world and seems always to have existed. If God is unable to remove evil, he lacks omnipotence. If God is able to remove evil but doesn't, he lacks goodness and compassion. So clearly the all-powerful, compassionate God that most people pray to does not exist.

This old critique has been revived by [theologian] Bart Ehrman in God's Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question—Why We Suffer. Theologians over the centuries have responded to questions about the existence of evil by pointing out that man, not God, is the author of moral evil. Evil in this view refers to the bad things that people do to each other. Moral evil is the necessary price that God pays for granting humans moral autonomy.

Yet while human freedom may account for moral evil, it cannot account for natural evil, or more accurately, natural suffering. Ehrman's book is full of examples, to which we can add recent tragedies such as the earthquake in China last spring and the 2004 tsunami that killed tens of thousands in Southeast Asia.

Christian apologists such as C. S. Lewis have attempted to account for natural disasters by showing how they draw people together, or how they provide moral instruction to the survivors, or how they turn our eyes to God. Ehrman asks, but couldn't God have found better ways to achieve these worthy objectives? Rejecting as implausible and offensive the usual responses to innocent suffering, Ehrman has stopped calling himself a Christian.

A fresh way of looking at the problem of natural evil and suffering comes from Rare Earth, a 2003 book by Peter Ward and Donald Brownlee that traces the myriad conditions required for life to exist on any planet. In a sense, the authors—an eminent paleontologist and an astronomer at the University of Washington in Seattle—are discussing the "anthropic principle," which specifies the degree to which our planet appears fine-tuned for complex life. The concept is often used in Christian apologetics to show that our intelligently designed universe seems to point to an intelligent designer.

Ward and Brownlee ask: Why do natural disasters such as earthquakes, seaquakes, and tsunamis occur? All three are the consequence of plate tectonics, the giant plates that move under the surface of the earth and the ocean floor. Apparently our planet is unique in having plate tectonics. Ward and Brownlee show that without this geological feature, there would be no large mountain ranges or continents.

While natural disasters occasionally wreak havoc, our planet needs plate tectonics to produce the biodiversity that enables complex life to flourish on earth. Without plate tectonics, earth's land would be submerged to a depth of several thousand feet. Fish might survive in such an environment, but not humans.

Plate tectonics also help regulate the earth's climate, preventing the onset of scorching or freezing temperatures that would make mammalian life impossible. In sum, plate tectonics are a necessary prerequisite to human survival on the only planet known to sustain life.

Ehrman and others may not find this convincing. They might ask, "Why didn't God devise a world that didn't require plate tectonics and consequently one that wouldn't have to put up with earthquakes?" In other words, surely God could have made a universe that operated according to a different set of laws.

Ward and Brownlee's answer to this is as simple as it is devastating. Such a world could have produced life, but it surely could not have produced creatures like us. Science tells us that our world has all the necessary conditions for species like Homo sapiens to survive and endure.

Our planet requires oxygen and a warming sun and water in order for us to live here, and we appreciate this, even though we recognize that people can get sunstroke and drown in the ocean. So, too, it seems that plate tectonics are, as Ward and Brownlee put it, a "central requirement for life" as we know it.

This is not to suggest, as the scientist and philosopher Leibniz once argued, that ours is the best of all possible worlds. But ours may be the best of all feasible worlds, at least as viewed from a human perspective. This recognition will not stop people from bemoaning the next earthquake, but it should at least stop us from blithely assuming that the Creator could have done a much better job.

As many in Britain have reflected on the life and leadership of Tony Blair, former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (1997–2007), stories have emerged concerning his faith. A 2008 issue of Time magazine featured one particularly moving story from Blair's past:

Blair is deeply religious—the most openly devout political leader of Britain since William Ewart Gladstone more than 100 years ago. He handles questions about religion deftly. He doesn't back down. His longtime press secretary and consigliere, Alastair Campbell, remembers Blair in 1996 at a school in Scotland where a gunman had killed 16 children and a teacher. In a bloodstained classroom, Campbell asked Blair, "What does your God make of this?" Blair, says Campbell, stopped and replied, "Just because man is bad, it does not mean that God is not good."

On May 17, 2008, Christian recording artist Steven Curtis Chapman and his family suffered a devastating loss. Five-year-old adopted daughter, Maria, was struck and killed when Chapman's seventeen-year-old son was backing his SUV out of the family's driveway. After much prayer and counsel, Chapman recently returned to touring in promotion for his newest album. Elizabeth Diffin, a freelance reporter, attended one of Chapman's concerts and writes about the experience:

It's not often you leave a concert reflecting on the words of a song by a different artist. But as I exited the July 24, 2008, Steven Curtis Chapman event, the words of a Matt Redman worship song echoed through my head. Chapman opened the concert with "Blessed Be Your Name" just two months after the death of his 5-year-old daughter, Maria Sue, in a tragic accident at the family's home.

"Blessed Be Your Name" was also the first song Chapman sang May 21, the day of Maria's death, when he wasn't sure he'd ever be able to sing again. Inspired by the story of Job, at one point the lyrics repeat, "He gives and takes away."

"As I sang this song … it wasn't a song, it was a cry, a scream, a prayer," Chapman explained to the audience of nearly 5,000. "I found an amazing comfort and peace that surpasses all understanding."

Chapman also shared that after Maria's death, he'd reconsidered the words to all his songs and whether he could still sing—and believe—them. Instead, losing his little girl brought the meaning of some of those songs into sharper focus. One example was "Yours," which addresses how everything in the world belongs to God.

"In this song, in particular, I had to come to a new realization," he said. "There's not an inch of creation that God doesn't look at and say 'all of that's mine.'"

As a result of that realization in conjunction with Maria's death, Chapman added a new verse to "Yours":

I've walked the valley of death's shadow
so deep and dark that I could barely breath.
I've had to let go of more than I could bear and
I've questioned everything that I believe.
Still even here in this great darkness
a comfort and a hope comes breaking through
as I can say in life or death
God we belong to you.

Shortly after the tragedy of 9/11, a wonderful story of giving was reported by Page Ivey of The Associated Press. It emerged from a school house in Columbia, South Carolina.

First you have to have some historical perspective. Two years after the Civil War, with much of Columbia still in ruins, some of the bitterness over the North-South conflict was put aside by a single gesture: New York firefighters set out to collect pennies to buy Columbia a firetruck.

On February 17, 1865, a devastating blaze…had devoured over 36 blocks, or about one-third of the city. Columbia had lost most of its firefighting equipment during the Civil War and desperately used bucket brigades in their attempt to douse flames.

Not long after, New York City firemen, many of them former Union soldiers, raised $5,000—mostly in pennies—and put a hose-reel wagon on a steamship bound for Columbia, South Carolina. It was March of 1867. On the way, the ship sank, but instead of giving up, they took up another collection and sent a second hose-reel wagon in June of that same year.

So overwhelmed was former Confederate Colonel Samuel Melton that he made a promise on behalf of South Carolina's capital city to return the kindness "should misfortune ever befall the Empire City."

After 9/11, White Knoll principal Nancy Turner and her teachers were trying to find some tangible way their students could respond to the attacks. The children were too young to give blood, and no one liked the idea of simply sending money to an impersonal national fund. Eventually the decision was made to collect money to buy a fire truck.

Then Turner stumbled on records of New York's long-ago gift while researching the cost and what type of truck to buy. It was easy to get city leaders and the state governor, Jim Hodges, to join in. Columbia's fire chief was a New York native. The effort was renamed "South Carolina Remembers." After 134 years, the day to remember came and the children of Columbia took it on themselves to honor that pledge.

They collected pennies at football games, held bake sales, and sold T-shirts in a drive to raise the $350,000 needed to replace one of the dozens of New York City firetrucks destroyed in the 9/11 attacks.

The idea began from a lesson in giving. Donations poured in. One donor wrote: "When I was growing up in Columbia, Mama always said you need to return a kindness. I know she'd be as glad as I am to be part of this wonderful thank-you gesture."

In notes to the students, donors told personal stories connecting them with loved ones who died on 9/11, to firefighters, and in one case, to Confederate soldiers.

In her article, Page Ivey tells about one of the most unforgettable donations, coming from Russell Siller of Rockville Centre, New York. Siller's brother, Stephen, was part of the elite firefighter force Squad 1. He died that terrible day. Siller wrote: "At a time like this, when the whole nation is still mourning its loss, what a powerful and poetic message your efforts send to all of us. I am proud that New York's bravest sent you a fire truck in your city's time of need. … To think that you would honor a pledge made so many years ago! The new fire truck will become a symbol for your love for your country, and for New York's bravest."

When Beth Moore and her husband, Keith, spent time in war-torn Angola to draw attention to tens of thousands of malnourished people, they were changed forever. "I learned something in one of the rural villages that will mark my teaching and response to the Word of God," Beth says. "As we stood there, trying to absorb the sights and smells of living death, our new friend, Isak Pretorius, said, 'One of the most frustrating things is that in villages where they received seed, they often eat the seed rather than planting it and bringing forth the harvest.' I couldn't get the statement out of my mind and suddenly had an answer to the question I most often ask God: Why do some people see the results of the Word and others don't?"

Beth continues: "Why have many of us read books on forgiving people, known the teachings were true and right, cried over them, marked them up with highlighters, yet remain in our bitterness? Because we ate the seed instead of sowing it."

On April 15, 2008, Barry and Marybeth Mosier, Seventh-day Adventist missionaries to Tanzania for eight years, climbed aboard a plane bound for Kinsangani, Congo, to visit their 24-year-old son, Keith. Along for the flight was their 14-year-old daughter, April, and 3-year-old son, Andrew. The plane crashed during takeoff and plowed its way through a crowded marketplace. When the plane—now engulfed in flames—finally settled on the ground, April rushed to the aid of a man who was trying to tear a hole in the fuselage as a means of escape for the passengers. Using the Swahili she knew, April and the man eventually created a hole large enough for her to poke through.

As passengers climbed out of the burning wreckage, the area around the crash site became more chaotic. It was filled with people from the marketplace, crash survivors, and medical officials. April was immediately taken to a hospital. She could assume the rest of her family had died. But 25 minutes later, the Mosier family was reunited. Her mom had a few cuts and bruises—and little Andrew had a broken leg—but they were all alive.

"When we saw each other at the hospital, I can tell you it was a grand reunion," Barry said. "We couldn't believe that our family of four could all escape a plane that was crashed and on fire, but by God's mercy we did." He added: "We actually came here with the idea of seeing if we could move to Congo, so it's been kind of a rough introduction. I think we'll keep praying about that. We know that the safest place in the world to work is where the Lord wants you to work."

The Power of Forgiveness is a collection of seven short stories that, taken together, reveal the limits, difficulties, healing qualities, and unforeseen effects an act of forgiveness can have in the lives of the people who give it. One of the stories focuses on Kathleen Lawler-Row, a professor of psychology who has conducted extensive research into the effects of forgiveness on the human body.

In a video, Dr. Lawler-Row discusses her experiments probing the connection between forgiveness and symptoms of physical stress, like blood pressure. "When I bring people into the laboratory," she says, "I ask them to tell me about a time when someone deeply upset you, hurt you, betrayed you, etc. And some people say, 'Well, where do you want me to start? I have a long list.' They could talk about lots of different people in that context. Other people sit and think and think and think, and they struggle to come up with something. And I think that's part of the forgiving personality—more-forgiving people are just a little less aware of being offended."

The video shifts to Dr. Lawler-Row's laboratory as she asks one of her patients to rate his current level of forgiveness toward an individual on a scale from one to ten.

"When a person walks into the laboratory," she continues through a voiceover, "we have a few minutes where they sit, and we try to get a resting level—and interestingly, highly forgiving people have lower blood pressure just walking around in the world every day. But when we bring them into the lab, we ask them about a time when someone betrayed them, and everybody's blood pressure increases when they talk about this emotional moment."

The scene shifts back to the lab as a female patient describes a situation where a man became increasingly pushy and violent in an effort to get her back to his apartment.

"But the amount of the initial increase is really not the critical factor," Dr. Lawler-Row continues. "The critical thing is how long that blood pressure remains elevated. And people who are talking about a time that they are still very unhappy about, and that they have not been able to resolve or forgive, their blood pressure stays elevated for a longer period of time."

Back in the lab, Dr. Lawler-Row shows the female patient how her blood pressure changed during the telling of her story. "Your blood pressure when we started out is very normal—121 over 83. But as you start talking about this event, it goes up to 156 over 87, then 164, and here it's 184 over 127. This is an event that really triggers a reaction in you."

The patient is very surprised—even exclaiming, "I don't like that guy very much, do I?"

"Many of the stories I have heard have been profoundly disturbing, and the person will never forget what has happened to them," Dr. Lawler-Row continues. "But I have seen instances of people completely coming to resolution about it, and they show the pattern of the forgiving person—their blood pressure increases, but it drops off as they talk about it, and they are very quickly back to normal.

"Where someone else may have a far more trivial incident, but if they're hanging on to it for dear life, you see the pattern of the maintenance of blood pressure and the slow recovery. So I don't think the severity of the experience determines the health effects. It's really how the person is able to incorporate this past experience into their lives."

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The Power of Forgiveness is a collection of seven short stories that, taken together, reveal the limits, difficulties, healing qualities, and unforeseen effects an act of forgiveness can have in the lives of the people who give it—or in the lives of those who refuse to give it. One of the stories centers on acclaimed author and holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel.

This clip begins with footage of Jewish families being ushered into concentration camps as the narrator speaks in the background: "Elie Wiesel was one of the few who lived to walk out of the camps—his father died only weeks before the end of the war. For the next 10 years, he was virtually silent about the experience. For the last half-century, his gift for putting words to the nightmare that was the holocaust has helped generations to never forget."

The video shifts to Wiesel giving a speech inside of a concentration camp's remains. "So look and listen," he says. "Close your eyes and listen, but open your hearts and listen. Listen to the question that we asked ourselves then: 'What happened here?'"

The scene shifts again, and an elderly Wiesel reflects on the powerful emotions he experienced in his attempts to grapple with the holocaust later in his life. "I composed a prayer," he says. "Literally I composed a prayer, saying, 'God of mercy, have no mercy on these souls—on these murderers of children. God of compassion, have no compassion on those who killed these children.'" As he speaks, the video shifts to scenes of Jewish children rolling up their sleeves to reveal the numbers they had been stamped with to replace their names.

"I was criticized all over the world," Wiesel continues, "because it was published all over the world. But I felt it—I still feel it. Some persons do not deserve forgiveness. And those are the persons, really, who went beyond the human capacity for evil. They went beyond it."

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