The other night I was going through some unmarked videotapes stacked beside our VCR to find out what "indispensable" programs I had impulsively recorded then failed to label. They were all forgettable except one. It contained clips from several newscasts on the evening of September 11, as the networks reviewed the day’s events. I sat transfixed as the American Airliner struck the World Trade Center again and again, and the towers collapsed in huge thunderheads, as if fulfilling a scene from the Apocalypse. I listened as commentators struggled for descriptions to match the spectacle. "Just like a movie" was a favorite comparison. The most memorable remark came from Aaron Brown of CNN as he watched the second tower disintegrate. "There are no words," he said.

Six months later, I still think Brown had it right. We have heard words by the million since that day, from presidential speeches, Pentagon briefings, and eloquent editorials to the blusterings of talk radio and the sentimental drivel of entertainers. But none of them says it better. The horrors of that day defy description. There are no words. There never will be.

The failure of words to capture 9/11 reflects the complexity of the day’s events. Unlike other catastrophes of vivid memory, this one will never be confined to a single, mentally manageable event. John F. Kennedy’s assassination, the explosion of the Challenger, the incineration of Branch Davidians, the bombing in Oklahoma City, the shootings at Columbine High School—like 9/11, these are all events of the you-never-forget-where-you-heard-it variety. But unlike those catastrophes, 9/11 yields to no single image or concept. It rolled over us like a series of shock waves, and it continues to rattle our lives.

For some, the suffering begun that day will never be over. Those whose loved ones died will live with it the rest of their lives. Things are different for the rest of us, too. If you have flown since then, you know that airports are not the places they used to be. Fly the friendly skies? We won’t hear that one in the future. Communication is different, too. You can’t look at your mail without wondering where it’s been. Entertainment has changed. The plot lines of TV shows have been adjusted and there are some movies that won’t be coming out after all. People don’t want to see actors mixing it up with make-believe terrorists when we have seen more of the real thing than we ever wanted. For a while, comedians openly wondered if there was any place for them in the post 9/11 world.

Yet through it all, the quest for expression continues. There may be no words—no adequate account of the horrors that haunt us—but we nevertheless live by words, as the Bible asserts. Without them, we have nothing to weave the strands of sensation into the fabric of memory and meaning that makes us human. A world without words is no world at all.

Furthermore, a day like 9/11 not only challenges our powers of expression, it also changes the expressions we use. Words don’t define events like that. Instead, they define the words we give them.

On the positive side, 9/11 gives new substance to words like courage and hero. A hero is not an athlete, a rock star, or an aggressive stockbroker. A hero is a firefighter who runs toward the danger others are running from. Courage isn’t trying to sink a thirty-foot putt with a golf tournament on the line. Courage is putting your life on the line so others can live.

America is another word that took on new meaning on 9/11. Patriotism suddenly became popular. I don’t mean a knee-jerk jingoism. Instead, I mean a new sense of the giftedness of life in this country. We may have serious flaws—as our best patriotic song admits—but we pray to see them mended, and the privileges and opportunities here are unparalleled anywhere. "Don’t read your reviews, America," said John Updike while living in England. "You’re still the best there is." Homeland isn’t a word I can remember politicians using. It sounds like the places our grandparents left to come here. But now it refers a cabinet position.

On the negative side, words like evil and hatred now have new currency, too. They seem to be indispensable—not as rhetorical tools, but in the sober, serious attempts to identify just what that day represents. They’ve made their way into newspaper headlines and the covers of national newsmagazines. Whatever the complexities of cultural conflict and the intricacies of international misunderstanding, there is no defense for killing thousands of defenseless people. If that isn’t evil, it’s hard to think of something that is.

At the same time, there’s a danger in invoking powerful words like these. Applied not just to actions or events, but to people, to religious systems and cultural perspectives, the word evil reflects the very sort of thinking that lies behind 9/11. It demonizes "them" and sanctifies us. In a Manichean universe, everything about the enemy is negative and everything about us is positive. If we are nothing but the victims of evil, pure and simple, any reaction is justified, and the spiral of suffering continues.

Last summer in London I saw "The Beautiful Game," Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical about the troubles in Northern Ireland. The climax of the drama is a bitter exchange in which one of the terrorists tells why he keeps waging a hopeless struggle. "I don’t expect to win our war with the British," he exclaims. "I just want to keep them from winning. If I can pass my hatred on to one more generation, then we’ve succeeded, because the war will never be over."

The most elevated words applied to 9/11 are also the most disturbing—words like religion and God. Nothing demonstrates the twistedness of human thinking more vividly than using religion to justify mass murder. It seems to confirm the chilling observation I heard somewhere: "History is filled with good people doing good things and bad people doing bad things. But to get good people to do bad things—for that you need religion." How anyone could find a mandate to destroy human life in ancient systems of belief and practice, which remind us of our common humanity and guide us to our better selves, is a testimony to the depths of human darkness.

At the same time, only words like these offer any hope for humanity. Hatred is immensely powerful, especially when there is good reason for it. Revenge is enormously attractive, especially when it is fully justified. But if there is any hope for any of us we cannot make them the last word on the subject.

Along with all the evil of 9/11, people have also become aware of a profound goodness in human life—a capacity to care for one another, a willingness to reach out to those in need, a determination to restore and rebuild. And we need to find words that express and cultivate these sentiments more fully. Perhaps we have heard enough about evil, justice, and revenge. From now on we need to hear more about love and forgiveness.

But do words like this make any sense after 9/11? Can we ever use them with confidence? Is goodness really more fundamental, more representative of our humanity, than a thirst for retaliation and revenge? That’s a challenging question, and a positive answer is anything but obvious. When we look at it closely, however, we see that that is the question of God. To believe in God is to believe that the forces that work for healing will ultimately wear down and wear out the forces of evil. To believe in God is to believe that love is more powerful than hatred, that forgiveness is stronger than revenge. To believe in God is to let these words define who we are and determine what we do.

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