The Falling Man and the Mercy of God

Twenty-five years ago today, on September 11, 2001, many innocent people died in New York City— almost 3000 by one count.  Those were the ones trapped in the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center when two airplanes, commandeered by Islamic terrorists, flew into those buildings in order to make a statement and kill as many Americans as possible.  Such was the horror and trauma of that day that its date, abbreviated as the number “911”, has ever since become a symbol of terrorist atrocity and heroic American determination to survive and prevail.  The trauma and outrage of that day were felt around the world.  Like the event in Dallas of November 22, 1963, many people remember exactly where they were when they first heard the news of 911. 

I remember it too: I was in my car driving back home from dropping my children off to school when a voice on my car radio told me that “the New York skyline will never look the same”.  What?  What could change the New York skyline?  By the time I pulled into my driveway, I knew exactly what could affect that famous skyline.  Like all Canadians, I was glued to my television all that day, praying for my dear neighbours to the south.

 A multitude of photos flooded television and print media in the hours and days following, many of them documenting the heroism of the first-responders.  The unthinkable horror had brought Americans together, reminding them of what was most important in their lives and also of what it meant to be American.  The photos were sources of inspiration and patriotic pride.

One photo, however, proved to be a source of controversy. The photo (inset above) showed a falling man who had leaped to his death from high up on the Twin Towers.  Like other powerful photos (such as the 1945 photo documenting the liberation of Buchenwald and 1972 photo of nine-year old “Napalm Girl” Phan Thi Kim Phuc fleeing a South Vietnamese napalm attack) it represented an important bit of history, a terrible and terrifying icon summing up the inner meaning of a particular day and time.

       The publication of the photo the day after 911 instantly provoked international disgust and moral outrage and it was immediately withdrawn from media distribution.  The reasons given for the outrage were many: it was thought to be a personal intrusion into one man’s tragedy, it was judged to be in bad taste, it was denounced as an example of journalistic voyeurism.  Mostly, however, the photo was just too emotionally difficult to view.  It was too hard to imagine that someone could leap to their death like that.

       That was perhaps why when one journalist inquired in the days immediately following 911 just how many people had jumped from the windows, he was told that no one had.  No one voluntarily jumped, he was informed; they were all involuntarily blown out from the windows. No one had leaped to the deaths. The authorities were emphatic: no one had jumped.

 This was clearly untrue: many people who stood watching the twin towers as they burned saw with their own horrified eyes people leaning out of the windows and many jumping to their deaths one after another.  Indeed, by a later count, about 200 had done so.

       The jumpers were hardly suicidal.  To have remained within the buildings meant a certain and horrible end, either by suffocation from the toxic smoke or by being burned to death or both.  Desperate to breathe and to find fresh air they ran to the windows and then chose to jump.

       This had nothing to do with suicide.  Suicide (and voluntary euthanasia, called “Medical Assistance in Dying” in Canada) summons death to a place where it did not formerly exist. It is a hastening towards death, a choice of death over life.  Those trapped in the towers did not summon death to a place where it did not exist; death was in the room with them, rushing towards them. When they ran to the windows they were not hastening towards death but running from it.  A man who commits suicide would’ve lived if he had not chosen death.  Those in the burning and collapsing towers were already dead men.

       So, what can be said about the 200 who jumped— and about the falling man in the first photo?  Simply that they deserve the sympathy and the salute and the abundant honour given to all those who died that unforgettable day.  The identity of the falling man in the first photo, tentatively identified as Jonathan Briley, a deacon in his Baptist Church, cannot be verified with mathematical certainty.  And nor should he.  Like the man lying in the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, the falling man represents all who died that day before whom we should stand in solemn respect and reverence, commending their souls to God.   

The “jumpers” (as they were known) became a storm center for the many traumatized and bereaved families who were loathe to believe their beloved family member would have jumped. In the agony of the days immediately after 911, some felt that the jumps smacked of suicide.  Indeed, one Roman Catholic family shared their belief that those who jumped could not be saved since their church taught that suicides went straight to hell.

Those who know the love of Christ which took Him to His own death on the cross will know that this fear is unfounded.  Those who jumped did not do so because they hated life but because it seemed to them in that fearful hour to be the only choice left. They did not want to die.  They wanted to live.

They are, in fact, not so different from you and me.  Those leaping into the air from the windows had about ten seconds more to live; you and I have longer but we are all of us hurtling towards certain death.  Whether that death comes after a long battle with cancer or a few moments after a sudden heart attack, all the children of men must face their end and not pretend to immortality.  We are all falling men. 

God knows the human heart and its agonies and its limited choices.  He was not far away those who stood trapped in the burning towers; rather He stayed close by their side.  I believe that when men such as Deacon Jonathan fell through the air that day they fell into the mercy of God.  We cannot know the fate of any man on any day, especially not on a day such as 911.  But we can know that God is merciful, that He loves all that draw breath, and that His embrace is not denied to any who reach out to Him.  Whether one dies peacefully in bed or whether one dies in a collapsing tower and leaps from its height, this we know for certain: God is our eternal refuge and underneath are the everlasting arms (Deuteronomy 33:27).