When I was asked to speak with children about Sept. 11, as I described here previously, my first reaction was that they and I might be sick of it by the end of that anniversary day. Then I read what the National Education Association was advising teachers to tell their students, and I changed my mind. NEA would tell them to excuse the terrorists and blame ourselves. The honesty with children about terrorism I advocated in the previous piece is also necessary in regard to the terrorists specifically.

My thesis in this part of the talk with the children was: Although we cannot blame everyone of that religion, terrorists really did do this on the basis of their own understanding of their religion; we must make sure our spiritual faith leads us to do good and try to teach good even to terrorists.

Now, all the men who hijacked the airplanes and killed all those people were Arabs or Near Eastern people. They all were Muslims, which means their religion is Islam. They refuse to believe what the Bible says but, instead, believe in another book called the Koran. The Koran was written by an Arab by the name of Mohamed a long time after the Bible was written.

I am sure you have heard it said that not all Arabs or Muslims think the way these men did. You have heard it said that most Muslims who live in America would never do something like this and are as upset by their murders as the rest of us are. This is true.

The Bible teaches that all people have sinned and fall short of being the humans God created us to be. Sin is when a person acts inhumanly, and evil is the consequence of sin -- what happens because a person sins. Even how we hurt other people. Everyone has sinned. All Americans have sinned. All people in every country have sinned. But the Bible also teaches that God will forgive our sin if we confess it to him and that he will then make us good.

Mind you, I was asked to speak to a church group and I spoke in terms of the teaching of this church, omitting here the details.

This means if an American who has gone to a protestant or Catholic church or a Jewish synagogue confesses his or her sin, God will forgive his or her sin. It means if an Arab who has gone to a Muslim mosque confesses his or her sin, God will forgive this person. God loves the entire world and everyone in it, and he loves us equally.

This church teaches you these things from the Bible, which this church believes is the Word of God. Now, the problem the terrorists had is this: They may never have read the Bible, and it might be that no one had ever told them that God loves them. Because God loves them, we love them. We have tried to send people to the countries where this religion is in control, but they won't let us in to tell them. They have even killed some of their own people when they became Christians.

We know that these men all attended mosques, read the Koran, and believed in the religion called Islam. They read in the Koran that when people aren't Muslims, they should be forced to believe in Allah even if Muslims must kill them. Their founder, Mohamed, called this "jihad" or "holy war." If a person believes in the Koran and does exactly what it says without any more modern understanding, he will kill those who don't believe as he does. This is exactly why these Muslims killed Americans on Sept. 11: they did a jihad.

Most American Muslims look at what is in the Koran and say: No, we can't go that far. We may not like it that Christians and Jews don't believe in the Koran and Islam, but we won't kill anyone. We must give a different meaning to jihad or holy war. So, we must not blame these Muslims who have a better understanding of Islam and read the Koran differently.

I am praying that Muslims who know Muslims do not need to kill for their religion will teach this to those Muslims who still believe this. I am praying that you and I will be loving and tell other people (especially, these days, Muslims) that we love them.

I concluded my talk:

One of the last things Jesus said to his disciples before he died on the Cross is this: "I have said this to you so that in me you will have peace. Even though in the world you have a lot of troubles, be cheerful. I have overcome the world." (John 16:33)

Dr. Wallace Alcorn's commentaries appear in the Herald on Mondays.