One of the many effects of 9/11 is that it has added to the challenge of being Christian and provided every kind of temptation to hate and violence.

It has put fear in to the heart of millions, and fear is not faith as Jesus constantly reminds us.

&8220;This is not the time for the luxury of a faith,&8217;&8217; a friend told me. &8220;This is the time for action and to assure good people win. He summed up the public mood, though I found no Christian message in it.

We believe we are locked in a struggle for our own survival after 9/11. Some say it&8217;s the end of the world but World War II still has a higher bid on that it seems to me.

Some 45-60 million dead, depending on how you count it, this is not the first time the world has rocked its axis, as awful as it is every time.

But what is always going on deep in violent conflict is what each side is convinced that it is not possible to live with each other.

The other side is not human, but &8220;a son of a dog.&8221; Even today, when you really want to insult someone you call them that, and it&8217;s not because we think they are cute as puppies.

&8220;It is not right to take the children&8217;s food and feed it to the dogs,&8221; Jesus tells this Gentile, Philistine woman in what today is southern Lebanon.

There have been bloody wars that would continue until Jerusalem was flattened and the Jews expelled.

People who grew up in rural small towns found themselves yet again staring into eyeball to eyeball with legendary conquerors of the ancient world.

This woman was one of them. &8220;It&8217;s not right to take away the child&8217;s food and give it to the dog,&8221; Jesus says. They are devastating words from the Savior of the world. They are the words we all dread hearing from God and secretly fear we might. &8220;A son of a dog,&8221; is all we are, and if we are honest, we know it.

But this woman won&8217;t let Jesus go. She won&8217;t give up on God, even when she has been rejected. &8220;Yes, but even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from the children&8217;s table.&8221;

Even Jesus had to step over that hard barrier we all feel when the outside world come crashing into our lives. But Jesus&8217; own faith in his mission held.

Even in this Gentile woman, who came in the ranks of those his own people despised, Jesus saw the power of God to redeem a world more broken and more evil then we want to admit or imagine.

We are afraid that the power of evil is out of control in our world. The evil is there, no two ways about it. But God is not dead and does not sleep.

The power that raised Jesus from the dead is still at work and victory belongs not to the power of Hell but the power of the Son of God.

The human beings who we are can be set free from our demons and redeemed, if we just remember to believe.

Robert Montgomery is the preaching minister at Cahaba Valley Church