Osama Bin Laden #2- When Push Comes to Shove

There has been such an outpouring of thoughts and opinions surrounding the death of Osama Bin Laden. I, myself, have participated because I feel passionately about the response that followers of Jesus should have. I am thinking out loud, and working my thoughts out through writing, and so begins another post on what's going on in my head about Bin Laden's death.

Christians preach about God's grace and his unconditional love and forgivness, for it is central to the beauty of what Christ did on the Cross. We celebrate the fact that we serve a living God who engages with us, pursues us, and offers us freedom from our darkness. We celebrate the fact that this gift is available to all. To me, Osama Bin Laden's death, is a "push comes to shove" moment in faith. This is the time where all of our proclamations of God's grace are at their most complex, but where it is the most significant. If Christ really did indeed, die for all, then he died for Bin Laden, and we must wrestle with intricacies of what that actually means. To gleefully rejoice over his death, is painful for me to watch, for I truly believe that God is mourning over the fact that it has even come to this. There is no justification for the inhumane attacks on September 11th, 2001, and we will forever remember those who were unjustly killed that day, but we become no different than those who cheered at our defeat that day, when we are parading through the streets exclaiming, "F@#$ yeah, America," or posting pictures of Bin Laden's bloody head being held by the Statue of Liberty. Is not grace and love what should set us apart? Is this not the time where grace and love are needed the most? The honest struggling with this conflict, makes us more compassionate, wiser, filled with a more well rounded perspective, and closer to Christ, in my mind.

The most humbling part of this whole frenzy to me, is that when dish out such judgment, we forget that we were once guilty of punishment. We forget that without the good grace of God, through Christ, that we would be just as worthy of death, as we feel Bin Laden is. When we announce that someone is outside God's gift of grace, or less worthy, we become arrogant and prideful. I think we need to honestly check our hearts because we are all in equal need of a Savior.

Truthfully, I don't know what God's solution is for the evil acts of Osama Bin Laden, but I do know that I don't want to be responsible that man's justice. He is too much for any one of us to judge. Our "punishment" cannot compare to the righteous, pure motivated judgment that God will handle. It might just be more powerful, and more healing than we can even imagine.

I can't say that I know "for sure" or believe that justice has been served, for there are many factors for all of this to be solved overnight, or with one action. I feel relief that the pain he has caused so many, will not continue with any new victims, but my heart is heavy over this whole thing, and I am going to continue to work through this because I think this it is massively significant to our faith.