God and Bin Laden
Mon 02 May 2011 Filed in: Reflections | Hmmm...
I’m about to irritate some of my friends.
I heard the news that Osama bin Laden is dead called through the bathroom door this morning while I was taking a shower in Ireland. By the time I dried off and dressed, I could see the televised images of a joy that I can’t quite share. I can understand the sense of celebration. For the last decade he has been the face of evil and hatred, and he has now received the destiny he chose. But nagging at the back of my mind has been a disquieting question: What does God think about the death of bin Laden?
I do not minimize for a moment the unspeakable value of the lives of those who have died as victims of or warriors in the battle with terror. I also have trouble wrapping my mind around the truth that bin Laden was a man whom God loved and to whom God’s grace was available. To celebrate the irreversible rejection of such love misses the point of who God is and what He intends. Death, even the death of one who seemed to delight in being the personification of evil, is no win; in the economy of the kingdom of a God who desires that nobody should perish, it seems more like a loss because it was not evil that died; it was an evil man that God had not stopped loving. Bin Laden may be gone, but the battle against evil is not over.
That there are those for whom hell will be needed before they grasp the reality of God is a tragic truth, but probably not one worth celebrating. And if that irritates you, so be it.
I heard the news that Osama bin Laden is dead called through the bathroom door this morning while I was taking a shower in Ireland. By the time I dried off and dressed, I could see the televised images of a joy that I can’t quite share. I can understand the sense of celebration. For the last decade he has been the face of evil and hatred, and he has now received the destiny he chose. But nagging at the back of my mind has been a disquieting question: What does God think about the death of bin Laden?
I do not minimize for a moment the unspeakable value of the lives of those who have died as victims of or warriors in the battle with terror. I also have trouble wrapping my mind around the truth that bin Laden was a man whom God loved and to whom God’s grace was available. To celebrate the irreversible rejection of such love misses the point of who God is and what He intends. Death, even the death of one who seemed to delight in being the personification of evil, is no win; in the economy of the kingdom of a God who desires that nobody should perish, it seems more like a loss because it was not evil that died; it was an evil man that God had not stopped loving. Bin Laden may be gone, but the battle against evil is not over.
That there are those for whom hell will be needed before they grasp the reality of God is a tragic truth, but probably not one worth celebrating. And if that irritates you, so be it.
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