Truths

Initially, I was completely stoked when I saw Osama Bin Laden had finally been killed. I mean, it’s been nearly a decade since the United States began the search for him; I was only in the fourth grade when this started. This is huge.

I know this is an historical event, and I know how much emotional closure this must bring for so many people. Yet, after the news had spread, I began hearing from friends, saying while they recognize the significance of what has happened, it seems wrong to be celebrating the death of another, however cruel his actions. Because God calls us to love and forgive, unabatedly and unconditionally, for that is how we legitimize and share the glory of the Lord.

Reading their words made me take a step back from my initial reactions of celebration, and really examine myself as a human being and self-declared Christian, as well as what this collective enthusiasm says about who we are as a people. Perhaps, as humans, this response can be constituted as “typical” or “normal” for who we are, because we are eternally imperfect. We exist within what my Bible professor describes as “an evil age,” where sin, death, and Satan rule. At the same time, we are living in a new age that provides us the opportunity to find ourselves in God’s love, to learn from Jesus’ sayings, to place ourselves beyond that age of darkness. We are called to love as God loves, reconcile as God reconciles us every single blessed day of our lives. For when we act this way towards that which should be considered the most vile in existence, we act as a blessing to all lives, to all nations, just as God promised we would become.

Perhaps this is an instance of love the sinner but hate the sin. I don’t know. I am taking time to reconfigure how I view this major event that has happened within my lifetime, and find honesty in my feelings towards it. Hopefully, it will bring about new aspects of myself and others that I have not seen before.