How to respond to the events this week in the death of Osama bin Laden.
One part of me gave a fist pump and felt good when I heard the news Sunday night late. However as the week as progressed, I am more conflicted as another part of me wonders how I can feel good about the death of another human being?
I wanted to join the crowds in Washington D.C. and chant USA, USA, USA in a victory celebration but as time has passed I am ashamed that I would want to do so. I have remembered the demonstrations in some parts of the world after the twin towers fell, reminded of images of American bodies dragged through the street in a victory celebration and for me to celebrate one individual’s death is to be the same as those images. I am called to be different.
How different is that to be?
Different to have compassion for children who now have no father or a wife who now has no husband, different to consider the loss of an opportunity for repentance or to hear for the first time or another time the Gospel, different to rejoice over a great evil being removed from our world through hard, difficult painstaking work by many, many people over a decade, different to take the high road in offering proof rather than the easy way. Different to say thank you to the intelligence community and military of our nation and to wish they did not have to have that job. Different to stay in a balance between justice and mercy, truth and grace, lost and found.
I am called to be different like Jesus; to pray for those who persecute me, to laugh with those who laugh and mourn with those who mourn. To bless rather than curse and to heal rather than hurt. To expect justice and holiness and extend grace and mercy to be conflicted with the way things are and they way they should be and the way they will be. To remember I am being made different because I am not of this world but simply in this world. I am made for eternity, different.
Different has a price to be paid. Some may not see me as patriotic enough or soft on terrorism and others at the same moment will say I am too patriotic and lacking mercy. Different has no easy middle ground. It is a tough place to stand and take a stand. In fact different like I’m talking got one man killed.
HE was different. So different that on the third day he got up again. That’s the kind of different that makes a difference.
As you can tell, I’m still conflicted. That makes me different and yet maybe not as different as I think.
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