Weep for Osama

Is it possible to love one's enemies and kill them? I think it is...here is my take on the death of Osama.

In our war--and it is a war--against militant Islam, we can err in two ways. The first error is to have a sense of joy and jubilation in killing our enemies. The second error is to not deliver death to those who have indiscriminately and unjustly destroyed human life and take glee in doing so.

While the U.S. is far from innocent in our militarism, only the most warped individual would think that somehow those caught in the Twin Towers collapse, the Pentagon, and the field in Pennsylvania, deserved their fate. They were innocent victims. Justice demanded a response. The bullet in Osama's brain, like Hitler's, was well-deserved. It hardly compensates for their crimes but in a world where accounts often cannot be settled, it is a farthing of a down-payment. God will mete out final justice and enforce it eternally. "Vengeance is mine" promises the Lord.

Yet, the jingoistic chants of "USA," in hearing of Osama's demise, must be checked. We are to take no joy in the death of the wicked because Christian theology teaches that all of humanity is wicked...the only difference is in degree. If we cheer in the destruction of our enemies, we must remember the God could take joy in our destruction, too. Only the most hardened heart would dare God to deliver us justice without Christ's intervention and mediation. This in no way is meant to lessen or equivocate on Osama's evil.

Jesus in Matthew 23 pronounces judgement upon Jerusalem, promising that one stone of the Temple will not stand on top of another, and a series of woes. 40 years later, the promise was executed with fierceness and finality by God's appointed avenger, the Roman Army. Yet, Jesus cried over her inevitable destruction, using about the tenderest simile imaginable...that of a hen trying and dying in trying to save her chicks.

The Jewish historian Josephus wrote:

"We may sum it up by saying that no other city has ever endured such horrors, and no generation in history has fathered such wickedness. In the end they brought the whole Hebrew race into contempt in order to make their own impiety seem less outrageous in foreign eyes, and confessed the painful truth that they were slaves, the dregs of humanity, bastards, and outcasts of their nation.....It is certain that when from the upper city they watched the Temple burning they did not turn a hair, though many Romans were moved to tears."

Matthew 23:37

O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not!