“Osama Bin Laden is dead; they got him!” As Michael told us the news, we all ran to the upstairs apartment (where the only TV is) to watch the breaking news unfold. The images and video clips narrated the events in detail; the political banter began, and the world reacted.
It was weird being thousands of miles from home, actually being 10 times closer to where it happened than America, and not being in the midst of the news breaking. The next morning we picked up an English newspaper and I opened it up to see this picture.
The caption reads: “We got him! It’s celebration time outside the White House…”
The section below the photo had this quote from a US National Guard trooper:
“There is no greater joy in my life than to know that this man is dead.”
Really?
There is no greater joy in your life than to see a man dead?
What about when Jesus says, “I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you?”
Or how about the call to “love your enemies and do good to them?”
At what point in our life did we get the free access to decide who should live and who should die? Since when is one man’s sins greater than mine? Because I commit my sins in private and they fail to make international news, I now have the right to find joy in a man’s death whose sin is great in the world’s eyes?
Here’s something to chew on for a while: what if you die and enter into the Kingdom and the first person you see is Osama?
What would you do?
What would you say?
What would the National Guard trooper say?
Sadly, we have become a nation who finds joy in worldly justice, not our Father’s. The real headline that would have shaken the world would have read something like this:
Osama Bin Laden renounces past, surrenders life to Jesus; enters Kingdom Monday
That would bring me the greatest joy in my life.
Why have we become a people that would rather see our enemies die than to know God?
I pray that my generation will not be amongst the crowds holding the banners in celebration, shouting “USA” at the top of their lungs. I pray that my generation would be in the corner of a quiet room, crying with the family that has lost a very real and living son, brother, and father; that we would be a people that would not see physical death of our enemy as victory, but rather a battle lost, if not won over in the spiritual realm.
Here’s a challenge for you. Pray this, if you truly mean it:
“Father please remember Osama Bin Laden in your Kingdom.” Amen.
My father posted a comment a couple days after I originally posted this blog that needs to be included:
“I asked Grama how people reacted to the news that Hitler was dead and she said most people went to church and prayed. Who was one of David’s greatest enemies? Absalom. What did David do when finally his great adversary was dead? He cried and lamented. While I am glad that a terrible force for evil has been silenced and he was killed because he refused to surrender, I am not happy that he is dead. Grama put it best when she very simply said – “Once he is dead, he no longer has the chance to repent” I read an article where the author said that the last time he saw such celebration from a people was on Sept. 11, 2001 when many Muslim people celebrated wildly at the death of 3,000 Americans. We considered them barbaric. The author asked the question “Are we any different?”
