So this may be coming a little late but I know that it’s for a reason. As most Americans lay there head on their pillow ready to dream of another horrid Monday in everyday life a single piece of news lit up almost every single phone in America. Ranging from “God bless the USA OSAMA IS DEAD” all the way to the text that I first saw, which announced that Obama has released information about the death of Osama. The weird thing about the text I saw… It was from ESPN, yes ESPN the sports network. It almost seemed like everyone wanted a piece of the story and yet I could find no PEACE in the story. I usually run to my computer and fire off words when a big time headline comes out. Yet for some reason I didn’t this time, I had to pray over all of this and figure out what it really meant.
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To be honest, my first reaction was joy. I cannot lie in the fact that I was happy that we have finally defeated our long time enemy, and yet I was unsettled. Facebook should have changed its name to USAbook or Patrioticbook that night because when scrolling through my news feeds over the couple hours after the news was announced I might as well have been looking at an American flag. The status that I saw the most “Praise God! Osama is now burning in hellâ€� or some variation of that. This deeply troubled me. Having known friends that have died I know what death feels like. I know the true pain of losing someone that isn’t old and “ready” for it, I’ve stood graveside of a best friend that was a year younger than me. Something within me just was unable to rejoice in the fact that he was dead. A few patriotic things may have come from my mouth along the lines of how America never gave up and finally achieved its goal. Mostly I was continually disgusted by what I was seeing from a large number of “Christians” or even people that would argue that they are a “good person” as the days rolled by the status posts slowed to a sputter of a here and there joke. This is the time that I was waiting for, the response from the religious leaders of today, how do these men respond to what has happened. I’ve read countless blogs and watched tons of videos on what people think about it. And well very rarely did I fully agree with a single blog, I agreed with several points from each but other things within just seemed to not make sense to me. I’ve been babbling now so you want to know what I think about his death?
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Rejoice not in the death of a man, but rejoice in the death of evil. Wow did that just take both sides? Yeah, it kind of did. Let me explain myself a little more in detail. While here on earth we will do battle with evil things, we will fight against injustice, we will rejoice when we triumph over evil, as we should. Evil is, well it’s bad, we should be happy when we lose something that is bad. HOWEVER, what if that evil thing is a man? I will mourn the loss of any man that did not know Jesus, for as a Christian I am called to love all of Gods people unconditionally. I am called to be a light in the darkness. My fellow Christians, when we rejoice in the death of a man who did not know Jesus we are covering our light. We are allowing our flesh to block our light to the world. I was reading a blog that defended the right to rejoice in this situation, he used good biblical detail in which he described how when the Jews in the OT went to fight a war in which they won they REJOICED in their victory, to which someone commented saying that he was taking the stories out of context. Which really only made me think more about it. How can anyone deny the fact that the winning side in a battle rejoiced in victory? Military victory in a battle that is taking place will result in JOY and PRAISE. To say otherwise is just, well, ridiculous. What exactly does rejoicing in military victory mean? It means that you are celebrating the fact that you did not lose your life and that they have lost theirs. Simply put you are rejoicing in the death of the men on the other side. To say that Judah did not rejoice after winning battles is a complete joke, it’s a silly thought. To think that the women and family members of the ones fighting did rejoice when seeing their loved ones return is saying that they rejoiced in the fact that the other people were dead. Where exactly am I going with this idea? We do have SOME wiggle room in this whole rejoicing in the death of a man thing. HOWEVER in this situation that we have today, in which we are no longer rejoicing in the victory! We are as a nation rejoicing in the death of a single man. This isn’t even a military victory. Yes we did take out a target of high value; we are still fighting the war. So what are we doing then? We are doing nothing more than grave dancing. The fact that I saw Christians saying things like “We’re happy he’s burning in Hell it is what he deserves” is again A JOKE I can’t believe these people are forgetting the basis of what we believe. No sin is greater than another in the eyes of God. No man alone is more worthy of anything Holy. We are all sinners, I deserve the fiery pits of hell just as much as Osama, or dare I even say Hitler? Hitler, while all of this is going on I can’t help but wonder how the reaction of the news of Hitler’s death was taken by the religious leaders of the time. There are some people that we look at and we feel as if we are better than them. We feel as if we deserve more than them. I’ll admit I do this at times. My mindset used to be one that said I am better in Gods eyes then people like Osama. But truth be told I am not. The fact of the matter is that without Christ both of us would burn in Hell, and WITH Christ both of us would live life everlasting with God. Hard to fathom that, am I right? So who am I to condemn another man to Hell? Better yet, who are we to rejoice that a man going to Hell? If I died and did not know Christ would you rejoice in the fact that my sinner soul is going burn in the fiery pits of Hell of all eternity, or would you feel bad, would you hate yourself that you had not helped me see the light and turn back to God? Would you rejoice in me going to Hell? Then why would you rejoice in any other man going to Hell? He is no more deserving of it than any of us.
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So now that you take a second and let all that steep. You might be asking yourself “what’s with the titleâ€� Well…. It grabbed you and pulled you in didn’t it? In reality here is what I view as the American paradox; well maybe not as a whole but it is one of the many American paradoxes. We as Americans view ourselves as better than others, we go and fight wars that many question if we should be a part of, we hate that we lose a life here and there. While we have every right to voice our opinion, because that is what this country stands for. How can the ones who so strongly opposed this war due to the loss of life be the ones who so loudly rejoice in the death of a single man? That just doesn’t make sense to me. Ok so maybe it’s not a paradox but more irony. Is it actually irony or are they the ways of a hypocrite?
