Osama Bin Laden is dead.
Mass texts, facebook statuses, tweets, press conferences, peace for the grieving families of 9/11, celebration for America’s armed forces and anger (righteous anger, mind you) for pacifists.
It’s a big deal for our generation.
Sputnik. Kennedy’s assassination. Vietnam. The destruction of the Iron Curtain. Princess Diana’s death. Columbine. Yes, even 9/11. This is what brought us here. Okay, maybe not Lady Di so much, but these major events have made our people, our military, our culture what it is today.
We are vengeance hungry. An eye for an eye. We want retribution for loss. We think we're on top and we want to keep it that way. And over the last ten years, we’ve fought a war to find a man who screamed at us, saying, “You have an enemy.”
America always wins. Does anyone doubt this? I don’t think so. Let’s take a walk back through history to look at the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, shall we? The “sleeping dragon” was awakened and we killed and killed for justice. And we went to “sleep” again. And we were awakened again.
And we have spent the last ten years in half a dozen countries, killing and being killed.
I have friends in the military. They find pride and they find satisfaction and significance with their work and vocation. I do not argue with that. But my beliefs about Osama’s death and my reaction to the thousands of reactions go deeper than our military.
It goes to spirituality.
It goes to salvation and love
It goes to the message of peace and transparency.
So maybe instead of praising our national intelligence and claiming “justice” for innocent lives, let’s think of ways to be awakened to the world. Let’s think of ways to be awakened to grace and the kind of justice that Gd talks about. Let’s think of ways to be friends to enemies and lovers of peace. And when we think about ways to heal that do not consist of murder, let’s actually do it.
Proverbs 24:17 “Do not rejoice when your enemy falls, And do not let your heart be glad when he stumbles.”
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