I had mixed feelings when I watched the news on Sunday night/Monday morning. While I was pleased to hear that bin Laden had finally gotten his due (buzz says that it was SEAL Team Six, so I toasted them) I was quite disturbed to see so many people celebrating his death like it was the end of an election or Mardi Gras. Well it is unclear just how big these celebrations were, that doesn’t affect the issue. There are evil people who should die and when they are killed the world is made a better place, but this is tragedy, not a cause for celebration.
Some well-intentioned people question how the killing of anyone can be justified, but for the sake of brevity, I’m going to assume here that killing evil people can be justified. If it is possible to justify killing anyone, bin Laden certainly was one of them. The man had caused the deaths of thousands of people and it is without question he would have killed more if he had the opportunity. Killing him makes the world a better place and if I had been present on the raid to get him, I would have pulled the trigger myself.
However I wouldn’t have then raised my fist in the air and chanted “U.S.A.” over and over again (and I very much doubt any of the SEALS did that, only the Americans on the streets). Just because something is good doesn’t mean it is something to be celebrated. We celebrate things (like holidays) because they are pleasant and wonderful things that point to the good parts of life or encourage us to live better lives. Not everything good is to be celebrated. It’s a good thing that my digestive system works well but it would be pretty foolish of me to daily celebrate that fact. Killing evil men to prevent them from doing more evil is a good thing, but it is a tragedy, not something to be celebrated.
Even in the Old Testament (were God commanded and commended a great deal of killing) killing was not regarded as something to be celebrated. Soldiers or other men who killed people were considered unclean and needed to be ritually cleansed before they could rejoin the community.
Bin Laden was a man with the image of God in him just the same as I am. It’s tragic beyond measure that he perverted, blasphemed, and distorted that image of God to the point that it was necessary to kill him before he did more evil. This is not fundamentally different than the tragic nature of the death of anyone who is brought to death by perverting and distorting the image of God within him. No one celebrates in the streets when a man dies of AIDS because he distorted the image of God by living a lifestyle that separated him from God. When that happens it’s a tragedy and we should all mourn the loss and the man’s wasted life. Well I can’t quite bring myself to mourn for bin Laden (and if I could that might be an indicator of other problems) viewing his story as tragedy is a far more Christian response than celebrating with chants of “USA!” He came to this point because he rejected the truth of Christ and that is tragic. But I still raise a glass to SEAL Team Six, and I hope they find all the other evil men who need to die.
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