... and we all end up blind.
I was shocked to hear on the 7 a.m. news report the sound of President Obama announcing that the USA had killed Osama Bin Laden. Shocked because this doesn't seem like any kind of justice I can relate to. Shocked because there was celebration in the streets and people chanting "U.S.A."
What Bin Laden has been involved with is awful, there is no doubt of that, and some form of bringing to justice was necessary. Assassination prevents that - now no-one will ever be able to ask what he did or why, details are lost forever. It seems likely to me, whatever the claims about the lack of an equally charismatic successor, that this killing will prompt more, not less, violence.
Many other British Christian bloggers are voicing their concern over events as they are being reported, and are doing so far better than I can.
We listen. We watch. We try not to judge. We pray for the incoming of God's Kingdom, we strain to glimpse the vision of a new creation, and in the meantime, in so far as we are able, we try to live at peace with all people (Romans 12/Hebrews 12) and to pray for, not about or against, our enemies (Matt 5/Luke 6). Not easy... but no one said it would be.
Comments
I agree, Catriona. http://dreamingbeneaththespires.blogspot.com/2011/05/osama-bin-laden-rip-thoughts-on.html
Well said, Catriona. As I've just commented elsewhere, my fear is that this will prove to be an illusory achievement, replacing a fugitive leader whose influence may well have been waning with a dead martyr whose blood, to some, will cry out to be avenged. Peace seems even further away, I'm sad to say.
While I believe the world is better off without Bin Laden, just as I think we are better off without Saddam Hussein, I cannot help feeling that President Obama is making much of how Bin Laden's demise is down to his (Obama's) leadership and instruction. I cannot help but feel the President is using this to reverse his waining support and popularity. As Catriona says, it is a strange sort of justice to relate to.