Osama bin Laden is dead

Rejoice not when your enemy falls,
lest the Lord see it and it displease him.
(Prov. 24:17-18)

I say this as someone who has fantasized perfectly seriously about celebrating the (hopefully imminent) death of a certain apostle with champagne and a rousing chorus of "Ding, dong, the witch is dead."

That's a shameful thing to admit—and that's precisely my point.

I had mixed feelings when I heard that bin Laden was dead. Relief, of course. But also regret that the justice administered was vigilante justice, not legal justice in an international court.

But then I saw footage on the news of people basically dancing in the streets outside the White House, and I thought: This is perverse.

This is not an occasion for celebration. It's not an occasion to be waving our flag and chanting, "USA! USA!"

This man's death doesn't end jihadism. His death doesn't bring back the dead—in this country and others; all the dead on all sides of the conflicts unleashed by and leading up to 9/11. His death doesn't undo the abridgment of civil liberties or the outright atrocities that agents of this country have committed, and in some ways are still committing, as the fallout of 9/11.

People are cheering and chanting the death of Osama bin Laden because they feel avenged. I can empathize. There are people whose deaths I will be tempted to cheer and chant. And it's wrong.

I'm speaking here of Americans in general. I'm not going to presume to speak to the pain of individuals who lost loved ones at 9/11 or in the wars.

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God of justice, God of life—

This was far from an ideal ending, though maybe it was the best that could be had.

If I pray that good may be brought out of this, does that make me complicit in what was done? I'd like to be clean from the blood, but maybe that's wishful thinking. Maybe it's supercilious.

I pray for all who have suffered, all who have lost loved ones, or homes, or limbs, or have been tortured, or imprisoned without due process, or suffered any kind of loss, because of 9/11, and the wars that followed, and the further terrorist attacks that followed.

I pray for all the dead, including your son, Osama bin Laden, whom you love and who has gone home to you. I have faith that's true, but I'm also sensing the cost required to make that statement true.

I pray for my enemies, though I don't know what to say more concretely than that.

In Christ's name, amen.