The murder of Osama Bin Laden has been the topic de jour this week and will be the topic today for me.
It’s easy to get caught up in the emotion of the event and lose the perspective of what it means to approach world events with a Kingdom world view. At the risk of sounding crazy to some I need to make a declaration about this event,
God had nothing to do with it.
I have many friends that are on the fence about the notion of a higher power and the actions and subsequent revelry from Christians about the killing of a man only serves to solidify their position that we have all lost our minds.
We paint this picture of God as good for us and bad for you unless you believe us. Singing God Bless America at the news of one of His lost kids murder is particularly troubling and only serves to show that the Church has lost her way in America. We have dumbed down our faith to a jingle, a catch phrase, a bumper sticker or a gruesome movie about the murder of Jesus.
The thing is, we need to get back to the murder of Jesus at times like this for it is the murder of a just man that sets us free from the guilt and shame of the murder of an unjust man like Osama. There is no argument from me that Osama was responsible for horrible acts of evil but his actions according to his belief system were as just as our actions to stop him.
Not to condone any of it, but his judgement of our actions started long before 9-11 and his response to those actions were only the beginning of our judgement of his. He was retaliating by force in the same way we retaliated by force and likewise someone else will retaliate by force down the road for him unless we go to the cross.
Short of the cross, justice is never enough. Justice is never satisfied because there is always someone crying out for mercy on the other side of justice and since God is just and merciful, justice and mercy must be satisfied.
Justice is my demand for someone to pay the price – mercy is my demand for someone else to pay my price.
The cross is the place to pour out our need for justice. Our hate, sorrow, venom, anger, hopelessness, revenge, questions, fear, everything we feel toward the person that wronged us. We need to hate Jesus. We need to hate Him because that is the only way the power and cycle of retaliation can ever be broken.
If you must hate – hate Jesus. If you must kill – kill Jesus. If you must have revenge – take it out on Jesus.
It’s on the cross of Calvary, the place of the judgement and murder of Jesus, where mercy and justice can coexist. The beauty of the cross is that justice and mercy are fully met so the judgement of God toward us, all of us, can only be love.
God is not angry. God is not on our side exclusively. God does not hate Islam. God does not hate anyone.
God so loved the world He gave His Son as a way to set us free from the cycle of retaliation.
Take it to the cross.
God can handle it there.