Reflection - Special Edition

Monday, May 2, 2011

Today's Word - Special Edition

"Love your enemies." Matt 5:44

A Reflection on the Killing of Osama Bin Laden

God loves Osama Bin Laden.

I have been watching the news and I noticed that all over America spontaneous celebrations have erupted cheering a killing. Is this good? When I saw that I immediately thought of the celebrations on the streets of Middle Eastern cities where the crowds shout “death to the great satan, America”. How different are we?

Newscasters are interviewing families who lost loved ones on 9/11 and they are speaking of finally getting closure. Can killing the one who killed your loved one ever bring closure? Can retributive justice ever bring peace? Has striking back ever, ever, been the final strike? Of course a secular nation cannot be expected to act on anything other than secular principles, yet . . . . . .it was GK Chesterton who wrote, “It is not that Christianity has been tried and found wanting, rather it is that Christianity has been found hard and therefore untried”.

Christianity is about Jesus, who when dying, asked his Father to forgive those who were killing him.... Closure for Jesus was forgiving his enemies and dying at their hands. No retaliation, no retribution, no final blow. He turned one check, then the other and as a Nigerian Christian recently asked, What happens when you’ve turned both cheeks and it has simply empowered the enemy?”. Easter is the answer to that question.

Some of you will think I’m simply writing idealistic nonsense. My daughter and I have been studying the Civil rights movement. It seems to me that the Civil Rights marchers courageously took on to themselves the sins of those who chose to be their enemies. They did not retaliate and many died in non resistance, substituting themselves as sacrifices to the hate of racists. If you think about it they were acting on what they had learned from Jesus’ example of substitutionary atonement---- themselves atoning for, taking on, the sins of the haters.

This is the way of the cross.

I sometimes wonder what would happen if America were to take all the money and resources we spent on military solutions and instead spend it all on loving, serving, building, educating, feeding, helping those who try to kill us. Again, the question comes, “what happens when you’ve turned both cheeks and the haters still hate?” and again the rejoinder is, “Christianity has not been tried and found wanting, rather it’s been found difficult and therefore untried”.

Can God possibly be happy that we human beings simply perpetuate the same old, same old cycle? You hit me and I hit you back? At this point I must add that I do believe there is such thing as choosing the lesser of two evils. Perhaps killing Bin Laden was a lesser evil than allowing him to live. But in choosing the lesser of two evils, one has still chosen an evil.

Here’s a story that God is very happy with. It is a story that brings real closure, one that ends the violence, one that follows the way of the cross. It is a story that none of us should ever forget and one that every one of us, each in our own way, should aspire to. It comes from the recent aftermath of the end of apartheid in South Africa . Here goes.

“A policeman named van de Broek recounted an incident when he and other white officers shot an eighteen year old black boy and burned the body, turning it on the fire a piece of barbeque meat in order to destroy the evidence. Eight years late van de Broek returned to the same house and seized the boy’s father. The wife was forced to watch as policemen bound her husband on a woodpile, poured gasoline over his body, and ignited it.

Now in a courtroom that elderly woman who had first lost her son and then her husband was given the opportunity to meet van de Broek face to face. The purpose was to expose the truth, bring justice, and finally closure.

‘What you do you want from Mr. Van de Broek?’ the judge asked. She said she wanted van de Broek to go the place where they burned her husband’s body and gather up the dust so she could give him a decent burial. His head down, the policeman nodded agreement.

Then she added a further request, “Mr. van de Borek took all my family away from me, and I still have a lot of love to give. Twice month, I would like for him to come to the ghetto and spend a day with me so I can be a mother to him. And would like Mr. van de Broek to know that he is forgiven by God, and I that I forgive him too. I would like to embrace him so he can know my forgiveness is real”.

Some in the courtroom spontaneously began singing, “Amazing Grace” (compare the the spontaneous celebrations around our country today) as the elderly lady made her way to the witness stand, but van de Broek did not hear the hymn. He had fainted, physically, overwhelmed by grace.

As Philip Yancey points out, nations will rightly pursue justice, but there comes a point where justice, as our legal system understands it, reaches a dead end.  Ghandi said it well, ‘an eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth and the whole world would soon be blind and toothless.

Yancey comments further, “The Bible tells us to overcome evil with good. But evil is overcome by good only if the injured party absorbs it, refusing to allow it to go any further” 

Today's Prayer

"Father, I admit that my heart is light years from your heart. Please help me to see the world as you see it, to view others as you view them, to have the courage of Jesus who instead of retaliating, forgave and who instead of seeking retribution absorbed hat and injury thereby ending the cycle of hate rather than perpetuating it. God, I need your help for this. In the name of your courageous son, Jesus. Amen”