Perspective on Bin Laden's Death

Proverbs 11:10b – “and when the wicked perish, there is glad shouting.”

            The news of Osama Bin Laden’s death popped up on my computer screen last night. As we began to look for news stories about what happened, we came across some videos that showed Americans out in the streets around the White House, jumping, screaming, cheering wildly because Osama Bin Laden was finally dead. As I watched the delirium taking place, I immediately thought of the verse from Proverbs that I quoted at the top of this blog. The videos showed the truth of that statement in a better way than a thousand words from me or anyone else could ever explain.

            At the same time though, I was reminded of a couple of other verses in the scriptures, which caused me to temper my response and not be joyous like those people in the streets. The first of these verses is Ezekiel 33:11:

                        “Say to them, ‘As I live!” declares the Lord God, ‘I take no pleasure
                       in the death of the wicked, but rather that the wicked turn from his
                       way and live…”

Another passage that relates to this is found in Proverbs 24:17-18:

                        “Do not rejoice when your enemy falls, and do not let your heart be
                       glad when he stumbles, lest the Lord see it and be displeased, and
                       He turn away His anger from him.”

Look at this verse from Job 31:29-30:

                        “Have I rejoiced at the extinction of my enemy, or exulted when evil
                        befell him? No, I have not allowed my mouth to sin by asking for
                        his life in a curse.”

Here is another one from Proverbs 17:5:

                        “…He who rejoices at calamity will not go unpunished.”

            Over and over again throughout the scriptures, God tells us that He does not delight in the calamity nor death of the wicked. He also warns us against taking pleasure the death or calamity of our enemies, or taking advantage of them at that time. God does not look at things the way we do. We get so caught up in the evil that someone may do to us, or to someone we care about, that we wish for the day when they get their just reward. Even as Christians we often harbor that secret desire to see our enemies suffer. We want God to get even with them for what they have done to us.

            Such attitudes, however, are contrary to what God desires in His people. If we are to be righteous as He is righteous, we ought to take no satisfaction, nor pleasure, from the death of Osama Bin Laden. Such a statement may sound unpatriotic and un-American, yet it is founded deeply in how God looks at the world, and how He feels about all of humanity, not just those of us who are Christians in America.

            God’s attitude from the Old Testament to the New Testament is the same and the Apostle Peter states it clearly for us in 2 Peter 3:9:

                        “The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count
                       slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to
                       perish but for all to come to repentance.

            God’s view is always towards the soul of the individual. There is not one person that God has not cared about their soul. No matter how evil, hated or reviled they were on this earth, God still loved them. God still desired that they would change their heart and turn to Him that He might save them. That is a tough concept for many of us to wrap our minds around. How could God possibly love someone like an Adolf Hitler, or a Joseph Stalin, or any others of the countless number of people who were heartless, cold-blooded killers on this planet. It may be at this point that many people want to turn away from God, because they don’t understand this about Him. Because of the hatred in our own hearts, we want to believe that God also hates those people. Instead we find that while God hates their evil ways, He loves their soul with an everlasting love. He wants them as much as He wants us.

            God is not a respecter of persons. He looks at me the same way He looks at you. He looks at you the same way He looks at Osama Bin Laden. How can God love these people? He can love them because He accepted the death of Jesus Christ on the cross, as payment in full for all their sins. It wasn’t just the sins of the “good” people for who Jesus died. He died for the sins of the whole world. This is the wonderful news that God wants us to share with everyone. He has forgiven us and nothing stands between us and Him except our will. We can choose to reject God’s love and forgiveness, just as Osama Bin Laden apparently did. Yet, even then, God still loves us. His heart still breaks over our rejection of Him.

            The death of Osama Bin Laden gives us the opportunity to look at what God desires from each of us in our attitudes toward one another. As extreme as the wickedness of Osama Bin Laden was, God could still forgive, love Him and desire a relationship with him. It is what He desires of us as we deal with those who have sinned against us. Forgiveness on our part is to take the same form as God’s forgiveness, it takes place at the cross of Jesus. Only as we accept the exchange of Jesus for those who have sinned against us, can we truly forgive as God forgives. The interesting thing is, that once we do, we are then able to also love as God loves, and that is what God desires of us above all else.

1 John 3:23 – “And this is His commandment, that we believe in the name of His Son Jesus Christ, and love one another, just as He commanded us.”