There is a third response, one which I felt on 9/!2/01, and on the day we "got" bin Laden. I did not celebrate bin Laden's demise at all. I tried instead to understand what so thoroughly warps an image bearer of our God. For indeed, Osama bin Laden was a fellow child of God.
My first response when we are the objects of hatred and horrific violence is always to look inward, to examine the history of our own national atrocities, to ponder the question "what has so inflamed the Islamist. Of course, retribution, angry and violence is never justified. But if we fail to understand what prompts such vengefulness, if we fail to consider our own national culpability, and the fact that there has never been national repentance over the many harms of our post-imperial imperialism, that we have never sought the forgiveness of those (particularly the Moslem world) our policies have defiled and traumatized, then we simply perpetuate a distorted view of those who hate us. Bin Laden did not role out of bed one day and decide to be violently evil. He was acting out of his own sense of violation, his own deep-seated pain.
Sadly, May 1, 2011 was a violent reaction to a violent reaction to violence ... this is what the perpetuation of evil looks like.
There is a third response, one which I felt on 9/!2/01, and on the day we "got" bin Laden. I did not celebrate bin Laden's demise at all. I tried instead to understand what so thoroughly warps an image bearer of our God. For indeed, Osama bin Laden was a fellow child of God.
My first response when we are the objects of hatred and horrific violence is always to look inward, to examine the history of our own national atrocities, to ponder the question "what has so inflamed the Islamist. Of course, retribution, angry and violence is never justified. But if we fail to understand what prompts such vengefulness, if we fail to consider our own national culpability, and the fact that there has never been national repentance over the many harms of our post-imperial imperialism, that we have never sought the forgiveness of those (particularly the Moslem world) our policies have defiled and traumatized, then we simply perpetuate a distorted view of those who hate us. Bin Laden did not role out of bed one day and decide to be violently evil. He was acting out of his own sense of violation, his own deep-seated pain.
Sadly, May 1, 2011 was a violent reaction to a violent reaction to violence ... this is what the perpetuation of evil looks like.