Friday, May 6, 2011

A Bearded Head on Liberty's Pike

I was just heading out the door from work when one of the people I worked with chuckled and then showed me an image on his cell-phone. It was a rendition of Osama Bin Laden's head impaled on the torch of the statue of liberty. The whole scene was subtly bizarre seeing as I am a Christian, the person who showed me the picture was a Christian and we both knew it. I had been listening on the radio about the mixed feeling that have come about due to the assassination of Bin Laden, but it didn't really hit me until I was faced with this event that was a microcosm in my experience of a greater experience that perhaps the whole world is going through, and in particular, the United States. But to hone the point to a sharper edge, one could ask how is an American Christian suppose to respond to this even in history?  Am I at liberty to celebrate the death of an enemy, in particular, the death of an enemy that stands as the responsible head for the destruction and calamity that struck the nation which I love, do I allow myself some kind of nationalistic, patriotic glee? Or am I to respond with the remorse of an individual who knows that death is not the end, and that for this man now dead, an eternity of hell may now await him? Do I delight in justice or mourn a life that has been blotted out without knowing Jesus? So there is this tension in my chest between the two.

However I do not think that the questions above are fair. It is here where I think we fail to distinguish people from the ideas that they may stand for. For every person, there is a duality in this world. We live in a world that suffers from hunger and yet, very differently, we also live in a world where people suffer because they are hungry. World hunger is a problem, but over time the very idea of world hunger becomes a thing in itself, disconnected from the lean faces that are starving. Human kind has this radical tendency to think and consider things as concepts and ideas, while allowing the reality behind those ideas to fade into the monotonous particulars. While there are many who would stand against world hunger, there are very few who actually take the time and the personal investment and risk to actually go out and feed those who are hungry. To sit among the destitute and the dirty, to share a meal with those who are withering, is to come very close to a dark reality that we would much rather forget. How can immense resorts dripping with luxury and indulgence stand in countries where there are so many that have nothing? How can certain celebrities waste away their wealth on narcotics and spurious glitz when in that very same city there are those who dig through trash for a gulp on milk? Because hunger as an idea can be dealt with by monthly donations, but the hungry can only be fed by those who would feed them.

This I think is the difficulty with Osama's death. His face and name have become synonymous with the idea of terror, his very identity has been wrapped up in the idea of cruelty and violence, and this justly so. Can we celebrate the demise of such a symbol that represented the violence that shook this country to its core? I believe we can. But are we then at liberty to become dull to the fact that this man was once a child in his mothers arms, and rocked to sleep as she dreamed of all he might be? I do not think that as Christians we are allowed this forgetfulness. Do I personally feel that justice has accomplished its task, yes, but I also believe that justice is a weight that has every right to crush my head as well. I am no less deserving of judgment than Osama was, I stand in mercy because of grace. Did Osama have the same offer of that grace as I have? Yes.

Osama Bin Laden full name actually means "Osama son of Mohammed. son of Avad, son of Laden" It is a genealogy in a name. His own name calls attention to he fact that he was a son, and his own name calls attention to his own father. His own name declares an identity that connects to his father. If only this man had known another man who claimed to be one with His father, and if only Bin Laden had believed that this other man offered all peoples a new name that would declare that we could become sons and daughters of the Heavenly Father. The name Osama actually comes from the word lion, and although I can find joy in justice, I do also believe that our Heavenly father weeps that this lion would not submit to the lamb who was slain so that the lion would not have had to be slain.

If I am the son of my father, if we Christians are not the sons and daughters of our father, are we not able to rejoice in justice, but also weep as our father weeps when any person is lost. Is not the cross clear in that it proclaims that we all deserve death, and yet we may all be made sons and daughters.

I feel the tension in my chest as many in the country do, and I am glad of it. I believe that this tension is there because I am the son of my father.

No comments:

Post a Comment