As an American citizen, and a beneficiary of the freedoms of Western democratic culture, I’m grateful that Osama bin Laden is dead. Without doubt, this mass murderer, this leader of terror, this ideologue of hatred, earned his own reward.
I don’t want my relief and gratitude, however, to pretend at joy. As a Christian, I can take no joy in violence, even necessary violence. There is no redemption in bin Laden’s death as a death. Though bin Laden died, his victims are not raised. As bin Laden lived, he died, a circle of death complete and unbroken, violence to violence, dust to dust. It is all death, all an enemy — our most wanted enemy and the Last Enemy in unholy communion.
There is only sorrow in death and war. Perhaps in some deaths and in some kinds of wars there is an underside of sorrow that becomes a sort of hope. A world without master terrorists, in pragmatic terms, is a much better world.
Yet, the making of this better-but-not-best world reminds us of this persistent idea of the “best” world. Here is a glimmer of a world in which the cycle of terror and retribution ends, a world in which a just man dies to free the unjust, a world in which the death of a servant calls all power to account, a world in which the one who died rose again and defeats death forever. That is the undiscovered country we long to reach.
Related: Daniel Kirk on The Economy of Death