...And There Was Much Rejoicing

Last night my wife and I were watching a movie in our living room. We finished about 10 o'clock and were just about to head to bed when she checked her Facebook one quick time. She read this post in her news feed:

"Burn in hell, Bin Laden."

We were both curious about this post. Was this person just having a bad day and blaming the worst terrorist mastermind of our generation? Or did something happen? We quickly turned on the news to see the news banner across the bottom of hte screen:

PRESIDENT OBAMA CONFIRMS OSAMA BIN LADEN HAS BEEN KILLED.

We watched as crowds gathered in front of the White House, clapping, singing and waving flags in the celebration of the death of this horrible man. I hit rewind on the DVR to see how the news unfolded--the first official announcement from White House press reporters. We watched as President Obama told us about the operation.

And...we rejoiced.

"One less piece of evil in this world" I posted on facebook and Twitter. And that sparked a conversation. Are we supposed to rejoice at the death of a terrorist? Or, in the much-cliche'd phrase, "what would Jesus do?"

"Do not gloat when your enemy falls; when they stumble, do not let your heart rejoice..."

--Proverbs 24:17 (NIV)

But that's not easy to do, is it? I mean, we are so human after all (sorry, shameless plug for my album.) It is very human to rejoice when a bad person is defeated. We want to see our enemies vanquished. We tell ourselves that it's okay because good conquered evil. Never mind the fact that the Bible tells us NONE of us is "good." So are we supposed to celebrate the death of this horrible man? It's not an easy question to answer. I believe God is happy that Osama Bin Laden will not be able to carry out any more evil acts on His people. But we can also presume that God wept last night. If Osama Bin Laden indeed died without having known Jesus Christ as personal Lord and Savior, then God found no pleasure in that.

"...as surely as I live, declares the Sovereign LORD,

I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked,

but rather that they turn from their ways and live..."

--Ezekiel 33:11 (NIV)

I'll be honest. That's not me. Not right now. Yes, I think it's sad that a human being died, presumably not knowing his Creator, but I'm glad that our country dealt an incredibly painful blow to Al Qaeda. I'm glad Bin Laden won't be able to plot against us anymore. (Though I'm not naive enough to believe this ends our war on terror.) And I'm proud of the men and women serving in our military to fight against their injustice.

Yes, there is reason to rejoice. But there is also reason to weep. It's never a good thing when someone is sentenced to eternal suffering...if, as some have recently suggested, that even really exists. (But that's another topic altogether.)

Waterboarding

I'm going to step away from my "christian artist/speaker" hat for a moment and talk to you strictly as an American. I realize I'm taking a huge risk talking about this, but it's something that has really bothered me for the past few days. I'm a bit ashamed that our country, under the direction of our president, is using horrible torture tactics to get prisoners to talk. I'm talking specifically about waterboarding. It's the act of holding a person's head in place, while he is strapped to a table, and pouring a constant stream of water into his mouth/nose. The prisoner feels the water entering his lungs, because he has no opportunity to take a break to hold his breath. He's constantly feeling the sensation of drowning. Here's a video, released by Amnesty International that shows how cruel it can be: I just don't know how Americans, in good conscience, can tolerate this. We yell "boycott the Olympics" because of China's record of human rights violations...yet we allow this to happen in our country. I'm not equating this to the terrible things China has done, but I am saying that it's torture. Cruel torture. I urge you to go to www.unsubscribe-me.org and read more about how you can help bring a stop to this kind of behavior. It's not like us. We're better than this.