I am challenged by the events of this past weekend. I'll try to sort through my thoughts and feelings as a way to help us consider all that is going on. The first one is easy, the Wedding, the death of Osama bin Laden is another topic altogether.
The wedding of William and Kate, just shows us how much we still love good ceremony and large gatherings and still want the best for one another. It was fun to watch some of it and it was replayed many times. Since I use the United Methodist Book of Worship for weddings, which John Wesley adopted from his Anglican church roots, the wedding ceremony sounded very familiar. It was fun knowing what was coming next.
I am a firm believer in the Jesus Creed which says Love God & Love Neighbors. With that simple declaration we should be able to cover all that life has to offer us. It was easy to celebrate love neighbors watching the wedding because that was a huge celebration of love.
The death of Osama is a different story. I truthfully have mixed emotions about that. On the one hand, I am glad that one who brought so much terror to our world cannot do that any more. What does bother me is that it doesn't seem like that will end anything. Retaliation and the fear of something coming back to us as a result of this doesn't solve anything.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a german Christian theologian and major teacher of the Jesus Creed, found himself in a huge dilemma with Adolf Hitler in Germany during World War II. After much prayer and struggle and Bible Study he determined that if he could stop the evil destruction of lives, that he would break his oath of pacifism, and he participated in the plot to have Hitler killed. The Bomb exploded, but the oak table it was under was too thick to kill Hitler. Bonhoeffer was arrested along with the others who plotted the assassination, and he was hanged three days before the war ended. He was in prison long enough to be able to share his struggles with us about that action of assisting in the killing by some one who was so committed to the love of Jesus. He said because he had connections and opportunity to end the mass destruction in the hands of Hitler, one life might be worth taking. It was a very hard decision for him, but he took it.
Killing Bin Laden is kind of like that. I believe love should be the way we deal with every issue, but sometimes, the challenge of saving many lives causes us to compromise our faith. It's a lot like the decision Caiaphas the high priest made about Jesus after he raised Lazarus, it is better for one man to die, than to have all of Israel under attack by the Romans as a result of his revolution of love.
Sometimes the death of one causes so much more to happen than we expect. In our life time the death of Martin Luther King, Jr. caused many of us to reconsider our attitudes about those who are different from us. It certainly increased an awareness and openness to some important changes in our culture.
I am concerned/worried, that somewhere along the line following the retaliation of Osama bin Laden's death, we may regret the final outcome. This is where prayer for resolution comes in. Join me in praying the we find some peace in the midst of this struggle. I pray that this might help speed up our exit from Afghanistan somehow, saving the lives of our men and women in combat, so that we can work on peace and care of our neighbors.
There is no perfect solution to anything, because we live in a broken world. It causes me to want to try harder to love God and love Neighbors in the Jesus Creed fashion, in order to bring hope and goodness into a world that seems so bent out of shape from what God intended when he created it all. And it also reminds me I have only the sphere of influence where I am, the lives I touch to try to instill the Jesus Creed more completely.
Wont you join me in prayer for our Nation, our Leaders, our World, that we might find better ways to bring peace on earth and good will to men and women. AMEN.
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