Life

Deliver me from my enemies, O my God; protect me from those who rise up against me. …Awake to punish all the nations; spare none of those who treacherously plot evil. Psalm 59:1, 5

Outcomes are complicated things. A decade of pain and anger ended in the middle of the night by a secretive military act in some far-off strange place. An enemy is defeated in the most final way, an important and (I think) worthy symbolic victory to be sure, but is it justice? Does it bring closure, or is this just the next chapter in the old and tragic story of the world we have made?

I sense relief on the part of many, but are we proud of this? Perhaps there is even satisfaction, but is there hope?

Well, what exactly were we searching for, anyway?

In this world of conflict and violence, this place and time of hate and enmity, perhaps we thought that we could secure ourselves from those who would harm us without being getting caught up in bloodshed too. But it all just bombastic oratory, so much wishful thinking, that we are playing the part of innocent victims even as we took up the sword and sought our revenge. We were fooling ourselves to think that we could play their game without, in the end, becoming just like them.

In cartoons, the bad guys are blown up, shot, smashed by falling pianos, yet never maimed or killed, until they meekly wave their white flag and admit defeat. In the real world, they must be killed.

And who will stop the killing?

If we would dare to look, in the blood on our hands we would see the reflection of our true enemy, our greatest foe, our own selves. The death of one man, if necessary and tragic, is neither a victory nor a conclusion. It is finally just another death, just another day, just another step along a path that has come to dominate our lives in this world. Our enemy is not the other, it is the daily choices we make the tear down justice and thwart peace, the casual insults and selfish slights and callous acts of greed that birth division and misunderstanding and quarrel.

And eventually war. And surely death.

And there is only one way off of this path.

For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death. 1 Corinthians 15:25-26

Does it mean something that the killing of Osama bin Laden comes in the season of Easter, in the renewal of spring, in the bursting forth from the tomb? This is the promise of the resurrection, that we need not spend one more day imprisoned by death, that we carry within us the divine spirit of promise, that even in our most sinful day we can find the grace to make the next one different.

We do not need an end to the war on terror. We need an end to war. Period. We need an end to the thinking that war in any metaphor leads to anything but more war.

I do not really know how I feel about the death of Osama bin Laden. Except that I hope for nothing more than it would be the last. And I pray that God should deliver us to that new day. And soon.