Christian’s struggle with Osama bin Laden’s death

BY Tehmina Inflation
Columnist

First, I was shocked. The man had become a virtual ghost. At times, he was almost forgotten. I thought the day of his death would never come.
Next, I felt a tremendous sense of pride. I was proud of our soldiers, our military, and our president. Our country had once again done a very hard thing and had done it well.
Then, as I watched people in New York and D.C. waving flags and dancing in the street, I felt an urge to celebrate. Lyrics from The Wizard of Oz came back to me. “Ding-Dong! The witch is dead. The wicked witch is dead.”
However, my little celebration caused me to have another feeling. Suddenly, I felt guilty.
For me, the news that the terrorist kingpin, Osama bin Laden, had been killed by U.S. Special Forces did not come until Monday at 5 a.m. I was running on a treadmill and squinting to read TV captions through both sleep and sweat. I had missed the late night news.
Headlines over the next several days echoed the president’s words. Justice had been served. No one could argue with that. The death of a man who had planned, financed, and overseen the deaths of thousands of innocent people seemed to be the epitome of justice. Osama bin Laden’s death undoubtedly had also saved the lives of thousands more of his potential victims. By all counts, it seemed to be the right thing. I did not feel guilty about bin Laden’s death, nor did I think anyone should feel guilty about it.
My guilt came from the fact that I wanted to celebrate it; I felt joy. “Yes, let the joyous news be spread. The wicked Old Witch at last is dead!”
Since then, I have been trying to sort out my own confused feelings. As a citizen of this nation, yes of the world, I know the death of this man has made the world a safer and a saner place. As awkward as it sounds, his death was a good thing.
Yet, I am also a disciple of Jesus Christ who would not take the life of another but laid down his own life. At his arrest in the garden, one of his disciples picked up a sword to defend Jesus. Jesus told the disciple to put the sword away because “The one who lives by the sword shall die by the sword.”
The only peace I find between those two parts of me is in the story of another follower of Christ. Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a Christian theologian and pastor in Hitler’s Germany. From nearly the beginning of the Third Reich, Bonhoeffer opposed Hitler and the Nazis.
However, that opposition took a drastic turn in 1944 with a failed attempt to assassinate Adolf Hitler. After Dietrich Bonhoeffer was arrested for crimes against the Nazis, it was discovered that he was also part of the plot against the Fuehrer.
Over the years many people have questioned or criticized Bonhoeffer’s involvement in something that appeared to be so anti-Christ. After all, Bonhoeffer was a New Testament scholar and had written extensively on the Sermon on the Mount.
Jesus said, “Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also.” Bonhoeffer’s resistance seemed in opposition to Jesus’ teaching.
I once read Bonhoeffer’s justification for the assassination attempt. He said that if you are in a car with a madman driving toward a crowd of people you have a responsibility to not only care for the wounded but instead to wrestle the wheel from the madman’s hands.
The Sermon on the Mount always calls us to a higher place. I am not there, yet. For now, I am glad that the wheel was wrestled from the hands of this madman. I am trying to temper that gladness with a measure of sadness about how it had to happen.