Justice and the death of a terrorist (three perspectives)

Like so many across the country and all around the world, I watched Sunday night as President Obama announced that the United States had conducted an operation that resulted in the death of the most wanted man in the world. Osama bin Laden, after all these years and after all this terror, had been brought to justice. I watched my Twitter feed as the reactions began. Some cracked jokes. Some quoted Scripture. Others expressed relief or disbelief. I held my tongue, mostly, because while I could have found myself saying any of those things, I didn’t trust myself in the moment to know or to say what was good and right and true. I still don't, to be honest.

But I came across two opinion pieces in Christianity Today, which I think are thoughtful and worthwhile. Michael Horton from Westminster Seminary in California asks, what kind of justice has been done? I’d urge you to read the whole thing, but a couple of his more salient points:

Cultures are the most dangerous when they invoke holy texts for their defense of holy land through holy war. However, Christians have no biblical basis for doing this in the first place… As Paul reminds us in Romans 13, secular rulers are given the power of the temporal sword—finite justice—while the gospel conquers in the power of the Spirit through that Word "above all earthly pow'rs."

He continues:

[T]he divine wrath that rulers execute is temporal and finite rather than eternal and infinite. Such justice is never so pure that it is unmingled with injustice, never so final that it satisfies God's eternal law. In view of the image of God stamped on every person, justice must always be tempered by love.

In the second CT opinion piece, Gideon Strauss, the South African-born head of the Center for Public Justice writes that justice has indeed been done, but what’s less clear is how we ought to receive the news:

The question that does trouble me is how we as Christians should respond to the news of this death, especially those of us who are citizens or friends of the United States of America… Rejoicing in the death of another, however wicked, involves forgetting the depths of our own depravity and the astonishing reality of our own salvation… Our best next response, I believe, to the news of Osama bin Laden's death, after we have sought our own hearts for the wickedness that resides in all of us, and have thanked God for his amazing grace that has rescued us from our own evil, is to join President Obama on May 5, this year's National Day of Prayer, "in giving thanks for the many blessings we enjoy" and "in asking God for guidance, mercy, and protection for our nation." And perhaps we can add a prayer for our enemies, that God may win them to himself and in his own good time bring into the relations between this nation and those who now seek her destruction some foretaste of the just peace of his world to come.

Finally, my friend Jeremy pointed me to a reflection -- on a sports blog of all places -- and it's stunningly poignant. In a piece titled “The Arithmetic of Payback," Jeff MacGregor writes:

"Payback" is easy. Payback comes out of petty cash. Payback is an elbow when the ref isn't looking; payback is a pitch up and in; payback twists your arm and steps on your hand after the whistle. Payback is short-form accounting.

But "justice"?

Justice reckons the infinite. Justice counts the cost of the universal and settles all debts. Justice doesn't truck with revenge. Better than anyone, sports fans understand that justice, true justice, lies far beyond the reach of any one of us. It is thus never ours to deliver.

Each of these three, in their own way, I think, say it well.

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