My Thoughts on Bin Laden's Death

I was lying in bed next to my sleeping Joe reading a book. My husband and his brother were in the next room playing Xbox. Suddenly Ryan peeked his head in and whispered, "Osama Bin Laden was killed." I jumped up and went into the other room where they had the news turned on. Soon Barack Obama would be speaking to the country. This was no rumor. This was no speculation. This was confirmed news.

I'll admit that my first reaction was that I wanted to run around in an American flag t-shirt and shoot pistols in the air shouting, "USA! USA! USA!" Finally- justice is served! That evil man is dead! My facebook wall flooded with similar status updates of being so happy that his man was dead as a doornail. Serves that bastard right! Hope he burns in hell! I texted my best friend saying, "We killed that a-hole!"

But then a girl I went to college with posted a different kind of status:

A man who has caused the deaths of thousands has been killed. Am I glad he can't terrorize the world anymore? Yes. Am I celebrating the death of a fellow human being? No. Stop gloating people...it may be hard to believe, but that man was created in the image of God just like any of us. Try praying for his soul...you know the whole "love thy enemies" thing.
Blessed JPII - Pray for us and for our world.

That stopped me in my tracks. Suddenly I wasn't in such a celebratory mood anymore. It's easy to picture Bin Laden as a monster. He is a monster who is responsible for the deaths of thousands of men, women and children. But he is still human. He was once a small baby, sleeping next to his mother, just like my son sleeps next to me. He was once an innocent child, playing with his friends. He was once a gawky teenager, nervous about himself and his future. Somewhere along the line, something went wrong. Terribly wrong.

I find it interesting that he was killed on Divine Mercy Sunday. God shows his mercy to the most evil of men, if they desire his forgiveness and love. We do not know what Bin Laden's last moments were like. God alone is his judge. You never know... we might be surprised to see Bin Laden in heaven someday.

I know I will probably take a lot of flack for this post. I do agree his actions were evil. I do agree that he needed to be stopped. One might even argue that he was killed in self-defense. I still love America and am a proud supporter of our military. But does his death really mean that we are safe now? It's not like the war on Al-Qaeda is over. In fact it might be getting much much worse.

Is celebrating his death really what we should be doing? Shouldn't we be praying for his soul? With all our comments about how he deserved to die and how we're glad he's dead and how we hope he rots in hell- well, we're not showing him mercy. We're not valuing his life. And with the rate we're going- we're not much better than him.