Osama bin Laden “Justice” and “True Grit”
I’ve heard a number of people talk about “justice being done” in regards to the killing of Osama Bin Laden. As I was listening to someone say this on an NPR program the other day, my thoughts wandered to the film “True Grit.” [spoiler alert]
Mattie Ross is a feisty young girl who sets out to capture the man who killed her father, Tom Chaney. After tracking him for days with Rooster and LaBoeuf, she finally has the chance to kill him. And she does. And he falls off the cliff. And she falls back from the power of the gun, down into a hole with snakes, is bit, poisoned, and almost dies. As an audience, you have no time to celebrate his death. It’s completely anti-climactic.
In many ways, this feels similar to the death of Osama bin Laden.
Here’s what we’ve paid so far to kill Osama bin Laden:
- Our way of life as a country has forever changed, in ways we can’t even remember. We live in constant fear of a possible terrorist attack. As a result, our quality of life has decreased.
- We have “spent” over $1 trillion on the wars, some of which my children will be paying for in years to come.
- Thousands of American soldiers have lost their lives 9/11 – almost 6,000 to date.
- Thousands of American soldiers have sustained physical injuries (approximately 32,000). As of the first few months in 2010, 178,000 soldiers had been diagnosed with traumatic brain injury. It is estimated that 30% of all soldiers have developed mental health problems. This will cost the American public for many years to come in lost wages, productivity, homelessness, medical care, and the loss of the quality of life for all of those soldiers.
- Thousands of Iraqi (8,000-194,000), Pakistani, and Afghan civilians (almost 3,000 killed by pro-government forces alone) have lost their lives.
- One estimate of the financial cost in the search for bin Laden came out today – $3 trillion over the past 15 years.
- Thousands of soldiers lives have been changed in indescribable ways – long-term physical injuries, post-traumatic stress disorder, divorce, night terrors, etc. Thousands of parents, grandparents, children, partners/spouses have lost loved ones physically and emotionally. They bear a burden bigger than any financial or lifestyle burden than those of us who have not suffered those losses will ever bear.
And this is justice? Scripture shows a very different picture of what justice looks like:
1 Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the LORD rises upon you.
2 See, darkness covers the earth and thick darkness is over the peoples, but the LORD rises upon you and his glory appears over you.
3 Nations will come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn.
(Isaiah 60)
This is what God says will happen to Israel when they begin to act justly. While not directly applicable to the United States, which is not a theocracy, God’s measure of justice should be our only measure of justice as a church. So it begs the question: Is light shining upon this nation as a result of this action? Are we radiant (v. 5)?
In God’s Kingdom, justice is not an expense. You don’t have to count bodies when Biblical justice occurs. You don’t have to cut needed supports to those in poverty to pay for justice. Justice is the presence of something – rightness, goodness, integrity, fairness. Humans flourish when justice is present.
Looking at what we have so far paid on catching bin Laden, are these things present?
To me, it looks more like the death of Tom Chaney than justice. Yes, he’s dead. But we’re in the snake pit.
Suffering and God’s Plan
Jonathan Torgovnik - Intended Consequences: Rwandan Children Born of Rape. http://www.torgovnik.com*
By Sarah
“I believe God our suffering is all part of God’s plan.”
I have heard this, or something like this, in a number of situations, from a variety of people, throughout my adult life. This view of suffering is fatalistic and presents a simplistic analysis of events inexplicable to humans. To accept this view rejects our purpose as God’s people – to work with God to build his kingdom here on earth.
Here’s a non-exhaustive list of things that cause suffering:
- Illness/disease
- Poverty
- Rape/sexual abuse
- Addiction
- War
- Natural disasters
- Racism
- Poor decisions
When you look at this list, what do you see? Many of these are the result of human sin. We sin as individuals, communities, and societies, and it hurts us and others. It’s not fate. People aren’t destined to suffer. Sin causes suffering. When we say suffering is part of God’s plan, we give meaning to sin. But suffering is merely the rubbish heap we have made through our sin.
Some causes of suffering are not fully caused by the actions of others. Natural disasters are not the result of human action. But the policies or practices that provide the most relief to the privileged, shown clearly to be sin in scripture, are choices made by humans and cause suffering. Hurricane Katrina is a good example of this.
So what does the Bible have to say about sinful human activity that causes the suffering of others?
In the book of Amos, we see many causes of suffering. We see slavery; war; the ripping open of pregnant women; war; colonialism; selling the righteous and needy; rape; oppression of the poor and needy; and more war.
What is God’s reaction to all of this sin? “I will send fire upon the house of Israel” (1:4). “Even the bravest among the warriors will flee naked in that day” (2:16). “[T]hey will take you away with meat hooks (4:2). God will “flash with destruction upon the strong” (5:9). God shows that, much as he doesn’t care for “personal sin,” he does not care for societal sin that causes suffering.
What about Jesus? “But woe to you Pharisees! For you pay tithe…and yet disregard justice and the love of God…” (Luke 11:42, NASB). Jesus lambastes the Pharisees, many times, in fact, because of their lack of compassion and their acceptance of injustice.
Jesus’ response to suffering is action, not a fatalistic, “it’s all part of God’s plan.” When Jesus saw sin that caused suffering, he acted with compassion, restoring dignity and respect to the sufferer. He also acted with justice, rejecting the cultural norms and religious laws that legitimized the sin of oppression of those that Jesus loved.
But Jesus also deals with suffering, ultimately, on the cross. Jesus was killed by human sin, suffering unjustly at the hands of oppressors. But God was victorious in the spiritual and physical realms as a result – human sin was blotted out and overcome by the ultimate goodness and justice of God’s plan.
So what does this mean for us?
As God’s beloved children, we are to act as signposts of God’s Kingdom here on earth. Our response to the sin that causes suffering is hope, reconciliation, respect, dignity, restoration. This is how people will see God through us (Isaiah 60). We live out God’s promise for the future – that he will dwell with us, and will wipe away every tear. “There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away” (Rev 21: 4). That is the Kingdom of God, which we are called to work with God to bring forth here on earth.
What does this actually look like? If a woman in your community is suffering from domestic violence, you can help her find a lawyer or give her a room in your home. You can buy fair trade coffee, ensuring that the children of coffee growers can go to school. You can do the hard work of trying to eliminate racialized outcomes by joining with organizations that refuse to allow the sin of racism cause the suffering and oppression of millions of people throughout the U.S.
Scripture is quite clear – God abhors sin that causes suffering. When we refuse to accept that this is just the way things are, reject the idea that that sinful actions are part of God’s plan, and live out Jesus’ example of restoring dignity and respect to sufferers, heaven and earth overlap (N.T. Wright). This is the core of how we are to live as Christians.
Have you participated in the rejection of the sin of oppression that causes suffering? Have you seen others do this? How have you seen heaven and earth meet through the elimination of suffering and oppression?
* Image – This photo is from Jonathan Torgovnik’s powerful Intended Consequences: Rwandan Children Born of Rape project. Torgovnik sought to highlight the difficulty faced by some of the women who became pregnant and bore children as a result of rape during the Rwandan genocide. More than 20,000 children were born as a result.
This Present Evil Age
By Austin
I just read a story by Dan Rather on Huffington Post about child prostitution in the U.S., and the perhaps 100,000-300,000 children who are forced into the sex trade in here. In some ways it is not surprising – there are millions of homeless kids out there (see the website for the amazing organization Stand Up For Kids for more info), and one of the real dangers is the sex trade.
After I read the story, I looked at some of the comments. The story mentioned how lucrative the trade is, and how high the demand is, and the comments mainly talked about how punitive this should all be – how we should use Capital Punishment for pimps, and make punishment so bad for johns that no one would want this “service.”
Perhaps what stories like this should do, however, is make us realize that we in the modern west have actually not progressed in history. No matter how far we have civilized ourselves, we still find ways to deny that we are made in God’s image, by still finding ways to violate others and ourselves. And no matter the outcry against a story like this, no matter how much we do not like this, the outcry is still for blood.
This perhaps proves a point that Christians have always said. Herbert McCabe puts it well. Talking about who Jesus is, he says
“Jesus did nothing but be the Son as man; that his life was so colorful, eventful, and tragic is simply because of what being human involves in our world. We for the most part shy off being human because if we are really human we will be crucified. If we didn’t know that before, we know it now; the crucifixion of Jesus was simply the dramatic manifestation of the sort of world we have made, the showing up of the world, the unmasking of what we call, traditionally, original sin.” (God Matters, 23)
One of the things Jesus does is show us what it means just to be human. For this he was executed by the power at the time, the Romans. Imagine: the slavery of the Roman world was even worse than now – although we are beginning once again to rival it – and God responds by becoming human, by being a true human, and by allowing himself to be violated when this true humanity displays itself.
Yet reconciliation happens even in this. Or, perhaps, reconciliation happens because of this – that Jesus showed us what our world is really like, and then offered us another way. He offered us a way to be human and to “crucified to the world” (Gal 6.14), a way to be freed from the present evil age (Gal 1.4) within this evil age. He established this community, this paltry thing we call “church” to display this other way, to (sometime) display this world-reconciling love to all.
The answer to this sex trade is not ultimately in the law or in punishment, but in us displaying our humanity to the world.
We begin this by being the type of church where those who are most marginalized most recognize themselves.
This hard work has already been prepared on the cross.
A Franciscan Benediction for a dreary Tuesday
May God bless you with discomfort at easy answers, half truths, and superficial relationships, so that you may live deep within your heart.
May God bless you with anger at injustice, oppression and exploitation of people, so that you may work for justice, freedom and peace.
May God bless you with tears to shed for those who suffer from pain, rejection, starvation, and war, so that you may reach out your hand to comfort them and turn their pain to joy.
And may God bless you with enough foolishness to believe that you can make a difference in this world, so that you can do what others claim cannot be done.
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