It has been argued so much for the past week and yes it has been annoying, tiring, and downright obnoxious, but I am choosing to write about it anyway. Ignorant statement after ignorant statement has gotten me to the point where I am thoroughly annoyed. As we sat in class today, we did a mini-poll. The poll started out with a few question about the summer and about life. The poll ended with some questions about Osama. The first couple were the typical "Go America!" questions that I could not justify myself to answer in a way that said, "Go America!" The last couple were theological. The question "Is Osama going to burn in hell?" brought upon a roar of laughter. Really, church? Is this how we feel as a body? This is what brought me to the deepest pain. The fact that we can straight up laugh at someone's possible damnation. Why is this something that is so funny to us? I suppose that justice is truly served when a person is personally separated from God. All of us are made in the image of God. We were given the ability to love like the God who loves us. Of course our love will never be a perfect love, but God gave us the capability to love like he loves. When a person loses a life that and that life was never reconciled with the perfect, loving God, who brought all humanity into existence, God mourns. He mourns over all life that is lost. He mourns over those who never came into a perfect love with him. He mourns over those who will never be in His kingdom. And yet, we think this is funny. Justice is served, a man is dead and there is a possibility that he did not know God. This is not something that we as a Christian body should rejoice over. This is not something that we should chant "GO AMERICA!" This is something that we as a Christian body should be mourning over. We should be deeply hurt and sorrowful because someone who could have spent eternity with the all loving father may not be. And yet, this is all a joke.
With this, I think that we should all accept a challenge. What is the purpose of our lives? What do we live for? We should be a life that is rejoicing with what God rejoices with. We should be mourning with what our God mourns. We should be showing love even in the hardest circumstances. This death of a man who was openly hated should be something that opens our eyes as believers. One of the last questions that was asked on that poll "Does God love Osama Bin Laden?" Not everyone could say yes. That is a sad thing to hear. Our God, our loving, forgiving, and deeply compassionate God does not dislike his creation. He does not hate his creation. He may hate what is wicked and what is wrong, but that is not humanity. He loves all and cares for all because all was created in him image.
You threw a stone too.
We are murderers too.
We killed our King and yet we were not "justly" punished.
Thanks for writing this, Annie. I really love your thoughts. I, too, thought it was sad that not everyone answered "yes" to "Does God love bin Laden". Isn't that not at the core of our belief in God and the Church, and one of the fundamentals for salvation..."God so loved the WORLD". No matter our political stance on the issue and what this all means for AMERICA...God still loves all that he created. He's just sad that some of us that love him do not love the whole world as well. Thanks for sharing, friend.
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