Mourning one who left intelligence behind

  • If you’ve been exult­ing over the news that Osama bin­Laden was killed, wel­come to the club. If you’ve then felt a twinge over exult­ing over the death of any human, join the club. Though he orches­trated the death of thou­sands and wanted to kill tens of thou­sands more, some of the expres­sions of cel­e­bra­tion at his demise have made me uncom­fort­able. But how do you keep per­spec­tive con­cern­ing the pun­ish­ment of evil peo­ple with­out sound­ing pro-death (because there’s enough of that in our cul­ture already)?

    To my res­cue came today’s read­ing for me in the OSB. In Wis­dom of Sir­ach, chap­ter 22, I read:

    Weep for a dead man, for he left the light behind,
    But weep over a fool, because he left intel­li­gence behind …
    Beware of him, so as to avoid trou­ble.
    And you will not be defiled when he shakes him­self off.
    Stay away from him and you will find rest, and not be exhausted by his insanity.(11, 13)

    And the tragic thing is that it didn’t have to be like this. Ortho­dox Chris­tians should always remem­ber that as the salt of the earth, we are meant to impart God’s Gospel to all and thereby be the true friends of all peo­ple every­where. But how can you be a friend to one who prefers dark­ness? If bin­Laden and oth­ers had only spo­ken ill of us, we could have ignored it. But he crossed a line, and every­thing that has come after­wards has come from that.

    If you open your mouth against a friend,
    Do not worry, for rec­on­cil­i­a­tion is pos­si­ble
    But as for revil­ing or arro­gance or reveal­ing secrets or a treach­er­ous blow –
    with behav­ior like this any friend will flee. (22)


    Related posts:

    1. Keep­ing offenses in perspective
    2. Begin­ning to Pray by Anthony Bloom
    3. Refut­ing “The Judas Gospel”
    4. Intro­duc­ing Ortho­doxy in 50 words or less
    5. Iraqis pack into churches

    May 2nd, 2011 | Grace | 3 Comments |

3 Responses and Counting...

  • Anam Cara 05.02.2011

    I can hon­estly say I never once felt like exult­ing in bin Laden’s death. And the odd thing is that given our cul­ture, that made me feel uncom­fort­able. But I came to terms with my feel­ings thanks to John Donne: “Any man’s death dimin­ishes me because I am involved in Mankind. There­fore, do not sent to know for whom the bell tolls. It tolls for thee.”

  • Grace

    I think my take on this may best be summed up by THIS ARTICLE by Mau­reen Dowd (who I nearly never agree with on any­thing) — Killing evil doesn’t make us evil.

  • Dana

    Thanks for post­ing Mau­reen Dowd’s arti­cle, Grace. I hadn’t seen it. She makes emi­nent sense. By the way, I love the new look to your blog!

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