Old Yeller and Bin Laden

Spot on, Rick.

My long-time friend and spiritual mentor when I was a teenager, Rick Bundschuh (co-author of Soul Surfer), posted an insightful blog on a Christian Response to Bin Laden's death. Read it here.

Here below is the comment I posted on his blog (with an added picture, free of charge)...



I remember trying to hide my tears (boys don’t cry) when reaching the end of Old Yeller in 5th grade, reading ahead while the class was doing some assignment or other.

I appreciate your perspective here on what love really means. I would have argued that for a Christian, revenge (as opposed to the mandated forgiveness), is something different than justice meted out by a government, or the casualties of war (as seen in Bin Laden’s case). But when I read your big-picture description of a Christian response, I found it thought-provoking and helpful.

When I first heard that Bin Laden had been killed, I knew that there would be lots of whoops because we’d finally gotten the “bad” guy. And there were. Ding-Dong the Wicked Terrorist is Dead! Then I thought, how like us as human beings. It’s only the really really bad guys that deserve anything. Bin Laden. Hitler. Guys like that. How we love to compare ourselves to them, and then we feel pretty good. We conveniently avoid comparing ourselves instead to God’s holiness, the only standard that really matters in the universe.

Yikes. I don’t measure up, either.

We don’t like to think about how crummy and sinful we are, and that our “little” (only from a human perspective) sins prove us to be just as lost as Bin Laden. Just as much NOT children of God by (natural) birth. Just as much in need of a savior.

A Savior. Christ died for me, just as much as he died for Osama.

God died for me. Now THAT’s something to whoop about.