A few weeks ago I posted about the killing of Osama bin Laden and said Christians shouldn\u2019t celebrate it.\u00a0 A number of people strongly disagreed, arguing that it is right to celebrate justice and his assassination was just.<\/p>\n
Both Christianity Today and Christian Century have weighed in the subject\u2013on my side.\u00a0 (Great minds think alike!) CT quotes Southern Baptist Theological Seminary president Al Mohler as saying \u201cRetributive justice is sober justice.\u00a0 The reason for this is simple\u2013God is capable of vengeance, which is perfectly true to his own righteousness and perfection\u2013but human beings are not. [Celebrating in the streets] looks far more like we are simply taking satisfaction in the death of an enemy.\u00a0 That kind of revenge just produces greater numbers of enemies.\u201d (June, 2011 issue)\u00a0 Amen to that.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Christian Century (May 31, 2011) contains an entire article on \u201cThe killing of bin Laden: justice or vengeance?\u201d by Tobias Wright who quotes St. Augustine as saying that \u201cA mournful mood should accompany even justified violence.\u201d\u00a0 Wright also quotes John Paul II who wrote in his 1995 encyclical Evangelium Vitae (The Gospel of Life) that \u201cnot even a murderer loses his personal dignity, and God himself pledges to guarantee this.\u201d<\/p>\n
Christian leaders from a conservative Southern Baptist seminary president to the pope oppose Christian celebration of death\u2013even the death of a murderer.\u00a0 Those who disagree and support celebration of execution and assassination need to explain themselves in biblical and Christ-centered ways in face of the overwhelming and across the spectrum Christian criticism of such celebrating of death.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A few weeks ago I posted about the killing of Osama bin Laden and said Christians shouldn\u2019t celebrate it.\u00a0 A number of people strongly disagreed, arguing that it is right to celebrate justice and his assassination was just. Both Christianity Today and Christian Century have weighed in the subject\u2013on my side.\u00a0 (Great minds think alike!) […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":58,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-488","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n