The Line Between Good and Evil: Reflections on the Death of Osama bin Laden

As a citizen of the United States, I applaud the work of our Navy seals in apprehending and finally killing Osama bin Laden. We all owe a debt of honor and gratitude to the military and intelligence personnel who have persevered and worked for this day.

As a resident of planet earth who has a hope for peace and justice for all, I could only receive the news of his death with a mixture of sadness, thankfulness and relief.  As a follower of one called the Prince of Peace, I understand that until He returns to establish His kingdom on earth, there will be times that even the use of measured and accountable violence to resist evil is appropriate.  This is certainly one of those times.

But let me ask a question: Where do you draw the line between good and evil?

It's easy for most of us to draw that line and put Osama bin Laden on the other side, leaving ourselves on the "good" side of course.  Depending on how you rate any of a variety of behaviors - and people have done that with everything from international terrorism to playing cards and mixed bathing! - you end up drawing the line in different places.  It can be a struggle to find ways to know who is "over there" on the side of evil in a way that clearly leaves me "over here" on the side of good.

To think of a dividing line between good and evil with different people on each side of that line is dangerously simplistic and self-serving.  I think Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn put it best in his 1973 book The Gulag Archipelago:

If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart? 

It is the gospel of grace that has made clear to me that the dividing line between good and evil does indeed run right through my own heart.  At the level of heart motivations before a holy God, bin Laden and I are different only in quantity and expression, but not in quality.  When Paul writes in Romans 3:23 that "all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God," he encircles all three of us: me, bin Laden and himself.

In one sense, Osama bin Laden has begun paying the price for his own evil with his death.  By the grace of God, I've had someone else pay the price for my evil.  That is what makes the death of Jesus on the cross so breathtakingly stunning:

For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die—but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.  Romans 5:6-8

Love so amazing, so divine, demands my soul, my life, my all.

It is a sad reflection on human nature to say that the world is a better place now that Osama bin Laden is no longer part of it.  The hope of the gospel says that when grace pushes back the evil in my own heart, this world can begin to be a better place while I am still alive.

Here are some links that I've found helpful in thinking through today's news:
Jihad and Just War - James Turner Johnson
The Death of Osama bin Laden: What Kind of Justice Has Been Done - Michael Horton