Last night, when the news broke, my trusty and faithful room mate said, “Sweet.” Then, “Well, I guess Proverbs tells me I can’t say that.”
I was annoyed, because I knew he was right, and the Holy Spirit was convicting me. So I read the verses he was talking about:
“Do not rejoice when your enemy falls, and let not your heart be glad when he stumbles, lest the Lord see it and be displeased, and turn away his anger from him. Fret not yourself because of evildoers, and be not envious of the wicked, for the evil man has no future; the lamp of the wicked will be put out.” –Proverbs 24:17-18
This morning, someone else put Romans 13:4 on their blog: “[The Governing Authority] is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer.”
Clearly, many of us are taking a number of perspectives on this moment. Christopher Morgan, over at the Gospel Coalition, has another thoughtful perspective to add to the mix:
“Though the comparison is by no means perfect, and though it is on a much smaller scale, I tend to think that we can rightly grieve that Osama bin Laden opposed the true and living God and will be punished accordingly. But we also can rightly rejoice in the defeat and judgment upon people who are evil–and he was clearly evil and deserving of every punishment earth can give. The dancing in the streets may not merely be American nationalism, but an appropriate response to the partial display of human justice as we await the final and perfect display of divine justice in the coming age.”
Read the whole thing here, and think along with the rest of us.
Caring for the Soul 