Grace offensively

My facebook feed has been filled with an surprising number of Christians who appear to be defending a glee-filled response to the killing of Osama bin Laden. That feeling is something I can't connect with, and I've been reflecting on why that is. I think it's because I've been thinking about God's grace lately.

I recently read Zahl's Grace in Practice: A theology of everyday life. One of the points he stresses is humanity's original sin and how close each of us is to total depravity. It's from that state that God rescues us by having a perfect Jesus pay what we owed. Jesus died for Osama bin Laden. We might not be able to forgive him, but the Jesus I know was willing to die a death powerful enough to provide forgiveness to bin Laden. That's how big God's grace is.

And while I have never and don't plan to actively participate in killing people, Jesus made anger equivalent to murder in Matthew 5. So while justice demands that bin Laden pay for the deaths he caused, justice demands that I pay for the murders I've committed too. That's how sin works. It universally evens the playing field; Zahl describes it as the even distribution of sin. Before a holy and perfect God, no one is more or less sinful. We're all just sinners; none of whom should be anywhere close to what is holy and perfect.

I think that the notion of justice is what is attractive about the death of Osama bin Laden and perhaps the notion of retribution. However, Jesus as I understand him is about grace that offends justice. So when I think about how God saw bin Laden, I don't think God was disgusted or offended by him. I believe that until the moment bin Laden died, God was wanting him to come home the way the prodigal son's father wanted to see a wayward child come home. While I doubt that bin Laden ever did accept Jesus's death as payment for his own judgment, this does not make me happy or want to run out into the streets.