Vengeance Belongs to G-d

This article was featured on the Washington Post Blog "On Faith" on May 2,2011 Max Carter is the Director of Friends Center at Guilford College. To view the article on the Washington Post blog click here

Vengeance belongs to G-d
By:Max Carter

Shortly after the attacks of 9/11, footage was beamed around the world of people allegedly dancing on rooftops and in the streets, rejoicing at the news. Americans (and others) were rightly appalled. As it turns out, those were isolated incidents, overwhelmed by the more typical response of candlelight vigils and expressions of sympathy. I hope that the jubilation in the streets shown following the announcement of Osama Bin Laden’s death was similarly just a “snapshot” of responses and that the majority of people have a more measured reaction. As Gary Cooper, playing Jess Birdwell in “Friendly Persuasion,” said to his little boy, who had told him to go “kill a Johnny Reb for me, papa” - “Don’t ever talk that way about a man’s life.”
Or as a number of students here at Guilford College - one of the places where “jubilation in the streets” was not the norm - have said: “Our battle is against powers and pricipalities, systems of injustice, and not flesh and blood,” referencing scripture.
Interestingly, on the same day as the announcement of bin Laden’s death, our local paper carried a review of David Goldfield’s “America Aflame,” a scholarly look at the enormous cost in human life and treasure of the Civil War. Goldfield calculated that the war was not inevitable, that the goals of the war could have been achieved by less costly means - but that the prevailing political and religious climate made it difficult to solve the matters peaceably.
I wonder if we are not seeing a similarly sad situation now. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have cost trillions of dollars and countless human lives. That certainly should temper our “jubilation” at the death of bin Laden. In a mural exhibit on our campus entitled “Windows and Mirrors: the human cost of the war in Afghanistan,” sponsored by the American Friends Service Committee, a panel depicts the numbers of Afghan civilians killed at wedding celebrations alone. Six separate air strikes on people expressing their own jubilation at the marriage of happy couples had killed nearly 400.
I am not personally celebrating the death of Osama bin Laden. My religious faith tells me that vengeance is the L-rd’s and that I am to follow in the way of Christ - letting love be my first motion. I don’t condone what Bid Laden did or preached, but I cannot justify killing thousands upon thousands in order to exact justice on one person. I think G-d expects better of us.