As the news of Osama bin Laden’s death sweep across the world, Christians are faced with a bit of a conundrum. Is it justice? Is it murder? How should we feel/respond?

For anyone interested, these are my thoughts so far on the whole thing. I hope they might help.

1. Justice, like everything else in a fallen world, is always incomplete. As Christians, we understand that better than anyone – if God pursued instant and complete justice, none of us would be here now.
2. The Bible has something to say about social justice alongside with mercy. It tells us that it is instituted by God (Rom. 13:1-4). Should we then not rejoice when a smidgen of God-instituted social justice, although vastly incomplete, is upheld?
3. I would wish with all my heart that the headlines this morning were “BIN LADEN CONFESSES CHRIST AS SAVIOUR – TURNS HIMSELF IN”. But they weren’t, nor will they ever be. And we cannot deny that God, in His sovereignty and providence, must have something to do with that.
4. The take-home message for us Christians who long for fulfilled and perfected “broader” justice, is to:

• i) hope even more for the full restoration that God has promised us and live accordingly
• ii) remember that we have received mercy and not justice and behave accordingly
• iii) pray even more earnestly for the penetration of the gospel into countries and cultures where religious beliefs lead to tremendous oppression, social injustice, and waste of human life.