One of the interesting things about being both a Christian and an academic, particularly one whose interests lie in digital rhetoric, is getting to watch the interesting discursive practices of lay Christians as they navigate life. For this reason, the conversations in response to the death of Osama Bin Laden have been particularly interesting to me. So, here, in the midst of the moment, I'm dropping in to make some notes about this rhetorical event even as it unfolds.
Because social media sites allow such instantaneous, unreflective, and unrevised communication, it's a prime site for watching the ways in which people react to and discuss events, like the death of our current greatest enemy. For this reason, I've been watching facebook posts from my Christian (and a few former-Christian) friends.
I've seen three different threads running my friend's facebook posts. They are:
1) God does not delight in death, even of evil men, so celebrating Bin Laden's death is inappropriate (Ez 18:23, for example).
2) In this, I'm including variations on one theme: God is just and therefore it is right that the evil should die, and the emotions attached to retributive justice are human and natural and therefore cannot be judged (Psalm 137:8-9)
3) People shouldn't be using the scripture to make these arguments, since we must, by definition, argue these scriptures out of context.
I'll address the first two by critiquing the third. The view that we should not be using scripture to back our thinking on this issue seems to rely on a couple of assumptions. First, that the authors of the status updates falling into the first two categories intend to use scripture as evidence that their view point is the correct view. And, second, that they shouldn't do so.
This first assumption may very well be correct. Certainly, I've been watching a lot of arguments and implications that the author sees his or her view as the correct one and that others must get on board. The authors of the first category seem to be the bigger offenders in this regard. Some (by no means all, and probably not even most) of these authors wish to prove that those who rejoice in Bin Laden's death do not show the love of Jesus, and that rejoicing over death, even of a man as evil as Bin Laden, is therefore sinful. Implicit in such arguments is the suggestion that because I do have this kind of love, my Christianity is superior to your's. Certainly, I understand the critique of this type of argument. Such presentations of Christian thought make us look narrow, and completely out of touch with human experience/emotion.
Authors of the second category often seem instantly defensive, expecting or responding to the arguments of the first category. I can likewise understand the objection to this category. Such presentations of ourselves may make us seem unrepentant, showing a lack of understanding for how bad people become bad, and perhaps downright hypocritical (I'm supposed to love my enemies after all).
So I understand the objections to people using scripture to justify their own feelings on what is an extremely important national event. But I do not share it. This is because I question assumption number two.
One colleague of mine noted that this is evidence of why people ought not use the Bible as evidence in an argument. She says this from the perspective of a composition teacher in the Bible belt, where we are constantly trying to convince our students that there are very few academic arguments that benefit from citing scripture. That's just not the way academic writing works.
Indeed, the Bible is not written in such a way that it can work for arguments of scientific (social or natural) proof. Instead, the Bible is about the stuff of life. This is why I critique authors in category three. Writers in this category understand that the the Bible cannot be used to decide which side is right and thus they argue that it should not be.
I, however, think that this is exactly what scripture is for. Scripture is not helpful in arguing objective truth; it is, however, designed to help us navigate the subjective experience of human life.
The reason writers in both categories are able to find scripture that seems to back up their own feelings is because the Bible does in fact support both views. Jesus was the prince of peace, but he also came to bring division. As one friend of mine wrote "The Bible says not to get drunk. It also says God makes wine to make the heart glad. The Bible says God hates divorce and also says God divorced Israel. Go Figure." The Bible contains such contradictions (and they are contradictions) because life itself is contradictory. The Bible is complex because people are complex.
The purpose of these scriptures, then, is to help us make sense of and discuss the often contradictory emotions we experience in these events. My colleague mentioned to me that half the posts she saw used the Bible to support the idea that we should rejoice and the other half were used to support the idea that we shouldn't. My response was that this is because both were correct.
This is why I applaud the open conversations taking place on this issue. By discussing these events, and by struggling with our experiences and with how scripture relates to them, we gain a picture of the complexity of life and the complexity of God. Some in category three have expressed that these types of public debates are dangerous because they make Christians seem divided. But I have often though that the church's role in a post-modern culture ought to be to show the world that we too are complex and disintegrated subjects. That we too struggle with how we ought to feel and act. That there is room for other people to struggle with us.
We ought to embrace our own multiplicities and wrestle with them. In this way we, like Jacob, wrestle with God.
