Some thoughts on the past few days

I did not hear about the death of Osama Bin Laden until Monday morning. I was in bed when the news broke and when I saw it on the computer the next morning at first I thought it was a hoax because to be quite honest I never thought he would be tracked down. When I saw the news reports and all the celebrating going on as a result I was taken back a bit.
Let come right out and say a couple of things: Osama Bin Laden was one of the most evil people of our time. His hatred toward the West and his misrepresentation of the Islamic faith as a motivating factor for that hatred has caused many people a great deal of pain. It has caused hatred to grow toward many without just cause. By that I mean the many peace loving Muslims who live in this world who have been victimized by those who do not understand their faith.
As a follower of Jesus I have found several things to be very disturbing. First the celebration of death. As one of my colleagues put it this morning: I wonder how many people who are celebrating today go back to 9-11 and remember how angry they were when they saw followers of the attackers celebrating the fall of the twin towers and all those who perished as a result.
I feel this time should be one serious reflection for me as a person of faith. While I may have some degree of relief the man is out of the picture, I am sure there are many others waiting in the wings to continue terrorist activity. The result is terrorism is still a part of our world and nothing has changed that fact since Sunday.
The other thing I found very troubling was all the rhetoric concerning who is getting the credit for this. Several posts I saw were about how the Obama did not kill him, others gave him credit, others gave the previous administration credit while still others gave credit to the military and CIA. I can't help but think how petty we have gotten. It reminds me of an incident I was engaged in several years ago. Another pastor was sitting across from me at a table when I was asked a question what I thought about a certain organization which happened to be highly controversial at the time. I said there are some thing about that organization I disagree with but on the other hand they do happen to do some good work in other areas and I went on to name a few in which their work was some of the best being done in those areas. The other pastor then said nothing good comes from that organization. I took that to mean if I say one part of that group is good then there might be a possibility that other parts may also be good. So I must to say it is all bad in order for me to save face and maintain my reputation of being tough. So I see all the negative spin going on as being just another form of closed mindedness because if we say our enemy has a good quality we might just see them as human then they would be much harder to hate.
As a follower of the Christ I believe we need to look for other solutions rather than violent ones because violence only brings forth more violence. my question for me is how can I show forth the love of Christ in this world filled with violence and hate? That is the big question.