Reflections on a Death – by Cynthia Holder Rich

The impact of one execution through the lens of my life

I heard the news when I got up early to help our teenage children get to school – Osama bin Laden had been killed in the night by US forces in Pakistan.  My personal experiences, a few of which are shared here, frame my sense of events; this one fills me with an overwhelming and complex set of emotions and thoughts.

  • When my husband and I served parishes in North Dakota, the closest major city was Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.  We visited a number of times, leaving ND by two-lane roads where unstaffed shacks sat at the international border.  Now, many of those are closed off and the roads left are highly secured and much harder to cross.
  • We moved to Madagascar in 1998 with our three young children, and came home on leave in 2001.  On 9/11, a beautiful early fall day, we were out to breakfast when the attack on the World Trade Center began.  We went home in time to see the second tower hit.  Much of Chicago went into high alert, with fears of continued attacks that might penetrate the Midwest and barriers hurriedly built around public and federal buildings.
  • The Sunday after the attack, we went to church and heard white liberal Christians, people who worked for peace and advocated for justice on other days, utterly reject any sense of rationale for the attack and decry the actions of the attackers and the celebrations seen on TV from various places in the Middle East.  When we tried to talk about how this might be seen internationally, we were completely rebuffed and told we had become unpatriotic through living outside the US for too long.
  • Meanwhile, we were receiving many emails from our growing group of expat American friends, who spoke with one voice with the hope that finally, the US would “get it”.  We were seeing very little evidence that that was happening.
  • I had been asked by Chicago Presbytery to give the mission moment at the stated meeting that took place a few weeks after 9/11 of that year.  I was on the docket immediately following worship, which was a memorial for those who had died in the attacks.  People were in tears and the sanctuary was filled with grief.

As part of my remarks, I shared that at that time, more than 10,000 children were dying every week in Africa from preventable causes, and that their deaths were not mourned in this way.  Further, inaction made clear that many Americans and the US government had deemed these acceptable deaths.  I closed with my gratitude that our church was working to prevent child mortality in places like Madagascar.  People were gracious in response, and some were affirming, and others responded quizzically.

  • Returning to Madagascar was a chore.  We had a luggage allowance of 35 kilos apiece; that is, we had around 380 pounds of luggage and we were picked for extra security review.  Every single piece in the bags was removed and inspected and returned to the bags.  Subsequently, this happened every single time we left the US.  We were a white woman, a white man (who is 6’7” – that is 2m – tall), a black baby girl, and two little boys, one white and one black.  We didn’t go anywhere without attracting notice.  Nevertheless, we were ALWAYS picked for extra security.  We learned to take our three young children to the airport at least 3 hours early; our children learned to enjoy long periods of time in airports.
  • Our return to the seminary where we taught was marked by a service of gratitude to God for our safety in the midst of international crisis.
  • As I travelled to South Africa for doctoral studies, the sight of my blue US passport seemed to give total strangers permission to share their disgust with Bush’s “you are for us or against us” stance.  US colleagues teaching in Africa were taken aside by colleagues and asked why “we” were taking this stance.  My husband and I were both engaged by colleagues in the same way.
  • I was in South Africa when the 2003 attack on Baghdad began.  Being American overseas at such moments is a tricky and delicate endeavor.  Again, the sight of my blue passport made accosting me in airport lines acceptable; again, fellow students, some professors, and all of our colleagues felt compelled to share their dismay with “our” response.
  • People coming and going to and from Madagascar received even more heightened security, as it became known that members of the bin Laden family lived on the island.

Since our return to live and work in the US, our experiences have impacted all of life, faith, and witness.  If we ever could, no longer can we perceive events like the killing of a terrorist leader in simple ways.  Life has always been complex, particularly for we who follow Jesus.  I don’t really believe life has become more complex – rather, I think that we in the US have come to understand some of the complexity and interconnectivity of life through our experiences of events in which Osama bin Laden had a hand.

I pray this morning for expat US citizens, as I know this increases the difficulty of their lives.  I pray for peace and for justice, two goals so hard to achieve, which this death may well make harder to attain.  I pray for the people celebrating, for whom 9/11 continues as a primary wound, that a broader understanding of how most people in the world live might be bestowed upon them.  I pray for increased wisdom for the leaders of the world.

And I pray for the church in the world, including particularly in Pakistan this morning, which may well be persecuted in response; and for all of us who follow Jesus, help us to be the salt and light Jesus called us, in the midst of a very complex world where suffering and death is the daily norm – and where many, here in the US, have no sense of the privileged safety in which we live.  Lord have mercy; Christ have mercy; Lord have mercy.

6 thoughts on “Reflections on a Death – by Cynthia Holder Rich

  • May 2, 2011 at 6:37 pm
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    Thank you, Cynthia, for these insightful and prophetic reflections from your experience. I share your prayer.

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  • May 2, 2011 at 10:31 pm
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    Thank you for writing this.
    I attended an international high school by choice in 71-73. My ELCA synod is a companion with the Tulear Synod in Madagasgar. I was on a synod trip there in 2005.

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  • May 2, 2011 at 11:31 pm
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    Cynthia,
    Thank you for writing this.

    I’ve found myself troubled today– holding two competing emotions. One, the “American” response of thank goodness, this hunt is over. I would have preferred bin Laden die of a massive heart attack, but the assassination is the way the political/military world operates. I understand that. But I don’t like it. As a Christian, I deplore the way of retributive justice. I don’t believe this is the way of Jesus. For the moment, I’m treading water– not celebrating (how can one cheer after a murder?) but not disappointed that this we are now on a new bin Laden-less page of history. A strange, indeed complex set of emotions for this Christian in the USA.

    I shall make your prayers my own.

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  • May 3, 2011 at 3:18 am
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    Thanks for these remembrances, Cynthia! I also remember people in Madagascar insisting to us in 2002 that the imminent invasion of Iraq was wrong, to which we could only agree in embarrassment and frustration. I also remember the demonstrations in France in 1973 (while a high school student there) against the CIA’s coup in Chile. One placard has stuck with me: it showed Uncle Sam with his hands dripping with blood. It’s often not fun to be an American living overseas when the US government decides to kill.

    To be sure, Osama bin Laden’s death was justified by his own murders of so many thousands, most of them civilians. Yet we Christians need to remember that the commandment “You shall not kill” is still entirely in force, all the more so for us who are followers of the Prince of Peace. That commandment contains no exclusions or exceptions or conditions. It is always and everywhere a sin to kill any human being.

    The whole point of just war theory is to say, given that killing is always a sin, when it is nonetheless lawful. Our moral thinking is much muddied in this matter because we conflate the legal concept of ‘just’ or ‘lawful’ (which is ONLY what is being referred to just war theory) with the moral concept of ‘right’. Bin Laden’s death was certainly lawful, but it was not morally right by the standards of either the Ten Commandments or the gospel of Jesus Christ.

    This is also why Jesus’ commandments of repentance and forgiveness are so absolutely key. Since we know that through the resurrection no death will ultimately be final, the only possible future for us humans is through repentance and forgiveness. This is exactly what bin Laden himself absolutely could not hear or follow. For him it was only and always the lex talionis carried out through some extremely crazy moral accounting (such as oppression and deaths in the Middle East = the deaths of 3000+ civilians in the US).

    As Christians (and alongside many Muslims) we must reject such moral accounting as the coils of Satan that they are. Repentance and forgiveness are honored and praised in the Qur’an, and they are commanded by Jesus. They, and not death, are the only way forward together.

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  • May 3, 2011 at 8:05 pm
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    I actually applaud the execution of bin Laden. I have no problem with how it was done either. I do regret the death on any innocent, but also acknowledge that collateral damage is a consequence of war. And war is what Osama bin Laden declared on the United States of America. Are we ignorant of the reasons behind this? Yes. Are we as United States citizens blind to our own sin? Yes. But the death of Osama bin Laden feels like justice to me. What I object to, and am saddened by is the rejoicing in the streets. Judaism has a story about the angels in Heaven singing songs of joy as the Egyptians drown in the retiring waters of the sea. Then a voice from the throne room calls out: “Why are you singing? Don’t you know that those are my children who are dying in the water?” Judaism does not allow for rejoicing over the death of an enemy, even one as vile as Hitler, by the way. It’s called the higher path, and for a reason – it’s a harder path to get on.

    Anyway, with humility and respect for other points of view – Marlin

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