the death of a terrorist

When David heard that Absalom was dead he went up to his chamber and he wept (2Sam 18:33). I did not much take to David when I first read the books of Samuel and this was the story which redeemed him in my mind. His son is dead, his son who has been his mortal enemy and has lied and cheated and done everything in his power to raise an army against David and take the kingdom, and David breaks down and cries.
It is, to me one of the most human and devastating moments in the Bible. For all his finery David weeps over a lost son and it is not until he is told he must join in the vitriole of celebration for the sake of his own army and nation that he removes himself from his grief.
I awoke this morning to the same news as everyone else - Osama Bin Laden is dead. I felt sad - not that someone who had caused such pain and suffering had ultimately paid for his actions with his life - that seemed fairy inevitable - but sad that we are led to that point of hatred in the face of atrocity. I looked at Facebook and found several posts rejoicing in death - life which is ripped away, when the image of God desecrated, is never a matter of rejoicing.
Many people just cannot cope with the tragedy of humanity - of humanity gone wrong and turned inside out with sin and so we begin to treat those who hurt us most as less than human - and that is hate. I am not issuing some weak liberal call for being nice to everyone no matter what - that is not realistic - but to rejoice in killing another human being is wrong, in any circumstance, it degrades our own humanity and God weeps.
There are those already expressing penitence and sadness - and I hope this will be the dominant voice. We are not sorry for what an extremist did to us - we are angry about that and rightly so - but we are sorry that one who God created, who God aches for so distorted the Creators image in destruction and pain. But through these feelings, these strong feelings of self-justification and self-preservation we can never, ever remove the possibility of God and the reality of God's creation. We can never see ourselves as so different that we remove the humanity of another - that is hatred - not justice.