Rabbi Michael Leo Samuel

One of my passions is the study of ethical dilemmas. I, for one, love raising the great philosophical and theological questions that challenge today’s thinking person.

Jesus says in his famous Sermon on the Mount,

“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your heavenly Father, for he makes his sun rise on the bad and the good, and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust.For if you love those who love you, what recompense will you have? Do not the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet your brothers only, what is unusual about that? Do not the pagans do the same? So be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matthew 5:43-48).

After we heard the news about Osama bin Laden’s death, I began wondering about several interesting questions.

This passage made me wonder: What would Jesus say about men like Adolf Hitler and Osama bin Laden? Are we commanded “to love” this kind of enemy? Put in a different way, had Osama bin Laden or Hitler accepted Jesus as their savior one minute before they were killed, would they be granted instant forgiveness of sin and enjoy an eternal life of companionship with God in Heaven or Paradise?

The Protestant theologian Karl Barth is purported to have been asked such a question. Bear in mind that Barth was one of the greatest Christian theologians who defied Hitler, yet when he was asked such a question, he would cite the passage from Romans 5:8-9 that reads, But God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us. How much more then, since we are now justified by his blood, will we be saved through him from the wrath. Only such unparalleled mercy and forgiveness, such unstinting gladness could have prompted the Führer’s genuine repentance. To accuse him, though justly, of his dreadful sins would have prompted Hitler’s self-righteous defense, his angry justification of his ‘necessary’ deeds.“[1]

Thus, according to the classical Protestant view, God would grant clemency and forgiveness even to the worst kind of sinner. Barth’s perspective is not much different from the Catholic view expressed after WWII, which claimed, “God forgives even the worst kind of sinners—such as Adolf Hitler. Just the other day, Jennifer Fulwiler wrote in the National Catholic Register:

“God loves Osama Bin Laden, just as He does the rest of us . . . It wasn’t until I came to believe in God and started learning about Catholic teaching that I would look back on that awful day and have my mind reel as I tried to absorb one of the most difficult moral truths I’d ever heard: That God not only could, but wants to forgive Osama bin Laden. That even someone who was responsible for a terror attack that slaughtered thousands could ask for God’s forgiveness, and receive it… It was one of those things that I’d read about but had never internalized: God loves murderers as much as he loves the rest of us, even as much as he loves the people whom they hurt. What does that say about our God? What does it mean for us, given that we are called to love as God loves?! . . .This most difficult of truths has come to mind again as I see Osama bin Laden’s image splashed all over the media, and hear the reports that he is now dead. God loves that man as much as he loved Mother Teresa? God loves that man as much as he loves the people on Flight 93? As much as he loves each of the other victims of 9/11? As much as he loves me? It’s true. It’s completely counter-intuitive to our fallen human nature, which sees love as something that is earned, something finite and fluctuating, something that can be permanently lost with enough bad behavior. But it’s true.”

Oh really?? I don’t think so.

God’s love demands that we change our behavior, ask those we have wronged for forgiveness, and make the amends never to repeat the offense again. There is nothing whatsoever to suggest that bin Laden ever did any of these things. No murderer can undo the evil that he has done. There can be no forgiveness. Osama bin Laden, along with Hitler, is unforgiven.

Personally, I think that Jesus was only speaking about the typical garden variety of “enemies” that we experience in our daily lives. I do not believe he intended to include mass-murderers and genocidal maniacs.

If God is truly a just God, a God who rewards and punishes people based on their the quality of their deeds, then no “cheap salvation,” (to borrow a phrase from the great Lutheran theologian Dietrich Bonheoffer) can ever hope to prevent such wicked people from the consequences of their heinous deeds. Whenever speaking about God’s attributes, it is important to remember that each divine attribute serves as a model for human beings to emulate in their behavior. Attributes depicting Divine love, compassion, graciousness, and so on are fairly self-explanatory. But what about “Divine wrath” or “anger”? The ubiquity of the dark emotions of God found in much of the Tanakh cannot be sugar-coated or glossed over.[2]

Yet, as the theologian Abraham Joshua Heschel observes, there is a place in our lives for “righteous indignation.” Whenever we see the oppression and murder of innocents, we cannot merely stand by and sing a chorus of “Kumbya.” The Torah demands that we hold people accountable for their murderous deeds; why should we expect anything less from a God who created the moral law along with the laws of nature?

More seriously, if God is so willy-nilly about punishing evil, why should we care? Why have Hell altogether when a sinner can simply and magically say, “Lord Jesus, save me!”

Imam Hesham Hassaballa, author of the blog God, Faith and a Pen, wisely writes:

I received a message from someone who had mentioned his killing and said “May God have mercy upon him.” I had a hard time with that. This man didn’t show any mercy to anyone on earth that didn’t fit his ultra-narrow definition of “believer.” Thus, I can’t bring myself to ask God to have mercy upon him.

That is not to say that God cannot have mercy upon him. I am no one to predict or put words in God’s mouth. But I will not be someone who will beseech God to forgive Osama bin Laden. God will deal with him as he deserves. And God is a Lord of justice: bin Laden will get exactly what he deserved.

I agree with Imam. Wicked men—regardless of the religion they profess—cannot escape justice, not in this world and certainly not in the World of Eternity.

One last thought for the record: For nearly 2000 years, the Christian world has seldom forgiven Jews of any era for the death of Jesus and Christian hatred contributed greatly to every historical tragedy that has affected our people-culminating in the Holocaust. It is no coincidence that the infamous Kristallnacht, “The Night of Broken Glass” occurred on a night where Germans celebrated Martin Luther’s birthday. Luther wrote a small “pastoral” treatise, “Von den Jüden und iren Lüge (“The Jews and Their Lies”) in January of 1543 where he advocated harsh persecution of the Jewish people, including that their synagogues and schools be set on fire, prayer-books destroyed, rabbis forbidden to preach, homes razed, and property and money confiscated.

One cannot believe that Jesus or James would ever want to have their names associated with such scoundrels; the KJV of James 2:19 is reads much more dramatically, ” Thou believest that there is one God; thou doest well: the devils also believe, …”

In summary, if anyone believes that Osama bin Ladin is deserving of Heaven, then one is forced to admit that each and every one of these mass-murderers of Christian history also gets a free pass to Heaven; they could spend their dying moments with complete equanimity knowing that they would be forgiven of all their sins because they were pious true believers, washed by the “blood of the lamb.” This exposition may help explain why the Church’s attitude remains (enigmatically) benign toward all of its perpetrators of evil. Its seems to me this kind of thinking encourages the worst kind of human behavior imaginable.

Christianity would be wise to abandon the justification of faith doctrine as being morally bankrupt, and perhaps the world can breathe a deep sigh of relief . . . To Christianity’s credit, it has come a long way from its violent past, but its followers must remain mindful of its heinous historical record against the Jews, Cathars, and the Native American communities of the New World-from North to South America.