Osama Bin Laden is dead and the world is a safer* place, but that will not bring back the lives he took, only God’s love can do that. As a Christian, Christ calls me to love my enemies and pray for those who persecute me, but at present the best that I can bring myself to say is may God have mercy on his soul.

*Whether or not it will become a better place depends more upon our response to his death than on his death itself (just as terrorism does most of its damage not by acts of terror in and of themselves, but by the response of the victims of the attacks). As Christians we are called to apply ourselves to shaping our country’s response.