“In your religion, do you believe God could forgive him?”
The questioner’s face betrayed an intense curiosity. She wanted my answer. The surname of the person in question was bin Laden.
Shortly after the September 11 attack, American intelligence agencies identified lead players responsible for the terrorist carnage. The assault here on American soil – the most brazen and vicious since Pearl Harbor (1941) – guaranteed the enshrinement of another date to “live in infamy”. The principal schemer and mastermind was revealed to the public and in a matter of hours the name Osama Bin Laden became synonymous among many with unspeakable evil.
The young woman from the Far East, whose husband was pursuing an engineering degree at our campus, had directed the question my way amidst an informal visit on life and faith. Her knowledge of Biblical Christianity – its foremost tenet being sacrificial love – was foreign to her mind and she drove the question home.
Can God forgive the bin Ladens of the world?
I responded in a quiet tone. ‘Yes’. God’s mercy was somehow big enough to cover even an evil such as this. “If he were to confess and turn from his sin, yes he would find pardon”, I responded, hoping my voice carried a conviction I did not deeply feel.
The student spouse wouldn’t buy it, “No”, she replied, “such a wrong like this done by someone cannot be forgiven!” She was not to be persuaded otherwise. Not today, perhaps not at all.
For my own part, I frankly entertained a subtle wish in the moment that it might not be true, that even divine pardon had its limitations. As with the Prophet Jonah in the Old Testament with his condemning heart posture toward the barbaric city of Nineveh and its inhabitants, I could, at least momentarily, want God’s wrath directed toward particular elements of evildoers.
But then, where would that leave me and the rest of humanity. I knew, at least in my mind, the answer. Forgiveness, indeed full pardon, extends to any and all presenting themselves in contrite repentance. Some label such mercy as outrageous. And so it likely is.
“The wages of sin is death but the free gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. . . Christ suffered for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God.”*
©2024 Jerry Lout *Romans 6:23; 1 Peter 3:18