Simply Complicated: One Catholic's Response to the Bin Laden Brouhaha

God is simple.  It is we who are complicated.

This whole weekend has been fraught with brouhaha.  As if the royal wedding and the papal beatification weren't enough excitement to send the entire Western world into a manic frenzy, U.S. special forces have successfully killed terrorist leader Osama Bin Laden.  All of the media websites from NBC to Fox have saturated their websites with in-depth analysis and commentary over the event.

As if we didn't know the facts already.  He blew up several buildings and military targets, as well as all of the people inside.  What else do we need to know?  All of the political tit-for-tat can't dress up the brute evil that he has overseen.  And I am not just saying this because I am an American; I am saying this because I have eyeballs in my skull that just happen to still work decently and remain connected to my still-functioning brain.

Bin Laden committed grave atrocities, succumbed to his violent urges, losing the greater Jihad in the process.  He embraced a fundamentalist, radical version of Islam; Islam, like the other organized religions, is multi-layered, multi-faceted, and multi-cultural.  If any quintessentially "Muslim" solution exists for a practicing Muslim, it can only come from consulting the Koran, wise leaders, and the traditions of the community.

In the wake of such a socio-political tsunami, Christians would be wise to withdraw from shore, regroup, and carefully plan how to respond to the aftermath, rather than rush headlong into the tide, spouting choice prooftexts or joining in the chaos.  Instead, they should reflect upon the Church's historical teachings and ponder the whole of Scripture; usually they will find that the "Christian solution" is equally multi-faceted.

As a student of Church history, I have the luxury of a panoramic perspective; the Church has undergone steady growth and has blossomed brightly, despite certain periods of drought, doubt, and lack of clout.

Christianity has survived for so long and flourished so vibrantly precisely because it has refused to simplify its answers for a world that demands all of its answers in neatly-wrapped boxes.  

But isn't the Gospel simple?  Even a small child can read John 3:16 with a little help, so we shouldn't over-complicate God's simple message, right?

I agree that the message is simple.  It is beautifully simple.  God and his message are beautifully simple.  It is his world and all of sinful creation that are complicated.  It is precisely when such pristine, unalloyed truth encounters this perverted creation and attempts to untwist it that the process gets complicated.  How does one provide for the poor in a world with such scarce resources?  How does a society govern itself justly without relying upon manipulation or violence?

How does the Church uphold both its mandate to be the "salt of the world" and to "love [its] enemies"?  How does the Church, the very sign and sacrament of the renewed humanity, embody within its weak members God's saving power?  How does humanity, with all of its multiplicity, emulate and participate in God's divine unity?

It does so by asserting both Divine qualities unflinchingly, by affirming all true demonstrations of God's presence, and by admitting that, despite its best efforts, its own attempts to demonstrate God's one, unchanging, saving action with her own is imperfect at best.  

We are the Body of Christ. Even His resurrected body bore those salutary scars; through those wounds, he saved Thomas from his doubt.  It is precisely through uniting the world's suffering to His through her Body that the Church ushers in the kingdom.  For "it is in dying that we gain everlasting life".  Christ gave life only through self-renunciation and death.  We should do the same.

It's that simple.