The recent death of Osama Bin Laden has created a buzz in the world of Facebook, Twitter and online discussions. President Obama announced that after ten elusive years, the mastermind terrorist of the September 11 attacks had been slain by the fighting elite of SEAL Team 6. News coverage showed exuberant residents Washington D.C. reveling outside the White House in the wee hours of May 1.

In the following days, many evangelical Christians posted blogs and Tweeted Bible verses conveying their take on Bin Laden’s death. While some gave candid opinions, most were oblique and ambivalent.

There appeared to be indecision as to how we should react as Christians –as if some underlying guilt kept us from jubilation at a wicked man’s demise.  The rationale seemed to be that Bin Laden was an evil man who did know Christ; he is awaiting final everlasting judgment, incapable of repentance and salvation. Therefore, we shouldn’t be happy about it.

Something’s wrong with this perspective.  We should not rejoice because of vengeance, granted.  God is the final judge, not us. We should love our enemies as Jesus commanded. We should pray for them. We should’ve been more overjoyed at the possibility of a man such as Osama Bin Laden possibly being forgiven and saved. [...]

Having discussed the source from which God’s love flows—that is God’s essential attribute of love as it is and has been expressed perpetually and eternally, apart from and independent of the created order, within His intratrinitarian Persons (See my first installment to this series)—we can now consider the expressions of the outworking of God’s other-orientation in His self-giving. The first aspect of God’s self-giving love, to which we will now devote our attention, is the providential love of God for all creation.

God “did not, on making the world, leave it to itself, or commit it into other hands; but it is an object of His constant care, and His hand is concerned in all its movements.”[i] God is not deistic; He is, in fact, interested and concerned with what He has created. Creation is not worthless; it is, on the contrary, of special significance to God.

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You might be unaware of this but as of right now there are two states out 50 that still allow death row inmates to be executed by firing squad – Utah and Oklahoma.  Death by firing squad was actually banned in Utah in 2004, but it is still allowed to be a chosen form of death by those who have been on death row prior to the laws conception.  

This morning a death row inmate was executed by firing squad in Utah.  His name was Ronnie Lee Gardner, and he was the first to die in Utah by this method of execution in 14 years.  He died at 12:15 am. 

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C.S. Lewis wrote many books which actually chronicle his own journey through life, and one of those books is entitled The Problem of Pain. In this book, which is considered by many to be one of his most well written and beautifully delivered works, C.S. Lewis attempts to tackle what he calls the problem presented to the Christian by the issue of pain. This problem is more than a problem; it is a horror filled war raging from the halls of academia to the silent nights spent in a lonely hospital room. Philosopher David Hume artfully captured the problem of evil in this way:

Is he [God] willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is impotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Whence then is evil?

This question is posed many different ways in many different situations, so answering it requires the Christian to be prepared to “give an account for the joy within us” even in the face of great tragedy. Broadly speaking, there are two situations in which a believer will run across this question: pastorally and philosophically.

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Question:  Will the person who has never heard the gospel go to hell?

I am not under the false allusion here that this is a tough question to tackle within our post-modern generation where people slap ‘co-exist’ bumper stickers on the back of their cars and rail anybody who preaches an exclusive message.  What is more, lots of  western ‘Christians’ have been influenced by their cultural framework into believing that all religions lead to the same place, and that the person who has never heard the gospel is in no danger at all from separation from their Maker for eternity.  There is in fact an awareness that needs to be raised for Christians to begin to think through tough questions and be ready to always give a sound and logical answer.  In this article I will attempt to explain this question from a biblical perspective the best that I can.

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