Light and love and yada, yada, yada...

I follow my good buddy Lynne's blog and I'm going to throw down this quote from her about page:
"Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that." -Martin Luther King, Jr.

While I generally agree with the good Reverend, I'm beginning to question the only light and only love parts of this idea. Then again, maybe I don't question it, maybe I'm just perplexed at this moment, given the recent killing and disposal of Osama Bin Laden. Yes he was a heinous maniac of our time who took SO MUCH from SO MANY. He was in our eyes the darkness. He, to us, was evil. As in the funny movie Dragnet, he was P.A.G.A.N.


You know, People Against Goodness and Normalcy.

Well sir, now we have his extinction, the icon of the terrorists. Our God gets to be the judge. As in all capital punishment cases, the question in my mind is, did God actually say it was time for the judgement? Do we damn our own selves each time we take judgement (in this extreme) in our own hands? I know I come off sounding like a pansy, liberal here, as if I'm against capital punishment. As if I don't want all those murders, that were on Bin Laden's watch to be vindicated. Let's get this clear, I'm not feeling that either. But I look at the crowds cheering and singing in victory over this one demonic, almost inhuman, creature, and I can't help but think how much this all appeals to our basest primal levels. Is the arguement then, does it really take love and light to drive out darkness and hate? Does it just take a good team of Navy Seals? Or does our drive to avenge this evil turn us simply more dark? If the latter is the case, then we may actually be doomed to swirl endlessly in our own pools of darkness and hate, because it sure is hard NOT to celebrate the execution of Bin Laden. I wonder, then, if it is possible to celebrate now and ask God for forgiveness later.