On Charlie Kirk

On Humanity in Grief:

I am sad. Profoundly sad for the public assassination of a political figure, and for all the indicators that political assassinations represent - the vitriol that storms across the internet and the loss of our shared humanity.

I'll be honest: I didn't really follow Charlie Kirk before his death. I couldn't have told you much about him, about Turning Point USA, about his tone or his role in the Republican Party, about how he engaged with college kids around the country.  

The evening of the day Charlie was killed, a neighbor was pacing in turmoil in front of our house. We invited him onto our porch, gave him a drink, and listened to his pain and confusion. That felt good - that felt human. Our 16-year-old daughter was familiar with Charlie Kirk and was shocked and saddened by the news. It was jarring for all of us. Listening to her process this tragedy, guiding her through her questions and emotions - that, too, felt human.

Since then, I have listened to many videos of Charlie Kirk doing his thing. I've watched him on stages, in formal debates, under tents with open microphones. And if I felt it were my place to give an opinion on who Charlie Kirk was, I would say this: Charlie Kirk was a man. A man with many parts, like all of us.

I think one part of him loved Jesus and wanted to follow and live an obedient life before Him. I could see that he was clearly passionate, bold, and courageous - he ran toward vulnerability rather than away from it. These are admirable qualities that many of us aspire to.

I also noticed he could be domineering at times. He made inappropriate and personal insults. Sometimes he created space for the opinions and voices of others; other times he seemed to shut voices down or diminish them.

I don't want to excuse these behaviors by simply calling them "human." Poor behavior is poor behavior, regardless of who does it. Being human doesn't give us license to dominate others or to use our words as weapons. But recognizing someone's humanity means acknowledging that they are capable of both harm and good - not excusing the harm, but refusing to pretend that's all they are.

This is what strikes me: Charlie Kirk's complexity mirrors our own. He contained multitudes, as we all do. He was capable of great passion for what he believed in, and also capable of causing real harm. He could inspire and he could wound. The question isn't whether he was perfect - none of us are. The question is whether we can hold both truths about someone simultaneously: their capacity for good and their responsibility for harm.

What I Support

In recognizing Charlie Kirk's humanity - his mixture of light and shadow - we must also recognize our own. And in that recognition lies an opportunity for something better than what we've been giving each other.

I am someone who often sees behind the curtain of spiritual and religious leadership. I am not easily swayed by charisma or by people saying all the right things. In my experience, the best measuring tool for the measure of the maturity of a a person is this: how are your relationships going?

I support humanizing each other, even across political divides. I support speaking with words that build up rather than tear down. I support telling the truth in love. I support fair power dynamics in our discourse. I support pulling over when a hearse is driving by - metaphorically and literally - respecting times of mourning for families and communities who have lost someone they love.

I support debate that is fair, civil, and productive. I support admitting when we are wrong. I support healthy confrontation that brings truth to bear without destroying the person in the process. I support honor, solidarity, personal regulation, and perspective. I support taking responsibility for our words and actions.

The Danger of Unprocessed Hurt and Willful Blindness

Here's something I've been thinking about: hurt, when left unaddressed, has a way of turning into resentment. Every time someone heard a video of Charlie Kirk and felt hurt or offended by his words, and just absorbed that hurt without processing it - that pain didn't disappear. It accumulated. It hardened. It became something darker.

This happens on all sides. When we hear someone say something that wounds us, challenges our deepest beliefs, or attacks something we hold sacred, and we don't find healthy ways to address that hurt, it ferments into resentment. That resentment makes it easier to see the person who hurt us as entirely bad, as less than human, as someone who deserves whatever happens to them.

But there's another trap that's equally dangerous: when we love someone, we can fall into offering all hope and no truth. We tell ourselves stories about the people we care about that ignore their capacity for harm. We make excuses for their worst behaviors, we minimize the hurt they cause others, we create a delusional perspective that sees only their light and never their shadow.

Both extremes - the resentment that sees only darkness and the love that sees only light - rob people of their full humanity. Charlie Kirk was neither the monster his critics made him out to be nor the perfect figure his supporters might have seen. He was a complex human being capable of both inspiring and wounding, just as we all are.

When Charlie Kirk was killed, we lost not just a political figure, but a complex human being. We lost a father, a husband, a son. We lost someone's annoying neighbor and someone else's cherished friend. We also lost someone who wounded others - who insulted people because of their race, gender, or sexuality. We lost someone who proclaimed the name of Jesus. We lost someone who was still growing, still learning, still capable of change - and now that possibility for growth and repair is gone forever.

This is what happens when we reduce people to their politics, when we forget that even those we disagree with most vehemently are still human beings with inner lives, with people who love them, with capacity for both good and harm. When we flatten someone into just their worst moments or their most controversial statements, we make it easier to see them as less than human. And when someone becomes less than human in our minds, violence becomes thinkable.

What I Treasure and What I Lament

The thing I treasure most about Charlie Kirk is that he did proclaim the truth of the good news of Jesus. And he seemed to genuinely value people being in each other's presence, talking about their differences. In a world where we increasingly retreat into our own echo chambers, there was something valuable about his commitment to showing up in spaces where disagreement was inevitable.

I don't agree with all his positions. I don't agree with the tone and disrespect he treated people with at times. But what I can see is that he was one heck of a determined man. From 19 to 31, he made a mark on the world. 

And what I can say is that it is a tragedy that he was publicly assassinated. Not just because of what we lost in him, but because of what this act represents about our inability to handle disagreement without violence.

What I can say is that I remain disappointed in our ability as people to draw near to each other. We have lost the art of sitting with someone whose views wound us, of staying in conversation when it gets uncomfortable, of finding the humanity in those who frustrate us most. We have lost touch with basic decency and common manners. We have forgotten what it means to debate a topic with respect and competency - to engage ideas rather than attack persons, to listen before we respond, to disagree without demonizing.

Charlie Kirk's death should remind us that behind every political figure, every pundit, every voice we love or hate, is a person as complex as we are. Someone trying to make sense of the world, someone doing both good and harm, someone beloved by some and reviled by others.

We can disagree passionately with someone's ideas while still honoring their humanity. We can oppose their politics while still grieving their loss. We can critique their public actions while still recognizing that they were someone's everything.

This doesn't mean we stop fighting for what we believe in. It doesn't mean we stop calling out harmful rhetoric or dangerous ideas. It means we do so while remembering that the person we're opposing is a person - flawed, complex, and human, just like us.  And in this case, now dead.  

As we process the death of Charlie Kirk, perhaps we can find our way back to seeing each other as we truly are: complicated, contradictory, capable of great love and great harm, and deserving of the basic dignity that comes with being human.