Article“I had enough of his hatred. Some hate can’t be negotiated out.”
To the extent that we have a purported motive for the assassination of Charlie Kirk, this is it: what 22-year-old Tyler Robinson texted his roommate and romantic partner when asked why he did it.
We can all see the irony and the perversity in trying to overcome “hate” with violence – with more hate. Can we see the lure of it too?
The collective response to the tragedy across the US and the world would suggest that when it comes down to it, the irony may, alas, be lost on us. The declarations of vengeance and lists of enemies, the mutual recriminations between right and left, the fury and, yes, the hate: all these are natural human responses to being attacked, to injustice, to loss. And after that initial moment of (self-)righteous satisfaction, all end up only making things worse.
That this is our default reaction to injury, and that it isn’t the only one available to us, was displayed starkly at Kirk’s public memorial service over the weekend. Kirk’s wife Erika declared through tears:
“That man, that young man … I forgive him. I forgive him because it was what Christ did and is what Charlie would do. The answer to hate is not hate. The answer we know from the gospel is love and always love. Love for our enemies and love for those who persecute us.”
President Trump, speaking after her, was almost comically unable to concur. “[Charlie] did not hate his opponents,” he said. “He wanted the best for them. That’s where I disagreed with Charlie; I hate my opponent and I don’t want the best for them … I am sorry, Erika … But I can’t stand my opponent.”
All our traditions of moral wisdom are clear on which path leads to peace. Just this week I was reading something by an atheist (the sociologist Jonathan Haidt) that quoted the Torah, Jesus, Martin Luther King Jr, and Buddha on the need to be slow to anger and quick to forgive (and the tendency of social media in particular to encourage the opposite):
“In this world, hate never yet dispelled hate. Only love dispels hate.” (Buddha)
“There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies.” (MLK)
As Erika Kirk pointed out, Jesus was extremely, extremely clear on how his followers are to treat those we consider our enemies: we are to love them. We are to love them. Given the number of Christians in the world, you would think this would therefore be a common, even mundane moral act. But when we see it happen – when Danny and Leila Abdallah forgive the drunk driver who killed three of their children, when Ian Wilkinson forgives Erin Patterson for her attempt to murder him – we are still stunned. It goes so deeply against our natural instincts.
Those who do this under terrible circumstances and in the public glare will often say that this grace doesn’t come from them, it’s given in the moment. It’s divine. But I suspect those who respond this way in moments of such monstrous pain are people who have sought that grace, exercised that moral muscle, over and over in the small things for many years.
Those small choices are not ones that Facebook (for example) encourages, or wants, us to make. Hate breeds only hate. Fury breeds only fury. (Both breed addiction to social media, and funnel advertising dollars to its architects.) The temptation to it is strong, but we can start by recognising it for what it is: a temptation, and a trap. To paraphrase the old dieting saw: a moment on the lips (at the fingertips?), a lifetime on the moral parameters that govern our society. (The original is catchier, I guess.)
I want to urge those around me: don’t heed voices of division from far away. Look at people in our own backyard – like the Abdallahs, like Ian Wilkinson – who reject hate and seek to repair the fabric of our common life.
I want to urge my fellow Christians in particular: don’t heed those who talk of retribution, of crushing your opponents. The way of Jesus is harder and higher and holier than that.
But given my own scrolling, and ranting, and (yes) hating, how can I? I despair of saying anything that will make things better and not worse. There are too many things being said as it is. Maybe I should quit social media and go touch some grass, or whatever.
I don’t know, honestly. I think of that great but apocryphal story of G. K. Chesterton writing to a newspaper, in response to the question “What’s wrong with the world?”, the brief answer: “Dear Sirs, I am.” Looking it up, I find that the letter he really wrote to the editor of the Daily News in 1905 – I’ve never seen it before – was longer and more complex, but just as pertinent to this moment:
“Political or economic reform will not make us good and happy, but until this odd period nobody ever expected that they would. Now, I know there is a feeling that Government can do anything. But if Government could do anything, nothing would exist except Government. Men have found the need of other forces. Religion, for instance, existed in order to do what law cannot do … The Church endeavoured to institute a machinery of pardon; the State has only a machinery of punishment. The State can only free society from the criminal; the Church sought to free the criminal from the crime. Abolish religion if you like. Throw everything on secular government if you like. But do not be surprised if a machinery that was never meant to do anything but secure external decency and order fails to secure internal honesty and peace. …
In one sense, and that the eternal sense, the thing is plain. The answer to the question ‘What is Wrong?’ is, or should be, ‘I am wrong.’ Until a man can give that answer his idealism is only a hobby.”
Writing this has made me more disappointed in myself, and a bit more hopeful about other people. If I can turn away more often from whatever “content” makes me more self-righteous, angry, and misanthropic – and towards sources of moral beauty, first and foremost the implacable and infinitely tender example of Jesus – that would be a start.
Natasha Moore is a Senior Research Fellow at of the Centre for Public Christianity and author of The Pleasures of Pessimism. She holds a PhD in English literature from the University of Cambridge.