In a moving speech at Charlie Kirk’s memorial service, his widow Erika said she forgives the murderer, Tyler Robinson. Although it could not have been easy, she was in a safe place to forgive because her views align with those of the present government, which has commenced Robinson’s prosecution. Those who forgive require a justice system founded on fairness to protect against offenders doing more harm. Unfortunately, Donald Trump’s actions and policies are eroding American justice, and it is not a safe time for his opponents.
In 2015, President Barack Obama also spoke movingly at a memorial service, that time for the victims of the mass shooting at the AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina. Like Kirk, AME’s parishioners said they forgave the perpetrator. But what does it mean when genuinely well-meaning people say they forgive?
In Luke 23:34, Jesus is reported to have cried out from the cross: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” Speaking at her husband’s memorial service, Kirk appears to have relied on that passage when she said:
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.
Are we to understand from Christ’s words that “they” didn’t realize they were doing evil by executing a controversial but innocent man, and in such a cruel way? Hardly. It was recognized at the time that those who agitated for his execution were in the wrong. It’s why, so we’re told, Pontius Pilate washed his hands. Or did Jesus mean his executioners didn’t see that he was the son of God? To that extent, Christ’s words have no personal application to us because none of us has a claim to divinity.
This is not to impugn Kirk’s sincerity nor that of the AME congregation; rather, it is to illustrate how hard it is to comprehend “forgive,” as evidenced by the lengthy analysis in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Among other things, “forgiving” is: “relinquishing resentment or some other form of morally inflected anger.” It “helps us move beyond strong negative emotions which, if allowed to fester, could harm us psychologically and physically.” Forgiving also releases wrongdoers from the “blame and hard feelings” of those they wrong or helps them “transcend the guilt or remorse.”
I doubt I would feel any impulse to forgive if someone I was close to was murdered, at least right after the event. How could I react with anything less than anger? I’d be enraged each time the loved one came to mind because then I’d remember that their life was wrongly taken. Trump was honest when he declared at Charlie Kirk’s memorial service: “I hate my opponents and don’t want the best for them.”
Nevertheless, Trump was wrong to leave off where Erika Kirk humanely began. The act of forgiving serves essential societal and psychological ends. To persist in hating another human being is to allow them to inhabit your brain and heart, while to forgive is a wrenching but intelligent resolve to move forward. We need to divert resentment to some harbor in our emotions where, over time, it might become more manageable.
However, to forgive does not mean to let the murderer go unpunished. Granting them the ultimate mercy of freedom would be reckless. It could expose the victim’s family and friends to further harm. In the case of political assassination, it would allow the murderer to go after other ideological opponents.
A safe environment for forgiving, however we comprehend it, requires a reasonably fair and efficient justice system that consistently follows established rules. Such a system shows mercy in that verdicts are rooted in principle, not private vengeance. It protects family, friends and associates from ongoing danger as they try to come to terms with the loss. In doing so, it creates a bond between government and citizen.
Unfortunately, while Erika Kirk bravely forgave, the movement her husband led has not acknowledged that it, too, has done devastating harm. Take the January 6, 2021 insurrection, when President Trump urged on an assault in which more than 140 police officers were injured and one died from his injuries. Four years later, in a perversion of the spirit of “forgiveness,” Trump issued fourteen sentence reductions and a blanket pardon for the remaining nearly 1,600 insurrectionists who had been convicted of various crimes.
By overriding the verdicts issued by courts around the country, Trump threatened the bond between government and citizen. He is weakening it further by converting the Department of Justice from a professional organization guided by rules into an instrument of personal vendetta. Opponents must protect themselves. It is not a safe time for them to forgive.
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