Every kingdom divided against itself cannot stand. (Mark 12:24)
Harvard Professor Arthur Brooks delivered a speech at Utah Valley University just two weeks after Charlie Kirk was assassinated on its campus.
He spoke on one of his favorite themes: we must learn to love our enemies if our nation is to heal from the polarizing hatred that dominates our discourse. Anger, Brooks proposed, isn’t really the problem; contempt is. “When we deploy disgust in conjunction with anger,” he argued, “we produce a complex emotion called contempt: the conviction of the worthlessness of another person. And it is contempt that is the source of America’s greatest problems.”
Our judgmental hearts naturally block us from considering Christ’s command to love our enemies.
Yet Christ himself questions us when we allow our hearts to harden. “Why,” he asks in the Sermon on the Mount, “do you notice the splinter in your brother’s eye, but do not perceive the wooden beam in your own eye?
How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me remove that splinter from your eye’ when the wooden beam is in your own eye? (Matthew 7:3-5)
Truly we are living in a “kingdom divided,” where rather than considering opponents’ ideas thoughtfully we quickly turn to media outlets that mock our opponents and comfort us in views we already hold.
We’ve just observed how, even before a suspect was apprehended on the tragic day when Kirk was killed, confident commentators framed his murder in whatever way would increase contempt of their political enemies.
Social media posts, podcasts and television spots from both the left and the right used the murder for their own purposes, seemingly without a moment of self-examination.
Yet we also saw a compelling model of compassion for an enemy, one we might have the courage to emulate.
In a stunning public act of commitment to the narrow way of Christ, Charlie Kirk’s wife Erika forgave her husband’s killer.
“My husband, Charlie, wanted to save young men, just like the one who took his life,” Erika Kirk said when she spoke through her grief at her husband’s memorial. “Our Savior said, ‘Father forgive them for they know not what they do.’ I forgive him:
I forgive him because it was what Christ did and is what Charlie would do.
Sadly, few public people followed her example. Even after Erika Kirk’s beautiful gesture, most of the commentary about the crisis continued in the same contemptuous tones.
Domenico Fetti’s 1619 masterpiece, The Parable of the Mote and the Beam came to mind. It is a painting I return to often when examining my own judgmental heart.
Fetti sets Christ’s parable as a lecture, even a scolding, from a bearded older man to a younger, more innocent one. The beam blocking the older man’s sight is large and long, and from it a thin splinter juts at the eye of the younger man.
The accuser, seated above the young man, doesn’t see him clearly; his clouded eyes indicate the blindness of his heart.
In contrast, the younger man, respectfully standing in the lower place, gazes with wide open eyes, not at his elder’s beam, but at the splinter pointing right at him.
The painting unmasks me; I am so often that older man. It convicts me of the consequences of succumbing to the contemptuous culture that makes it so very difficult to see others as Christ sees them.
Erika Kirk did not succumb to the culture of contempt.
Her example of forgiveness moved many of her political enemies. Jimmy Kimmel, whose talk show was temporarily suspended following his initial comments after Kirk’s murder, returned to the air about a week later with a monologue that included this tribute:
There was a moment over the weekend, a very beautiful moment. On Sunday, Erika Kirk forgave the man who shot her husband. She forgave him. That is an example we should follow.
“If you believe in the teachings of Jesus, as I do, there it was,” Kimmel continued, “That’s it. A selfless act of grace, forgiveness from a grieving widow. It touched me deeply, and I hope it touches many. If there’s anything we should take from this tragedy to carry forward, I hope it can be that.”
Political opponents described Kimmel’s emotion as “crocodile tears” and Charlie Kirk’s opponents continued to comb the years of his campus debates for moments that would further contempt of his supporters in the aftermath of his death.
Of course Kimmel’s fans and Kirk’s supporters will continue disagreeing with a passion worthy of anyone who loves America and wants everyone in it to flourish.
Arthur Brooks asserts that we don’t need to disagree less, but better. We do that, he says, not so much by standing up to the other side, but “by standing up to those on our own side who say we must hate each other:
We must go looking for contempt, and run toward it with love.
Wherever we find ourselves on the political spectrum, whatever vision of this country we want to see realized, we must seize this moment to bravely resist contemptuous speech, confronting especially those people who tend to agree with us about our “enemies.”
This divided kingdom will not stand unless we all take on the difficult work of removing the log from our own eyes while loving political enemies as ourselves.
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You might also enjoy Pointing Past Polarization: Matthew Becklo’s The Way of Heaven and Earth and Whoever You Are and However You Voted, You Are (Still) My Neighbor.
“She follows in a distinguished line of Christians who forgave, including the Amish, who forgave the killer of their children; Everett Worthington, who forgave the man who raped and murdered his elderly mother; and Pope St. John Paul II, who forgave his would-be assassin.” –Dr. Christopher Kaczor, whose reflection, Erika Kirk Teaches the World Forgiveness, was helpful to me in thinking about what forgiveness means.
I would love to hear your thoughts!
Photos: Ajax9 and stmphotos on iStock. Domenico Fetti’s The Parable of the Mote and the Beam courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. Scripture reference: New American Bible.
