Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.
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Notes -
What would it mean to not "forgive"... to proclaim a desire for vengeance? If so, that seems like a much more staggering path. Even after seeing his previous career, Trump's words at the funeral are the ones that are shocking to me, as I have no wish for ill to befall my American political opponents and indeed would like policies that I oppose to prove me wrong by being beneficial. (For one, it costs me money when the economy is bad!) All this to say that I think that you are simultaneously too cynical about basic standards for human behavior and not nearly cynical enough about the extent to which this is a cost-free, potentially calculated position: Erika Kirk doesn't legally really get any say in the punishment already.
It's not cynical from a Christian perspective, to my knowledge of Christianity. You, as a person, are enjoined to forgive on a spiritual level, but that has very little to do with the state executing temporal justice. Executioners in the Middle Ages used to have swords with prayers for the victim's soul engraved on them. A lot of people in this thread seem to be running on some sort of behaviourist model where Christians can't actually believe what they claim to believe, but in my experience they actually often do.
My point is that if Erika Kirk did not genuinely forgive her husband's murderer and inwardly longed for violent vengeance, her taking a public stance either way almost certainly has zero impact on the actual outcome. Indeed, I would argue that there are strong incentives, both social and financial, to take on the forgiveness stance. While I am not doubting her sincerity (and I certainly approve of these incentives' continued existence as a plus for contemporary Christianity), I am not impressed by it.
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