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?
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Notes -
This isn't a question but rather a statement. But I would like to hear what you think.
So I didn’t care for Charlie Kirk, and I’m not Christian (though I think they're pretty cool in general). But the fact that Erika Kirk, his widow, stood up and forgave the man accused of murdering her husband is staggering.
In an era where public life is fueled by score-settling and astounding cruelty this feels like a rare moment of moral progress. It’s counter-cultural in a good way: mercy instead of vengeance.
Here's an article from The Guardian about it
It's especially notable when you compare this act to yesterday’s generation of right-wing Christian political leaders, who would’ve absolutely doubled down on punishment and wrath. Can you imagine, fucking, Hannity, Limbaugh, O'Reilly, Falwell or Robertson forgiving someone that murdered their spouse? Yeah right.
And just to remind us of the previous era that needs to finish going the way of the dinosaurs, Trump himself openly said on stage right next to her that he hates his enemies and doesn’t care what Erika just said about what Jesus says about forgiveness.
To see Erika Kirk take the opposite stance, forgiveness, love, mercy, is unexpectedly hopeful. I am appreciating the small bit of moral progress on the Christian right here.
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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