By Father Casey

I had never heard of Charlie Kirk before this week.

Considering his massive popularity in the right-wing of American politics, that probably says something about me. It also says something about the chambers of our political discourse, and how little we tend to know about people "on the other side" of our battle lines. Regardless, I didn't know his name or story before I read the news of his murder.

So, like all of you, I was faced with a question. What should I feel about his death? Isn't that what we are asked to do anytime something like this happens – obey the dictates of our national politics to decide if we should be happy or outraged about something? Especially when an event involves someone who is so clearly associated with a political ideology, we are expected to view it through the lenses of our political allegiances.

And sure enough, before I could even learn anything about Mr. Kirk, I could see that people were lining up according to the pattern. My social media feeds quickly filled with all sorts of sentiment, including a fair amount of schadenfreude.

As Christians, we should be careful not to follow the dictates of our poisonous political environment to determine how we view the world and our fellow human beings, no matter who they are. We should, instead, return to our values.

Our values exist to guide us when we don't know what to think or how to act. That's why we have core values: to orient us in the dark. It's easy to know what to do when we're in the daylight, when life is simple and straightforward, when the questions are clear and the answers are obvious. Far harder to know what to do when the questions are complicated and the answers feel ambiguous.

Our values come from Jesus Christ. He is our way, our truth, and our life, so we look to him to know how to act when we aren't sure what to think or feel. And his teachings in the gospels are clear. We are to love all our neighbors as ourselves, regardless of how they feel about us. We are to love one another with the same selfless love that Jesus loves with. We are even to love the ones we think of as enemies.

From that standpoint, I didn't need to know anything about Charlie Kirk to know how to react. Regardless of his opinions or advocacy, our Christian values tell us that love is the right response. So I've been praying in lament for his wife and children, whose grief must seem bottomless. I've been praying for those who admired and followed him, that they will be comforted and their hearts shielded from bitterness. I've been praying for those who witnessed his killing and will carry that trauma for the rest of their lives. I've been trying to pray for all of them like I would pray for anyone I love.

But Casey, some will say, what about what Charlie Kirk said and stood for? His diminishment of LGBT personhood, his hostility toward civil rights, his promotion of "replacement theory"? Why should I do anything other than denounce such views and the people who hold them? Well, there is surely a place for repudiating things we think are wrong, but outrage is not a Christian's primary posture. We lead with love, not cynicism, and that love should prompt our compassion, not hostility. That's the only way our witness will be Christlike, and not just more of the animus that the world already knows too well.

We are in a frightening moment as a country, when the seductive whispers of evil are making it harder to listen to our better angels. And in the face of the growing clouds of hatred and violence, we can wonder, "What am I to do?" Remember your values. They are our guide posts in the dark. Remember who you are in Jesus Christ, for he is our orienting principle in this and every time. Remember to love, because love must always be our first response, no matter what.