Until his murder earlier this week, I had never heard of Charlie Kirk. You could have put me under a heat lamp, and I could not have told you who he was, or what he stood for. His name was not even familiar.
Of course, now I know who he was and what he stood for.
From what I have read and heard, it is clear he and I would not have agreed on much. He was an ally of the sitting president, for whom I have no respect, and a darling of the president's group of supporters commonly known as the MAGA crowd.
But he was a husband. A father. A son. A friend.
And he was gunned down in broad daylight.
At the time he was shot and killed, he was exercising his First Amendment rights in a peaceable manner, no less (and no more) than I am doing as I type this.
For all of that, I grieve his passing.
I grieve the increasing loss of the ability to have civil disagreements.
I grieve for a country in which more and more, resorting to violence becomes a way to express an opposing view. This is but one example.
Mr. Kirk's political and philosophical leanings, no matter how they may have differed from my own, have no bearing whatsoever on how I, a fellow human being and, according to what my faith teaches me, a fellow image bearer of God, feel about what happened to him.
It is, simply speaking, an unspeakable tragedy.
