It’s been nearly three weeks since Charlie Kirk was gunned down in cold blood on a college campus in Utah, and Americans are still processing their grief and loss. As we grapple with how to respond to this heinous act and the toxic environment that produced it, we seek inspiration from those who suffer alongside us.
On the one hand, we have the incredible testimony of Charlie’s widow, Erika, who freely and openly forgave her husband’s assassin before the entire world at his memorial service in an example of pure Christian charity. Others, like country star Brantley Gilbert, are struggling with their anger at their fellow citizens’ celebration of the murder, saying, “It’s senseless. I don’t understand it, and it p-sses me off.”
To my discredit, I find myself in the second camp. My ire is aroused when willfully ignorant congresswomen spit on Charlie’s grave from the House floor and the studios at CNN. Clueless celebrities claiming that the temporarily suspended Jimmy Kimmel is somehow the real victim in this situation rubs salt into an open cultural wound. In short, I am definitely not at the forgiveness stage yet, but I take some solace in the biblical precept that anger, when handled righteously, is a healthy response to the evil that surrounds us.
A Scriptural Perspective
The New Testament certainly understands that angry thoughts and actions are part of the human condition and can thus be tainted by sin. When Jesus was rejected by a Samaritan village while traveling to Jerusalem, James and John, the “Sons of Thunder,” sought to call down fire on it as a punishment for its insolence. Jesus justly rebuked them, seeing their bloodthirst as fundamentally unjust.
Yet when confronted by the Pharisees, Jesus didn’t meekly plead with them for “unity.” He called them a “brood of vipers” and “whitewashed tombs.” When He saw the moneychangers despoiling the temple, He didn’t shrug His shoulders and “go along to get along.” He made a whip of cords and drove them out, rightly condemning them as thieves and usurpers.
By these passages and many more besides, God teaches us that anger, if properly applied, can be harnessed to accomplish His work.
Anger vs. Wrath
Because of our fallen nature, however, the proper application of anger is where things get dicey. Anger is, after all, a passion and as such can very easily lead us astray, as it did the sons of Zebedee. For help with this, Christians can turn to the words of St. Thomas Aquinas, the 13th-century theologian who succeeded in connecting faith and reason.
When discussing whether anger is a sin, Aquinas makes a clear distinction between “zealous anger” and “sinful anger” based on whether the passion is properly regulated by “the order of reason.” Zealous anger requires both a just cause and a rational desire for what Aquinas terms “revenge.” “Sinful anger” lacks these limitations:
On the other hand, if one desire the taking of vengeance in any way whatever contrary to the order of reason, for instance if he desire the punishment of one who has not deserved it, or beyond his deserts, or again contrary to the order prescribed by law, or not for the due end, namely the maintaining of justice and the correction of defaults, then the desire of anger will be sinful…
Aquinas is also quick to point out that even if the cause is just, anger should not be “immoderately fierce,” lest this “impetuosity … precipitates the mind into all kinds of inordinate action.”
Aquinas even admits that to not feel anger when one has just cause to do so is a sin, because in such cases “the lack of anger is a sign that the judgment of reason is lacking.” In other words, injustice should make us angry, though we must control and channel that anger constructively.
The Fruits of Our Anger
To date, the conservative response to the assassination of Charlie Kirk seems to check all the boxes Aquinas requires for zealous anger. The public murder of a husband and father who only wanted to engage in honest debate is certainly a just cause. As for reaction within “the order of reason,” we see that instead of the destructive rioting over the death of George Floyd back in 2020 (an “inordinate action” based on “impetuosity,” if ever there was one), there are prayer vigils and peaceful memorials where violence only occurs when provoked by leftist agitators.
Anger can also goad the hesitant into positive action. Charlie’s organization, Turning Point USA, has been flooded both with requests to open new chapters at colleges and high schools and with donations into its coffers. On a more spiritual level, there are claims that attendance at religious gatherings has risen since his murder, leading to hopes for another “Great Awakening” just when our nation desperately needs one.
Finally, there is the “Charlie Kirk effect” on politics itself. After seeing the Democrat base’s celebration of his murder, some rightly horrified Democrats and independents are rejecting the party outright, intensifying a trend established under the Biden administration. House Democrats did themselves no favors in this area when 118 of them either opposed or avoided voting for a resolution condemning Charlie’s assassination, outing themselves as either cheerleaders for political violence or weaklings who cower to the radicals who form their voter base.
In the brilliant 1993 western Tombstone, when asked about his friend Wyatt Earp’s desire for revenge against the gang that killed his brother, Doc Holiday (Val Kilmer) replies, “Oh, make no mistake, it’s not revenge he’s after; it’s a reckoning.” We conservatives will come to forgive the agents of the culture of death who murdered Charlie Kirk in time. But for now, our righteous anger gives us the focus and drive to make sure this long-awaited reckoning finally comes to fruition without devolving into the violence so favored by the left.