Speaking ill of the dead

What did your pastor preach on today?

That was a post I saw yesterday on exTwitter.

I was the one who preached yesterday in our small congregation in Atteridgeville. Since we use the old calendar, I preached on St Simeon the Stylite and the Ecclesiastical New Year, remarking that in our part of the world it coincides with spring, and that is appropriate for the beginnings of things. 

On the way home after the service we stopped to take photos of the camel's foot trees in bloom, which is always one of the first signs of spring in our part of the world.

Out of curiosity I looked at the comments on the exTwitter post, and found that almost every one of them was about whether the preacher in their church preached on, or mentioned Charlie Kirk. Some of them said that they were never going back to that church because the preacher had not preached on Charlie Kirk.

Until last week I had never heard of Charlie Kirk. The first I heard of him was a bunch of angry posts on social media saying that he was a terrible person who said terrible things and deserved to die.

So that was the first thing I learned about Charlie Kirk: that a lot of people didn't like him, and didn't like the things he said, and thought he deserved to die.

After reading a bunch of posts in this vein I came a couple of others that said he was a fine upstanding young man and that he didn't deserve to die. 

So there were the second, third and fourth things I learned about Charlie Kirk: that some people admired him, that he was young, and that he was dead.

And then more messages appeared about his wife and children, and the manner of his death, and so on.  

Now Charlie Kirk wasn't the only one to die last week. He wasn't even the only one to die violently. In the same week we had heard about 11 people who died violently on a boat in the Caribbean, shot by the US Navy. And some people had been killed in Ukraine, and some in Gaza, and some in Qatar who were trying to make peace. But none of these others were of any interest to the Twittering classes. Their names, their ages, their opinions, their families, were of no interest to the news media or the Twittering classes. The only one that interested them was Charlie Kirk.

Then I started seeing all sorts of opinions about Charlie Kirk from people who knew no more of Charlie Kirk than I did. I began to get a sense of pressure from social media, that one ought to have an opinion on Charlie Kirk. One ought to be able to say whether he was in heaven or hell. I felt a bit uncomfortable about that; after all, "vengeance is mine says the Lord, I will repay" (Romans 12:19).

If, as some people were saying, Charlie Kirk had said some bad things, then, without judging him as a person, one could at least comment on the things he said. But what did he say? 

People who knew him, who had listened to what he had said or read what he had written, might be able to form a judgement. But I hadn't heard him speak or read what he had written. All I had on social media was third-hand or even more remote -- people who had heard someone else say that he had said something. That's hearsay, not evidence on which one can make a judgement.

I suppose I could do some research.  I could search the web for a speech, writing, utterance or statement he had made, study it and then embark on a critique of his views, opinions or character. I could search for evidence of his actions. But why bother?

Perhaps one should bother because a lot of people seem to think it is important to have an opinion about Charlie Kirk. But is it really? I think it is no more important to have an opinion about Charlie Kirk than it is about the 11 people who died on a boat in the Caribbean. I think that Charlie Kirk no more deserved to die than they did. 

One of the problems of the world, or perhaps one of the things that exacerbates the problems of the world, is this rush to judgement. The perceived need to identify the "good guys" and the "bad guys" in any conflict, what Americans call the "black hats" and the "white hats" (from the old Western movies of the 1930s and 1940s). And social media tend to exaggerate this tendency. It seems that their algorithms are even designed to do so.

As a result, in the conflicts of today there are no good actions or bad actions, only good people and bad people. Genocide is bad if the bad people do it, but good if the good guys do it. Terrorism is bad if the bad guys do it, but good if the good guys do it. As a result the needle of the world's moral compass swings about wildly. An act by those we designate as bad guys is an outrage, and the needle points north. The same act by those we designate as good guys is a brilliant strategic move, and the needle swings around and points south.

For Christians, at least, one way to steady the moral compass is to remember the adage Love the sinner, hate the sin. But I've said more about that here.