“What a sudden, unexpected death.”
“I can’t imagine something like that happening where we live.”
“His kids were standing right there.”
This has been the constant refrain since Charlie Kirk’s assassination, amplified by the intense, visceral videos of the murder. How could life hold such a low premium? For me, these questions had an additional dimension—my peaceful, charming hometown of Evergreen, CO, was rocked by a high school shooting the same day. September 10th, my phone buzzed incessantly, fueled by stunned collegian friends and horrified families back home whose children had been evacuated.
Pope John Paul II, in his encyclical “The Gospel of Life,” made several points which I believe are worth reflecting on as we consider our culture’s response to tragedy. He warned of a new climate where attacks on life are not only tolerated but even justified—what he called a “culture of death.” He saw it first in abortion and euthanasia; we see it in the swaths of social media dancing on the grave of Kirk, due to his status as a controversial political figure.
This pattern is not new. Consider Luigi Mangione, who was lionized for gunning down a father—a man with no personal knowledge of his grievances—in cold blood. Perhaps many saw him as a hero because Mangione fit easily into our entertainment-conditioned cultural patterns. The format in which we receive news—shorts, reels, and stories, juxtaposed alongside lighthearted content—conditions us to treat tragedy as diversion. 84% of Americans engage with true crime content that sensationalizes murder, making killers complex protagonists while victims are reduced to props.
Human dignity isn’t selective. To justify any murder entails, as John Paul argues, “a profound change in the way in which life and relationships between people are considered.” Celebrating what happened at Utah Valley University opens the door for what happened in Evergreen, CO. As different as the victims might be, talking about murder positively always has broad, negative results; A culture of death impacts everyone.
Limiting the sale of weapons makes a convenient online policy point–but the gun used to kill Kirk is legal in Canada and England as well. Legal restrictions alone cannot safeguard life: we need stable cultural bulwarks, grounded in the sanctity of life. Christianity’s radical attachment to the sanctity of life–our celebration of the image of God in everyone–has always been extremely counter-cultural, and intensely appealing.
As John Paul put it:
“[the Gospel of Life] has a profound and persuasive echo in the heart of every person…because it marvellously fulfils all the heart’s expectations while infinitely surpassing them. Even in the midst of difficulties and uncertainties, every person sincerely open to truth and goodness can, by the light of reason and the hidden action of grace, come to recognize…the sacred value of human life from its very beginning until its end, and can affirm the right of every human being to have this primary good respected to the highest degree.”
He concludes that “Upon the recognition of this right, every human community and the political community itself are founded.” All discussions on justice, politics, and international affairs, must be intensely, intentionally grounded in sanctity of human life. It must take a place of constant attention in every issue. I disagreed with many of Kirk’s individual statements—that is staggeringly irrelevant in the face of the infinite sanctity of an eternal soul, handcrafted by the God who made the universe. The same care went into the entire earth, with all its splendor and majesty, as into any individual human being. No bundle of splintered, out-of-context quotes can outweigh the dignity of a human soul.
Retelling the story of Cain and Abel, John Paul reflects on God’s intervention after the first murder. “Cain, instead of showing remorse and apologizing, arrogantly eludes the question: “I do not know; am I my brother’s keeper?” (Gen 4:9). “I do not know”: Cain tries to cover up his crime with a lie. This was and still is the case, when all kinds of ideologies try to justify and disguise the most atrocious crimes against human beings. Defenders of the culture of death, who consider policy opinions more vital than human dignity, are implicated in the same type of misdirection.
God breaks through what Spurgeon calls Cain’s “cool impudence,” a callous disconnection from the implications of the act that he has committed. We can only imagine how devastating this question could have been to Cain: “What have you done? The voice of your brother’s blood is crying to Me from the ground.” (Gen. 4:10) The Lord takes the side of the murdered—He hears his voice. John Paul suggests that we likewise ought to allow this question to break through our callousness: “The Lord’s question: “What have you done?”, which Cain cannot escape, is addressed also to the people of today, to make them realize the extent and gravity of the attacks against life which continue to mark human history; to make them discover what causes these attacks and feeds them.“
Even those of us who attempt to treat news as more than entertainment are susceptible to compassion fatigue, simply due to the mass of content thrown at us. It’s not just political assassinations and school shootings. Our clothes are made in Uyghur concentration camps in China, our phones become e-waste that poisons villages in India, our batteries are made with lithium mined in the death camps of the Congo. It’s difficult to conceive how we can live as Christians ought to in such a world. It starts with recognizing universal dignity. This seems “too simple”–recognizing that people deserve justice and respect bakes no bread. However, establishing a viable counterculture, with truly different vocabulary, ways of interacting with politics, and clarity about our eternal solution is something we can practically work towards where we are. Embodying real, appealing alternatives is Christianity’s most effective policy tool. We ended the gladiatorial games by making them culturally unappealing. Radical British Christians led a grassroots, cultural movement which abolished slavery in the UK. The task is impossibly large–but we’ve done it before.
I’d like to end by presenting John Paul II’s “pressing appeal addressed to each and every person…In the name of God: respect, protect, love and serve life, every human life! Only in this direction will you find justice, development, true freedom, peace and happiness!”
