The news that Charlie Kirk had been shot, and the subsequent update that the injury was fatal, cast a gloom over much of the western world on Wednesday night. Like many, I prayed that he would survive, but it was not to be.
So, did the God in whom he so unswervingly believed fail Charlie? That is what the crowing mobs – and, sickeningly, yes, there are such people – would tell you. They are always there, in every disappointment, every terminal diagnosis, every loss, every bereavement, jabbing their fingers and asking, ‘where is your God now’?
He is closer to the broken hearted than any atheist would believe. Indeed, closer than any Christian who has not yet been broken can comprehend. The late Queen, quoting indirectly from Dr Colin Murray Parkes, famously said that ‘grief is the price we pay for love , but I would add – from my own experience, no less – that God’s comfort is the dividend of faith. I have no doubt that the believing family and friends of Charlie Kirk are experiencing that God, and that comfort more viscerally now than ever in their lives before.
‘Pain’, said CS Lewis, ‘is God’s megaphone to rouse a deaf world’, and so maybe this personal, human tragedy for Charlie’s family should be regarded as a wake-up call to the rest of us. The political responses have been predictable: hunt down the person responsible and deal with him as punitively as the law allows; suppress the far left: in short, meet violence and lack of understanding with more violence and lack of understanding.
This is not the way. Any hopelessness that I feel in the face of this tragedy does not stem from a questioning of God, but of the depressingly unchanging way in which people are responding. Yes, it may be possible to locate the gunman . . . and then what? Does dealing with what may be an act of unwarranted inhumanity from someone ideologically opposed to Charlie Kirk end the problem? Of course it does not. The world’s way, as we are seeing daily, is to meet brutality with brutality. We talk more than ever before about understanding, about kindness, and about walking a mile in the other guy’s shoes – but I don’t think this world has ever contained less comprehension of love than it does at this moment.
There is, of course, a way through; there is always a way through if we are prepared to humble ourselves. Therein lies the rub, however. We have made gods of ourselves, of our desires, of our feelings. Nothing must be allowed to hurt me, or even contradict me. If you doubt my word, or dare to pose a counterargument, you are not merely disagreeing, but hating. In their populist stupidity, successive governments have tried to legislate for petted lips, for offended sensibilities, and now stand amidst the wreckage, wondering who to blame.
Blame us, then, the creatures who have tried in vain to usurp our Creator. We did this. Our relentless pursuit of power and glory has wreaked interminable havoc. Ultimately, we tried to run this world on a rogue operating system, having tried every which way to disable the pre-installed software. And we have catastrophically failed.
That, atheists, is why people die in pointless wars and human conflict, and why every day is peppered with innumerable acts of cruelty and depravity, inflicted on one set of human beings by another. It is the reason why, no matter how well-intentioned we think we are, nothing goes to plan. And when – if – the person whose bullet killed Charlie Kirk is found, we still won’t be satisfied. Don’t look for justice in a world that no longer recognises truth, that no longer cares whether a person or an act is good or evil, as long as it aligns with their own world view. We, each of us, think of ourselves as the plumbline for everything: does it sit true against my ideology? No? Ah well, it must be wrong.
This is no nihilistic assessment of world affairs. It is a call, not to arms, but to peace. I was so moved by the words of Pope Leo (yes, Proddies, him again) earlier in the week in describing the role of tears in situations such as this one. Weeping is not a sign of weakness, but of strength; Christ cried out on the cross to his Father, and that type of anguished plea can be understood, the Pontiff said, ‘as an extreme form of prayer’.
Sometimes, love has no other outlet than to shed tears. I think we have now reached that point as a world. Cry, then, from the depth of your hearts, to the God of all comfort, because he understand us – better, even, I think – without words.
Queen Elizabeth
Because He Loved Us First
When the bombs fell on Buckingham Palace in 1940, Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother said that she was glad because it meant that she and the King could finally ‘look the East End in the eye’. Many people have laughed at this statement, believing it to be illustrative of just how out of touch the royal family is. People who had almost nothing, losing everything they owned in one night were not experiencing the same war as the privileged Windsors with their untold wealth and multiple palatial residences. If one castle gets totalled, move to another: that is not poverty.
We seem to believe that empathy can only stem from our having actually experienced something. Until the monarch has to live in a high-rise flat with no food in the fridge and no money to feed the meter, she cannot begin to understand the plight of her poorest subjects.
Empathy, though, is like faith – it shouldn’t require evidence. Nothing breaks my heart more than homelessness, though I have mercifully never been in that position myself. Surely the essence of the empathetic heart is being able to find the common point of experience. The Queen Mother was not suggesting that her domestic situation was the same as that of the Eastenders; she was saying, however, that both knew what it was to have their homes threatened and even breached. One was much larger and grander, yes, but home nonetheless.
And, just the same, when I saw our Queen sitting all by herself at the funeral of her husband, I could finally understand how a blone from Lewis and the monarch of a kingdom might have something in common.
When the time came for the mourners to file into the church on the day of my husband’s funeral, a church officer approached me and asked, ‘are you alone?’ I felt his words like a knife to my heart. Yes indeed, I thought, quite alone. My best friend, my helpmeet, my companion in life, has gone on without me, and I have to navigate this path as best I can with no hand to hold.
I don’t imagine the pain of losing a spouse is any less when you are a world leader. Perhaps, indeed, the pain is greater still for one whose life is so public. She must now find a way in which to do everything she used to do, but always conscious of the absence where Prince Philip used to be. It is likely – though by no means certain – that her reunion with him will come much more quickly than mine with Donnie. When I was first widowed, I used to envy elderly women in my position, because I thought they wouldn’t have to experience so much of life without their husbands.
Now, though, I know it makes no difference. Jesus knew he would raise Lazarus from the dead, but he still wept with the family. His tears were not merely for their pain, but for the human condition – for the fall that has brought us to a place of death. Inevitably, whether we are exalted in the land or humble, we gather at the graveside and mourn for what the great leveller has removed.
Jesus – the Queen’s Saviour and mine – was displaying empathy. He was shedding tears for mankind, for the sin that brought death into our experience. Although he was about to raise Lazarus from the dead, death would eventually claim him a second time.
Of course, the depth of Jesus’ empathy was what led him to finally surrender himself on the cross. So moved was the Lord’s heart by what we have inflicted upon ourselves, that he did not merely weep with the bereaved: he gave himself to death in our place.
Christ became man and walked this Earth. He was born into the humblest of surroundings. As a man, he had no home to call his own, no regular income, no insurance policies. The King of Kings was a vagrant.
But that isn’t what made him the most empathetic man who ever lived.
Before God sent his Son into the world, there was compassion, and there was empathy for our plight. Do we castigate God because he has never had his home destroyed, or lost his spouse? Would it be fair to tell him that he cannot understand our pain? Of course not, because he is the very model of what empathy means. If I may put it like this, he carried empathy to its ultimate conclusion.
If we are followers of Christ, then, shouldn’t empathy be part of our character? There are things I have not suffered, practices I do not approve, walks I have not had to take . . . but when I see my fellow man in their midst, where is my heart? Do I rush to judgement, to vitriol and condemnation, or do I say, ‘there but for God’s grace go I’.
Christ came alongside all manner of sin and suffering. That was empathy. And we are capable of it, it is expected of us, because he loved us first.
Post tenebras lux 