Understanding Love and Hate

Thursday, September 18, 2025

Two things in the last 48 hours or so have helped me to understand on a new and deeper level why the murder of Charlie Kirk is so disturbing, and why efforts to not-quite-justify but be sympathetic with the murderer are even more so.  The first is John Campbell’s impassioned discussion with the host yesterday.  They headlined it, “His explanation will move you.”  That is even more true if you know John, which I do, though not exceedingly well.  That passion, and the deep emotions associated, drive me to continue to try and understand this evil.

I use that word “evil” on purpose.  It has been a long time since a post I wrote drew as much positive reaction as my post last week “The Church And Reacting To The Kirk Assassination.”  I have heard from so many telling me how much that post helped them – and from so many varied places – from my Presbyterian pastor to Mormon missionaries in Africa.  All that post did was point out that the assassination was a matter of good-and-evil first and foremost.

Which brings me to the release about 36 hours ago of the transcript of the chat between the killer and his roommate/boyfriend/lover.  It is not your typical insane shooter manifesto – it is too precise and too focused for that.  The only word I can use to describe it is “perversion.”  The perp claims to be acting in love and against hate by perpetrating evil.  It is not that it does not make sense – it makes perfect sense in light of so much of the nonsense that passes for acceptable public discourse these days.  But when punctuated by such an evil and barbaric act it reveals just how perverse our public discourse has become.

I realize all the sexual conduct overtones in this whole discussion, but I am not using the term “perversion” in a sexual sense.  Rather I am discussing the fact that this deeply troubled soul has such a perverse, yet somehow reasonable sounding, understanding of love and hate as to make one question everything.  It is not that the perversion is expressed sexually – we have grown accustomed to that – it is that the perversion is expressed murderously that makes this so disturbing.  This perverse understanding of love and hate has lead, in this man’s mind, to justify murder and yet we all know that murder is the ultimate act of hate, not love.  It is just upside down.

The roots of this perversion are cultural.  We have passed “hate crime” legislation, criminalizing an attitude, an emotion.  I thought such a bad idea then and still do.  But taking it at face value, is this not the ultimate hate crime? – Gunning down a man simply out of disagreement with his understanding of how the world should work?  And yet the perpetrator claims to be acting out of love for his paramour. (for lack of a better term)  We cannot write this off as merely the act of a lunatic.  It calls into question so much of what we, as a nation and a culture, have done in recent decades in the name of love and understanding.  It reveals our own misunderstandings and just how destructive they have been.

This one line from the chat has stuck in my mind since I read it, “I had enough of his hatred. Some hate can’t be negotiated out.”  And I thought, no hatred is a state of mind – you can always negotiate with a state of mind. It is when the hatred becomes action – exactly the kind of action this perp took, that the hatred becomes evil – and it is evil that you cannot negotiate with.  It is horrible that Hitler hated Jews, but such does not make him the ultimate example of evil he is so often treated as – that belongs to the fact that he tried to systematically eliminate them.

Then there are the perp’s claims of acting out of love.  Jesus said, “ Greater love has no one than this, that a person will lay down his life for his friends.”  But this individual did not lay down his life.  No, in fact his efforts to elude capture are the exact opposite of such.  This guy chose to lay down Charlie Kirk’s life.  How dare he claim to be acting in love?

I have said before and will say it again here. C.S. Lewis’ “The Screwtape Letters” is an invaluable regular read.  Lewis’ insight into how ugliness and evil creeps into our lives, even if you don’t buy into the whole devil/demon thing, is extraordinary.  The point is made repeatedly that these things don’t happen in a flash, but that gradual baby steps are the usual course – each little step is seemingly innocuous, but resulting in a journey into darkness.  This murder lays bear the darkness into which we have travelled over the course of several decades.  This murder reveals the baby steps each of us have taken on the road to this dark place, even if our journey into the darkness is not quite to the extent that it is for the murderer.

There is only one way back from the darkness and it too is a journey.  A journey that begins by realizing we are in darkness and turning around.  And that is what makes those that try and sympathize with, if not justify, the shooter so troubling.  Most people now see that we are in a dark, dark place.  We want to turn around and start the journey back into the light.  But these people that cannot let go of their perverse understandings are like great weights that would hold us back.  How do we respond?  How do we insure that our responses do not drag us deeper into the darkness?

I think we start by making sure we understand properly just what love and hate really are – and act accordingly.