The Power of They

This morning I watched a video the White House posted on social media that set Erika Kirk’s voice against soft background music. Whether the audio came from her husband Charlie’s funeral or another recent gathering, I do not know, but her words pierced me. She spoke movingly of his faith and of the life they shared, and she also spoke of the “evildoers” who killed him—of what they had done. In the rawness of grief that instinct makes sense. I cannot begin to imagine the weight of her loss, and I do not presume to judge what she meant or how she chose to speak. Naming “they” can be part of lament, giving sorrow a sharp outline when the mind can make no sense of sudden violence. My concern is not with a widow’s cry of anguish but with the way some have already seized on that single word and used it for their own political ends. For all of us, the small word they carries enormous power, and not all of it is good.

Investigators have now released extensive, publicly documented evidence that this was the deliberate act of one man, Tyler Robinson, age twenty-two. According to charging documents and multiple press briefings, Robinson left a note for his roommate stating, “I had the opportunity to take out Charlie Kirk and I’m going to take it,” exchanged texts after the shooting saying he had “enough of his hatred,” and even confessed in a Discord chat before surrendering. Prosecutors say he planned the attack for more than a week and have charged him with aggravated murder and related felonies, announcing their intent to seek the death penalty. Family members told investigators that Robinson had moved away from the conservative, Christian upbringing of his youth, entering into a relationship with a transgender roommate and embracing more left-leaning political views. All of these details will be weighed in court, and Robinson is presumed innocent until proven guilty, yet the evidence already presented—his own messages, the recovered note, eyewitness accounts, and his voluntary surrender—leaves little doubt that this was a personal, premeditated choice shaped by his particular mix of beliefs and grievances.

These sobering facts matter, because they remind us that one person—not some faceless bloc—made this choice. Yet even with such clarity, our hearts are quick to widen the circle of blame. Almost before the crime scene tape came down, conversations online began turning from one man’s sin to the supposed guilt of whole movements and millions of people. It had to be those people we don’t like, the people who think differently than we do. That is the quiet power of they at work.

This same instinct fuels conspiracy theories. Once we start speaking of they as a shadowy force behind every tragedy, they quickly gain almost mystical powers. Ordinary human choices begin to look like secret plots. We imagine vast networks that planned every detail, even when the evidence points to one person acting alone. On the right, this has given rise to movements like QAnon and endless talk of the “deep state” or “the Swamp,” as though hidden government actors orchestrate every headline. On the left, it shows up in claims that “the billionaires,” “Big Oil,” “Big Pharma,” “dark money,” the Koch brothers, or a single corporate cabal secretly steer every policy or control all media. Real scandals—Jeffrey Epstein’s trafficking and the horrors associated with his private island, for example—are rightly reviled and have rightly spurred criminal investigations and reforms; but those real crimes have also been pressed into service by some who leap from documented abuse to the grander claim that an omnipotent elite is pulling every string and raping children everywhere as part of a single master plan. Both moves are dangerous: one demands justice and accountability; the other substitutes fearful fantasy for sober moral reckoning.

We reach for “they” so easily. We use it to make the world simple, dividing it into those who are safe and those who are dangerous, those who are pure and those who are corrupt. Since Charlie’s murder, I have watched many rush to defend his memory by painting him as flawless. Because he died violently, any reminder that he could be abrasive, or that his way of speaking sometimes blurred the line between biblical boldness and worldly rudeness, suddenly feels like sacrilege. I know how thin that line can be; I have crossed it myself. As a teenager and college student I thrived on sharp political debate, writing essays like “Why Jesus Would Be a Republican” and sparring for days on end on social media. I convinced myself that provocation was courage, but mostly it only hardened hearts—my own included—and cost me friendships. Over time God showed me that love is stronger than argument, that real change happens when the Spirit softens a person’s heart, and that even when we speak hard truths we must do so with gentleness. Remembering that journey makes me wary of turning any human life, however admirable, into a story without shadows.

None of this means that everything Charlie Kirk said was wrong. Far from it. I admire the courage and boldness he showed, speaking truth in places where the truth is often very unpopular. While I disagreed with him on a few things, he and I would have agreed on a lot. And though we might have differed on how best to communicate conservative beliefs and pursue conservative policy goals, the most important thing is that by all accounts he seemed to have a genuine faith in Jesus Christ. But in the pursuit of articulating his beliefs and rallying the public to his cause, he also had a tendency to say provocative things and sometimes take them too far. The quotes circulating online right now illustrate this. I believe those quotes largely mischaracterize his overarching message, but it cannot be doubted that he sometimes said things that went beyond what was wise or helpful. When people point to those statements, we should acknowledge them and move to the deeper discussion of truth, rather than reflexively treat every criticism of policy as a personal attack from the enemy.

The next temptation is subtler but no less dangerous: pushing evil off on them even when all reason and evidence point elsewhere. We saw it first when MSNBC analyst Matthew Dowd speculated, during the first hours of coverage, that the shooting might have been caused by one of Charlie Kirk’s own supporters firing a gun in celebration—before the evidence showed otherwise, a comment that eventually cost him his job. We saw it again when late-night host Jimmy Kimmel, in the monologue that led to his suspension, reflexively tried to pin the crime on “those people” on the right—as though something so wicked could never emerge from his own cultural tribe. And we saw it in the case of the stabbing of a Ukrainian refugee in Charlotte, where many initially assumed the attack was politically or racially motivated, only for the reporting to reveal that the suspect has a long history of mental health issues, including schizophrenia, and that much of the violence appears tied to untreated illness rather than clear ideological hatred. It’s a human reflex. If we can assign malice exclusively to an outside camp, we feel safer inside our own. But it is a false security. Scripture reminds us that sin crouches at every door, including the people we like and generally agree with. The seed of violence is not out there somewhere; it is in every human heart.

Then comes the darker move: when they become less than human. In the hours after the shooting, many voices on the left mocked or even celebrated Charlie Kirk’s death, treating a man’s murder not just as a political win but as a moral win—a victory of “good” over “evil,” literally celebrating a moral evil, murder, as if it were a moral good. But no life is a trophy for our side. To rejoice in death—any death—is to deny the very gospel we claim to believe. Jesus wept over His enemies; He did not gloat over their graves.

Scripture will not let us off so easily. The Bible insists that there is a real struggle between good and evil, but it also insists that the line between them runs through every human heart. “None is righteous, no, not one,” Paul writes in Romans 3:10. Jesus commands us to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us, because in God’s eyes even those who hate us remain neighbors and image-bearers. The early church in Acts prayed for boldness to proclaim the gospel, and they did speak with courage, but their lives were also marked by gentleness and grace. The Spirit produces both together—courage without cruelty, conviction without contempt.

Remembering that, I want to speak carefully in this moment. Charlie Kirk was my brother in Christ. His death is a terrible loss. Yet to honor him truly we cannot pretend he never erred, nor can we permit hatred toward those who despised him. The deeper truth is that every one of us is capable of both greatness and wickedness. Political tribes do not erase that. Labels cannot change it. When we divide the world neatly into “us” and “them,” we blind ourselves to our own need for mercy and we strip others of their dignity. We make repentance harder and reconciliation nearly impossible.

So I end with a challenge to myself and to anyone who reads these words. Watch your heart and your speech this week. Notice how quickly the word they rises to your tongue or keyboard when you describe people who differ from you. Ask whether that thought or sentence would sound at home in the mouth of Jesus, who loved even those who nailed Him to the cross. The struggle between good and evil is real, but it is not fought by carving humanity into tribes. It is fought when men and women submit every thought, every post, every argument to the transforming love of Christ, who alone can turn enemies into family and make strangers into brothers and sisters.

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