FORGIVENESS: Erika Kirk’s Touching Moment Brought Tim Allen Emotional Closure To A 60yr Tragedy

Scant days after the murder of Charlie Kirk, the watching world gasped in amazement as the grieving widow announced that she would follow the example of Christ, and forgive the one responsible for his death.

Morality is so deeply wired into the human soul that there is a very real and visceral response when someone does us harm. Even short of doing physical harm, our reaction even to a perceived slight and the moral injury done to us can be profound.

The reason that Erika’s reaction gave such a stir is that it pushed back against every natural human impulse to demand justice when we’ve been wronged. The accused killer was exactly the sort of young person Kirk’s life was dedicated to reaching. Cynical accusers slandered Charlie a caricature of who he was, distorting his words and misrepresenting his views. The killer may have even imagined himself a hero for ridding the world of such a vile person as the one he thought he was killing. But in the end, a man who wished no harm on even his harshest of critics was killed. For his words.

Any way you slice it, this is a massive injustice perpetrated with malice aforethought.

When an injustice has been done every cell in our bodies demands that injustice be satisfied by some sort of justice or another. Even political systems that scoff at traditional moral frameworks can’t help but invoke the idea of some sort of ‘justice’ as the validation for their demands.

Forgiveness comes at a price. Whether they’re consciously aware of it or not, when someone offers forgiveness, they forfeit any personal claim as the injured party’s demand for justice. It doesn’t erase what was done to the injured party. It doesn’t wave away consequences. But it removes the emotional attachment the injured party has to the outcome of such questions.

Tim Allen was part of the audience watching the widow forgive the man accused of ending her husband’s life. She said she forgives ‘that young man’. Exactly the kind of young man for whom his events were designed to persuade, or at least hold out an olive branch of invitation.

Tim’s dad was killed by a drunk driver 61 years ago, when he was only eleven. Died in the arms of his wife. Understandably, it wrecked Tim’s world. But it did more than that, according to Daily Mail, it touched everything, including his faith in God.

‘(He) broke his neck and died in my mom’s lap right there,’ Allen said in a 2006 interview.
‘As many times as I’d relive this – if you haven’t had a death in your family, I don’t suggest it – but it certainly changes every single thing. From your cells and DNA, it turns a different color.’
Years later, in a 2012 interview, Allen admitted he has been looking for answers ever since his father’s untimely passing.
‘Part of me still doesn’t trust that everything will work out all right. I knew my father was dead, but I was never satisfied with why he was dead. I wanted answers that minute from God. ‘Do you think this is funny? Do you think this is necessary?”
‘And I’ve had a tumultuous relationship with my creator ever since,’ he said.

And then he watched Erika Kirk’s response to a tragedy that wasn’t merely accident, but premeditated malice. And her response inspired him to rethink his situation. He tweeted:

When Erika Kirk spoke the words on the man who killed her husband: “That man… that young man… I forgive him.” That moment deeply affected me. I have struggled for over 60 years to forgive the man who killed my Dad. I will say those words now as I type: “ I forgive the man who killed my father.”
Peace be with you all.

The price of forgiveness, and its opposite

As mentioned, forgiveness comes with a price — you must forfeit any claim to vengeance and any right to payback. It goes deeper than the merely legal level. This comes at the moral level where our outrage burns so brightly.

Unforgiveness comes with a price, too. But a price which is seldom mentioned. The outrage is nursed and carried like a leaden weight whose weight only seems to grow over time. Paul warned about it in Ephesians when he told us to be angry but not sin or let the sun go down on that anger. (Deal with it immediately, or let it go.) To do otherwise is to give the devil a beach head into our souls, what Hebrews calls a root of bitterness that will ‘defile many’.

We’ve all known bitter and cynical people who have nursed hurts so old they can’t quite remember why they first began hating their rival in the first place. It becomes a prison for the soul of the person who was already injured by an injustice real or imagined. Such hurts have aptly been described with the metaphor of ‘drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die’.

Did you notice how this hurt was a stumbling block for Tim’s faith? It’s because he was trying to apply the fallen world’s rules to a Christian life, and it never works out.

Forgiveness is central to Christian living

When Jesus taught his disciples how to pray, he taught them to say ‘forgive us our sins as we forgive those who have sinned against us.’.

If I stopped there, that should be enough to make the point. But Jesus never stopped there, so let’s continue.

One of his harshest parables involved the forgiven debts. Servant owed his master more than he could earn in a lifetime, but he cried out for mercy. It was given him. Then he left, saw another servant who owed him an amount of money we might carry in our wallet. Attacking that other servant, he demanded his money back. The master found out how ungracious he had been to the other servant, and executed the justice that servant demanded rather than the mercy he had begged for.

The first Christian martyr, Stephen, forgave the angry mob who had gathered around to kill him for blaspheming their religion. One of the men gathered to stone him to death, holding the coats of the others, went on to become the Apostle Paul.

Stephen in turn was following the example of Jesus who said of his killers ‘Father forgive them, they know not what they do’. In the very moment he was calling for their forgiveness, he was also paying price in blood that would make such forgiveness possible.

Justice requires that the guilty pay a price. As the Lamb of God he was taking that price upon himself so that he could be both ‘just and the justifier of the ungodly’ (Romans 3:26).

Let’s come back to why that parable is so important to this question.

Jesus was trying to make us understand that the slights and injustices we suffer from other fallen people are real. But they pale in comparison to the rebellion and wickedness our own hearts have harboured against God and against others made in His image.

If we want mercy for ourselves, we must insist on it for others. If we want justice meted out on others… well, be careful what you ask for.

But so long as a Christian insists that his demands for justice be served, he is no better than the wicked servant in the parable and does not yet comprehend either the grace he has been given, or that which he is called to share with others.

Freely you have been given, freely give.

That includes forgiveness.