When Loving the Unlovely
When love is reserved for the lovely it becomes something easier, something softer around the edges and easy to throw around. Being fair, this easier kind of love can feel intuitively just at times. The reward of kindness and honor is earned by being kind and honorable, no time is wasted treating undesirable people like they’re anything but undesirable. Except, the world is not so simple and humans are not so easily sorted into nice categories. There are no hopelessly evil or incorruptibly good people; our pasts are only our pasts; love is something we can fall into or scramble away from every day. Some make a habit of choosing one or the other, but habits can be broken and new ones can be practiced. So what do we do, instead, with a conception of love that is difficult, awkward, and painful to work with? What do we do with the question of what we owe one another?
There are some in this world that would tell you dignity is earned, or at least, can be justly denied. Maybe the felon forfeits their right to vote, or the immigrant should have double checked their papers, or the victim of police brutality shouldn’t have resisted. Dignity is quickly and easily taken away from people who lack power. Power and dignity are used as synonyms, falsely painting a picture of a world where the successful and the struggling are both owed their respective lives. The rich man is owed as much food as he can buy, and the poor man might be owed none at all. The same logic goes for other basic needs and political power. It’s sinister, and love for our neighbors produces a righteous anger when we see this kind of injustice. With that said, there is a temptation to miss the heart of that injustice. Instead of advocating for a love that flattens that hierarchy into a community, it becomes enticing to just flip the power dynamic and give the powerful, unlovely people their karmic payback.
I don’t want this to be confused with liberation, which I’d call the force that topples abusive power and lays the foundation for a loving, equitable community. I have no problem praising movements that put a stop to oppressive violence and protect the vulnerable. What I’m focusing on is a kind of revenge fantasy that plays out when we find our moment to do unlovely things to unlovely people just for the feeling of catharsis it’ll give us. We cannot look to violence as the force that will bring us peace.
The very public and graphic murder of the conservative influencer Charlie Kirk produced sweeping emotional reactions for what seemed like almost every single American. In a moment shorter than a breath, a human being was denied their tomorrow in horribly traumatic fashion. Many public figures, including our president, shared a memory and vision of the influencer’s life that painted his actions and inner-motivations with broad strokes of trust and generosity. They reminded the world of his Christian faith, his family, and his unwavering commitment to speaking freely. At the same time, while some spoke of him fondly, others expressed a matter-of-factness about his death, or even expressed happiness. Charlie Kirk was a man who upheld and sat at the head of almost every power structure in this nation. The multi-millionaire benefited from racial, religious, political, and gender power imbalances- which led many progressive Americans to take this as a moment to usurp those power structures and rob him of his dignity. Every generous, even inflated, story of the man was met with clips and reminders of everything he ever said to uphold inequality and support the powerful.
We have to be careful to not let our bold rejection of his ideas turn into a vengeful happiness about his murder. I would call this happiness an example of that poisonous catharsis we get by hating people we find hateful. There is nothing liberatory about choosing death, it only takes the teeth out of our critiques of harmful rhetoric.
A similar discussion could be had about any number of times where someone is deemed too morally bankrupt to be given dignity. We draw lines in the sand and set expectations, and too often we have no grace for the people who find themselves on the other side of those lines. Conservatism too often uncritically accepts the structures that were given to us by previous generations, meaning that people who lack power are often the most policed, the most harshly judged, and the least loved. Those of us to the left of American conservatism, however, have to be careful that we do not give in to fantasies of remaking the world “upside down” with the same abuses of power being used to hurt the oppressor. The injustice of abuse is not found in where the lines are drawn or who is targeted. Abuse itself is unjust. Murder itself is unjust. Hate itself is poisonous. We should support causes of liberation that protect the vulnerable, and also practice a kind of love that calls our enemies out of hate.
We cannot let compassion become something to be earned. I believe love is owed to every person, even those who run from its message. Whitewashing Charlie Kirk’s life is irresponsible and dishonest. He chose his own words. Speaking freely is not the same thing as speaking with gentleness, love, or truth. The content of our messages matters. There is no comparison to be made between the ideologies of Kirk and liberatory leaders like Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. or Malcolm X. But to quote a famous sermon given by the late reverend, who would have done nothing but righteously condemn Kirk, “hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that.”
