09.28.25 "That Young Man, I Forgive Him"

Last Sunday, September 21, at the memorial service for slain religious Conservative organizer Charlie Kirk, his widow, Erika Kirk said this:

"My husband, Charlie. He wanted to save young men, just like the one who took his life. That young man. That young man on the cross. Our Savior said, 'Father, forgive them, for they not know what they do.' That man. That young man. I forgive him. I forgive him because it was what Christ did in his. What Charlie would do. The answer to hate is not hate. The answer we know from the gospel is love and always love.”

And just like that – the world changed.

A Course in Miracles tells us, "Forgiveness is the key to happiness. – Here is the answer to your search for peace. Here is the key to meaning in a world which seems to make no sense." (WkBk.121.1) I see Erika Kirk finding the peace and meaning she will need in the days, weeks, and months ahead making sense of her young husband’s death.

There were over 200,000 attending the memorial, maybe 300,000. This is more people than attended the memorial for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Plus this event has been viewed many millions of times on YouTube and other video platforms. It was also covered live on various news platforms. I watch parts of it through the Epoch Times website. I don’t watch any legacy media any more.

Plus an unexpected phenomenon happened, was there has been an unpredicted world wide interest in Charlie Kirk's life since the assassination. Countless millions of people all over the world watched this memorial or selected portions of it. Countless millions of people witnessed Erika Kirk, a woman of deep Christian faith, say she forgave her husband’s murderer. Why did she forgive him? Because it is what Jesus did while on the cross, and it is what her husband would have done.

Jesus tells us in ACIM that we should take him as a model for our thinking and behavior.

"I could come to provide the model for how to think. ... I have enjoined you to behave as I behaved.” (Tx.5.30)

Erika Kirk gave the world an extremely powerful example of someone who has accepted Jesus as a model for how to think and how to act. I believe that was a wonderful moment in the healing of the world. It was a graphic representation of both traditional Christian and A Course In Miracles thought.