Forgive them, Father

Erika Kirk’s “I forgive him” wasn’t catharsis. It was a starting gun—a first step toward a Christian revival and a national reorientation.

OPINION: By Walter Curt

Millions of Americans saw it, and millions felt it: not a performance, not a political gesture, but a moral earthquake. In a moment when the world expected rage, Erika Kirk said three words: “I forgive him.” Those words did not erase grief. They did something far more dangerous to darkness: they withdrew its fuel. Hatred feeds on echo and escalation; it needs the next insult, the next punch, the next tribal cheer. Forgiveness starves it. In that instant, the oxygen left the room for those who wanted a cycle of vengeance, and something older and holier entered. You could feel it—like a bell rung in a storm.

Many admitted they “cannot comprehend it,” that the moment “shook them to their core.” Of course it did. It should. If you can explain supernatural grace with a spreadsheet of incentives, it isn’t grace—it’s math. What Erika did can’t be reverse‑engineered from human pride or personal strength. It doesn’t come from a clever communications plan or the hot hand of a movement. Forgiveness of an enemy, real forgiveness, arrives from above or it doesn’t arrive at all. If you find yourself asking how she could possibly do such a thing, stop and turn to Scripture.

The answer is not found in human strength but in one thing alone: faith.

Faith remembers that our Lord did not negotiate His way to Calvary or litigate His way out of it; He walked there and said, “Father, forgive them.” Faith obeys when obedience cuts against everything in us that wants balance sheets and payback. Faith knows the difference between cowardice and meekness, between surrender and submission to God’s will. And faith, when it shows up in public like this, does what laws and memes and think‑tank white papers never can: it changes the moral weather. The widow did not write a theological treatise; she bore witness. She did not argue for a revival; she started one.

That was the meaning of the night. Not a play‑by‑play. Not a tally of applause lines. Meaning. In a culture addicted to performative outrage, forgiveness is the one act that cannot be faked for long. You either release the debt or you carry it. She released it. And by doing so, she told every Christian man and woman watching what time it is: time to stop imitating the world’s contempt and start imitating Christ’s courage. If this is the opening chord of a new American revival, it will not sound like a stadium chant; it will sound like millions of private acts of renunciation—of bitterness, of envy, of the pornography of grievance. It will sound like fathers returning to the spiritual headship of their homes, like mothers embracing the dignity of their ministry, like young men laying down resentment and picking up responsibility. That is not a political program; it is a moral rebirth.

Yes, the online Left mocked, jeered, and even celebrated Charlie’s death. Let them explain that to their own consciences. But understand what Erika did to that chorus: she made it irrelevant.

Evil is powerful until it is refused. After that, it shrinks.

That is why Christianity has always outlasted its tormentors. Not because Christians are better talkers, but because Christians are called to be better forgivers. That call is intolerable to the spirit of the age, which is why the age keeps trying to redefine mercy as weakness. It isn’t. Mercy is strength under mastery. Mercy is a sword returned to its sheath.

This country, at its best, has never been neutral about these things. We were founded under God, and the great American experiment in ordered liberty assumed a people capable of self‑government because they were first under a higher government. The First Amendment—the “most human amendment,” as Erika reminded us—preserves the space to believe and to speak precisely so that we can live out this drama of forgiveness and truth in public. When speech collapses, politics turns into a fist. When faith collapses, a nation loses the only solvent strong enough to break cycles of hate. What we witnessed was the proper use of liberty: a free soul choosing the narrow road.

So, no, you don’t need to “comprehend” how she did it. You need to follow it. Take the question you’re asking—How could anyone forgive that?—and let it lead you by the hand back to the pages you may have forgotten. Faith comes by hearing, and what we heard was a wife echoing her Savior. That echo will carry—into homes and marriages, into the barracks of “lost boys,” into campuses where cynicism has been catechized as courage. And if you’re tempted to call this naïve, remember what cynicism has produced: joyless politics, brittle identities, and a public square policed by permanent outrage.

Forgiveness is not naïve; it is the first realism of a people who know what man is and what God has done.

Years from now, history will mark this moment not only as a memorial for a beloved man, but as the true Turning Point.

A stadium fell silent, a widow spoke, and a nation glimpsed the old path: revival instead of riot, responsibility instead of rage, faith instead of fear. If you want to know how our country rises again, start here—on the solid ground where a Christian woman, eyes clear, said three words that broke evil’s spell. And then start walking, because the map from here is simple enough to write on a single line: forgive, and follow.