In the opening scene of King Lear, the dying king compels his three daughters to say in front of the court how much they love him and how sad they’ll be when he’s gone. The best performance will get the largest inheritance. Goneril and Regan, the eldest daughters, are effusive. They’re obviously lying, but the king is looking for flattery, not honesty. But Cordelia, the youngest, refuses to play the game. “I cannot heave my heart into my mouth,” she says. “I love your majesty according to my bond; no more nor less.” Cordelia tells the truth about who Lear is and how she feels about him. For this, she’s cut off and banished.
I thought a lot about Cordelia as I read about the more than 145 people fired over social media posts about the gruesome murder of Charlie Kirk. Some were fired for celebrating his killing, but others, more disturbingly, were fired for posts that explicitly condemned violence while acknowledging Kirk’s racist views or mentioning the poster’s own indifference to his death. J. D. Vance, streaming live from the White House to host Kirk’s podcast (a Vice President’s duties never end), egged the mob on, urging Americans to call the bosses of anyone insufficiently sorrowful over Kirk’s death and demand their firing. The whole country was stuck in that scene from King Lear, lined up and ordered to give a histrionic performance of grief or face the sovereign’s wrath.
A kind of martyr cult has been formed around Kirk, and we’re all being conscripted to join. I’ll admit that I’m a firm believer in the moral, political, and theological value of publicly mourning the dead. I even wrote a book about it. The scandal of the cross is that God loves with an infinite love every single person, even the person you think is the least deserving of that love. And the terrible demand the cross lays on us is to imitate God’s infinite love—an impossible demand, meaning we must ceaselessly beg God’s forgiveness and ceaselessly widen our narrow hearts. Every death further breaks the ever-broken heart of God, and we are called to be like God and have hearts that likewise break at every death.
