“I must be a bad person,” my friend J tells me.

I called J just as I started my mid-day dog walk.

He continues, “Maybe I should ask if you can forgive me… though I don’t know if that’s a thing rabbis do.”

“Lay it on me. Let’s see what I can do.”

“Well, I think I must be a bad person because my first reaction when I heard that Charlie Kirk was shot was good.”
I don’t say anything.
I want to hear what his next thoughts are.

J continues, “I realized that’s not right. I do feel bad. No one should be murdered. But my first instinct was good. Does that make me a bad person?”

“Let me make it clear,” I tell him. “No.”

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Attributed (falsely) to Aristotle:
“It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.”

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We all have wicked thoughts.

It’s what we do with those thoughts that matters.

It’s the story of the two wolves that live within us—the one that is wicked and the one that is good. What matters is which one we feed.

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Attributed (rightly) to Joseph Nguyen:
“Don’t believe everything you think.”

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A little Jewish learning.

In the book of Genesis, shortly after God tells Cain that sin will always be near, crouching at his door, this first child kills his younger brother, Abel.

(Note: the name Abel literally means “transience,” “breath,” or “vapor”—foreshadowing for ancient listeners that he would not be around long.)

After the fratricide, and after God asks Cain, “Where is your brother?”—and after Cain renounces responsibility (“Am I my brother’s keeper?”)—God remarks, “Your brother’s bloods cry out to me.”

Did you notice the plural?

Bloods. Not blood.

(Note: this use of the plural “bloods” is not reflected in most translations.)

The ancient rabbis, who believed that no jot or tittle of the biblical text was there by accident, asked:
”Why would God have said the plural bloods and not the singular blood?”

They answer their own question:
“It is to teach that should you take one life, it is as though you have destroyed the entire world. Cain not only killed Abel, but also all possible future offspring that might have issued from Abel.”

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J’s first thought was not what his heart settled upon. He told me later on that he felt compassion for Charlie Kirk’s family. 

“That’s the key,” I said, “To continue to search our hearts until we find compassion.”