The Fifth Family

Stephen C

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Like many I’ve been constantly refreshing news and Twitter feeds over the past couple of days, going back and forth between the deadening horror of it all. I don’t know if I have a lot to add to the other moving and profound takes that I’ve already seen, but one dimension to this that I haven’t seen discussed:  

I’ve already written on the Amish community’s moving response to a similar nihilistic massacre in their own community. Now, although the theology on this is clear, I would not personally expect any of the victims’ families to extend the same kind of forgiveness to the killer. I don’t know if I could forgive somebody who killed my own family members, and that is their own decision to make. It’s between them and God, and I won’t think less of them if they choose not to given the horror of what happened. 

However, regardless of their relationship with the memory of the man who killed them, by all accounts there is another family who is facing a similar if not greater horror. One of the central tenets of our theology is that we only have to answer for our sins, we do not inherit them from our parents. Assuming that that man’s family was not involved in this atrocity, they are also victims here. 

While the Latter-day Saint families affected have and will receive an outpouring of support, and rightfully so, this family will receive little such comfort. My own writing can’t do justice to the special kind of hell they might be feeling when your loved one dies in such a way that even privately mourning them seems inappropriate, so I’ll quote Orson Scott Card’s moving post, written as only Card can, about the similar situation of the family of Charlie Kirk’s killer:

That father, those parents, face a grief even greater, I believe, than the grief of the widow and children Charlie Kirk has left behind, who will grow up being proud of their father’s legacy, sharing in the glow of the love so many strangers had and have for him. But the assassin’s family will live with the grief of his choice, without remedy, remembering when he was little and they had so much hope for him, and now facing the loss of hope because he closed all the doors of honor for himself. And yet I know, I know, that they still love their son. Because that is a love that cannot be broken, though the loving heart may break.

Charlie Kirk does not need my prayers for his soul, though my wife and I are praying for his widow and children. Yet I also pray fervently for the family of the assassin, who cannot be comforted or assuaged.

By all accounts the shooter’s family has already had a rough life. His son was born with “a rare genetic disorder in which the pancreas releases too much insulin, forcing numerous surgeries and hospital stays,” and they were forced to revert to GoFundMe to pay their medical bills. I’m not mentioning  this to incur sympathy for the killer, but to remind people that somewhere there is a sickly grade-schooler and his newly single mother whose father and husband is all over the news, but who are just as innocent as the members killed in the meetinghouse, and we should remember them in our prayers as victims in all of this as well.

Comments

12 responses to “The Fifth Family”

  1. Jonathan Green

    Yes, absolutely. Thanks, Stephen.

  2. Bbell

    Agreed 100%. Both his wife and child are also victims.

  3. Stephen C

    Addendum: There are a variety of GoFundMes for the families involved. Whenever there’s an event like this there are a lot of fraudulent GoFundMes, so I hesitate to post anything because I haven’t done my due diligence on these particular ones, but the one below was cited by the Ward Radio guys:

    https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-two-brave-doctors-recover-and-rebuild

    And yes, Jacob Hansen and the Ward Radio guys set one up for the shooter’s family:

    https://www.givesendgo.com/helptheSanfordfamily

  4. Carey F.

    What does it truly mean to forgive someone who has taken the life of a loved one? Does the nature of forgiveness change from 3 days to 3 years later?

    When people talk about forgiveness in this context, they don’t usually imply that the person shouldn’t face legal or divine consequences. It appears to be a profound act of faith and possibly the initial step towards forgiveness. However, merely saying it doesn’t demand much from the individual.

  5. Stephen C

    I’ve wondered that myself. It’s probably much easier to say the words than to really let it sink in and emotionally forgive them, but we don’t have insight into their internal processes, so we might as well assume that one sincerely reflects the other.

    And yes, forgiveness doesn’t mean no consequences. There was a case where Amish victims of a homicide wrote letters to the judge asking that the murderer not be given the death penalty. As somebody who, unlike the Amish, is pro-death penalty, I think you can forgive and still be okay with them executing the person, but I know many would disagree. At the very least, however, forgiveness clearly doesn’t necessarily mean keeping dangerous people on the streets.

  6. Joe

    The Sanford family GiveSendGo was not set up by Jacob Hansen or the WardRadio guys. The name of the creator is right at the top of the fundraising page.

  7. RLD

    Forgiveness for something like this is a process. Saying it once doesn’t mean anger isn’t going to creep back in later, and that’s okay. In fact the initial statement may be more aspirational than real; more of a commitment to try to forgive, or just wanting to forgive. All of that is okay. That’s how most covenants start out too. It’s also okay to need some time before being able to even want to forgive. This is hard.

    I appreciate Charlie Kirk’s widow publicly expressing her forgiveness. In a time when New Testament virtues are under attack, that was important. I suspect we’ll hear something along those lines in general conference.

    And yes, it needs to be said that forgiveness does not require compromising on safety. You can forgive someone and still do what needs to be done to protect yourself from them. Society can do what needs to be done to protect itself too.

  8. RL

    Like many in the community this event has been in my thoughts. Has information been realesed on other deceased victims besides this man:
    https://nypost.com/2025/09/29/us-news/first-victim-of-michigan-lds-church-shooting-idd-as-77-year-old-navy-veteran/

  9. Stephen C.

    @Joe: My bad, I saw it first though Jacob Hansen’s Twitter post, and the person setting it up did say he was on Ward Radio a lot, so I assumed he was one of the “Ward Radio guys.”

    RLD: Amen

    RL: I’ve seen GoFundMes drifting around, but in terms of solid information reported by media outlets I haven’t seen anything else.

  10. ji

    I am sympathetic to the sentiment of the OP. The family members of perpetrators also need ministering.

    But at times I wonder about our modern societal tendency to reclassify victims as heroes, and family members of perpetrators as victims.

  11. Stephen C

    I do think there is a human tendency for highly visual, sensational events to elicit more charity than more everyday events. The child whose father died from cancer or a car crash probably isn’t going be on as many radars.

  12. Kent Larsen

    FWIW, the person who set up the GiveSendGo for the Sanford family is Dave Butler, a fairly successful LDS science fiction author. And the generosity from donors (primarily LDS, if the comments can be relied on) is really stunning. I’m a little concerned, as previous comments have hinted, that the other victims aren’t being recognized as generously (at least from what can be seen publicly).

    There’s a lot to consider here. The willingness to at least say that you forgive those who have hurt you is commendable. It reminds me of the horrific 2018 attack at the AME church in Charleston, South Carolina, following which some of the victims publicly forgave the perpetrator.

    I’m still working on what to think about these statements of forgiveness. I believe forgiveness is a process, intimately tied to the grief and loss of the event. And it may be that performing forgiveness is a step toward a more complete forgiveness (something that can’t be seen from outside).

    If so, then maybe the performance of charity, like with the donations, can help both the individuals who donated and our fellow LDS Church members increase our actual love of others. Public displays of how to act can and often do change culture.

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