You Don't Have to Forgive Them. But Someone Should.

Grief doesn’t have to make space for mercy—but someone can.

I was in the comment section of a Facebook post about a man who opened fire on strangers.

You know the kind. A headline that guts you. A mugshot. A list of names of the dead. And then a flood of grief, fury, confusion, prayer, and blame all spilling out beneath it. Strangers typing furiously into their phones, trying to make sense of the senseless. Some demanding justice. Some demanding hell.

The man who pulled the trigger had a name. He had a mother. He had friends who remembered him laughing and showing up and loving people. He also took lives. Real ones. Children, elders, people who were just getting their footing. People who didn’t get to finish the day.

As I read through the comments, I felt myself holding both truths at once. He destroyed something precious. And he was once someone precious. It’s uncomfortable. It should be.

A lot of the comments were what you’d expect—rage, disgust, condemnation. And rage has a place. I won’t tell anyone not to be angry when their people are taken from them. I wasn’t born with the forgiveness gene and Blue Run Baptist Church was unable to instill it when I was 13. If someone had hurt my family, my child, my friend, I know that forgiveness wouldn’t be on the table for me. I’d want them gone. I’d want them to rot. I’d want their entire bloodline to vanish. That’s human.

But buried in between the fists and the fury, there were also comments—quiet ones, brave ones—from people who knew the man. Who loved him. Who didn’t excuse what he did but also couldn’t throw him away. And even more rare were the people—some who had just lit virtual candles for the victims—who said things like, “What he did was evil, but that doesn’t mean he was only evil.” Or “Someone should still pray for him. It just won’t be me.”

And that hit me.

Because there’s this story we tell, especially after tragedy, that some people are beyond redemption. That after a certain point, love is wasted on them. That if we offer grace to someone who’s done something unforgivable, we’re betraying the ones they hurt.

But I don’t believe that.

I believe every person deserves compassion. Deserves empathy. Deserves grace. Deserves the chance to be seen as more than the worst thing they’ve ever done.

But it doesn’t have to come from you.

It doesn’t have to be the grieving father. It doesn’t have to be the woman planning three funerals in a week. It doesn’t have to be the community torn open by a gun.

You don’t owe anyone your forgiveness. You don’t have to humanize the person who wrecked your world. If it would cost you peace to extend compassion, you don’t have to. That’s not your work. Someone else can carry that.

But somebody should.

Because we can’t live in a world where love runs out. Where the minute you cross some invisible line, you're done, you're trash, you're inhuman. Where the only version of justice is vengeance. We need people who are willing to do the quiet, messy work of remembering that people are still people, even when they become monsters to us.

There are people in the comments who did that. Who said, “I can’t forgive him. But I won’t deny someone else’s love for him either.” That’s a kind of grace too.

This doesn’t mean we stop holding people accountable. It doesn’t mean we excuse or erase harm. What it means is we allow the possibility—however faint, however far—for restoration. For some other kind of ending.

Maybe love doesn’t fix it all. But it still matters that it’s out there.

So if you're reading this and wondering if you're the one who has to be the bigger person, the forgiver, the forgiver’s forgiver—maybe you're not. Maybe you’re not the one who will pray for your enemy or show up for the one who failed you. Maybe you never will be. That’s okay. And I say that knowing I am the person who will not offer the love.

Just know that someone can. Someone else might. And maybe, one day, you’ll be able to receive that kind of grace, too.

Even if it doesn’t come from who you want.

Or who you think deserves to give it.

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