Pastor’s Perspective – November 2025
“Don’t hate the player, hate the game.”
There are many who wish to judge a person by the best or worst things that they say or do. With social media and in our recorded world, there is nothing easier to accomplish than a highlight reel that creates the impression that a person is a saint or a devil.
One of the strengths of Charlie Kirk’s work was that it was omnipresent. His organization edited and cut materials to distribute on social media with fearsome regularity. And so did his enemies. Most of the young people that stepped to the microphone were recording the event for their own social media accounts.
This is not unique to Kirk and his work. While he was wildly successful, he was neither the first nor the only one to do this. From Tik-Tok celebrities to politicians like Gov. Gavin Newsome and President Donald Trump, the goal is to create an avalanche of content that gets your posts into the algorithm to boost your next post.
This is the game. It is how one does politics. It is also the reason that it is so easy to malign someone in today’s world. The danger of saying something about everything is that you will eventually say something stupid or wrong. I ask my congregation to forgive me constantly, because “when you open your mouth every day, eventually you will put your foot in it.”
Don’t be surprised when you see “evidence” that this person or that person (today it is Charlie Kirk tomorrow it will be his adversaries) was a bigot or a racist or a __________. They are putting together a greatest hits album of bad hot takes, misstatements, and sometimes ideas that in ten minutes or ten years will not age well.
There is a reason that freedom of speech is so cherished in our society. It is because speech and writing are the ways in which we learn. To paraphrase I Corinthians 13, “When I was a child, I spoke like a child and thought like a child. When I reached maturity, I discovered a better way.”
Paul was once a murderer of Christians named Saul. It might be best that we do not have copious tweets from his earlier life. John Newton, the man who wrote “Amazing Grace” was once a slave trader. He first became a Christian, then years later he left the slave trade, after that he became a leader in the abolitionist movement in England, living to see the outlawing of slavery in England before his death in 1807.
If someone had killed Saul on the road to Damascus, there would be no I Corinthians 13. If someone had stabbed John Newton when he ran a slave ship, there might not be a Slave Trade Act of 1807.
People used to ask if they would kill Hitler in the womb if they had the chance. I always thought that was a stupid question. The better and more moral question to ask is, if you could go back in time would you love Hitler and teach him to ways of love and peace?
Hatred and assassination are zero-sum games. They assume that all things follow a direct line trajectory. They imagine that nothing and no one can be transformed and changed. They are not only godless strategies, but they are also hopeless strategies.
At the conclusion of I Corinthians 13, Paul tells us that three things remain eternal. Faith, hope, and love. And the greatest of these is love. Our faith is Jesus shows us that God loves even the worst of sinners. That faith births a hope that tomorrow may create allies out of adversaries. And love, the agape love that gives without expectation of return, frames all of our interactions and creates a new way to live.
Whatever is making you angry today. Whatever triggers you. Lay it at the foot of the cross. Forgive those who offend you. I don’t want you to be red or blue. I want you to be Christ-like. Christian. Forgive those who say things that offend you. Pray for those who persecute you. Love your enemies.
This is not an electoral strategy. But in order to forgive the player, you have to reject the game.
“As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”
Pastor Daniel W. Bellavia
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