Christchurch, New Zealand | Getty Images

There is no one explanation, and perhaps no real explanation, for why someone would walk into a public space and gun down dozens of people he’s never seen before.  In some cases, like the terrorist attack in Christchurch, we can appeal to “ideology” in an attempt to make sense of what has happened. Put very simply, an ideology is a set of beliefs about the way the world should be (i.e., a set of ideals) coupled, almost always, by an account of why the world is not that way. And such an account usually involves “those people.”

“Those people” ensure that the world remains a middling-to-bad place because of their own ideologies, behavior, or even their very existence. “Those people” oppress the proletariat; they undermine family values; they maintain the heteronormative patriarchy; they’ve come here to take our jobs.

It would be excellent, perhaps, if “those people” could be converted to the truth. But if they are obstinate (or just irredeemably bad) then they need to be ignored, shamed, marginalized, ghettoized – or maybe violently destroyed.

It’s true, thank God, that very few people are willing to murder complete strangers for reasons ideological or otherwise. Human beings usually have to work hard at conditioning themselves to kill in cold blood (or even in combat). But I suspect that almost everyone thinks, or feels, that if certain classes of people just went away somehow, then the world would be a much nicer place.

But that very natural human emotion is not one you’re allowed to indulge in as a Christian, which is both annoying and difficult. The Christian faith agrees with all other ideologies that the world is broken, and that a certain class of people is responsible for its brokenness. Awkwardly enough, however, it maintains that this class of people includes everyone: 

“None is righteous, no not one… All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.”

Which makes it impossible to neatly place ourselves in the Good People category, over and against the Bad People – be they Trumpians, libs, gun nuts, radical feminists, white supremacists, ISIS, whoever. This isn’t to say everyone is equally bad according to the relative ethical standards that (necessarily) govern human society, an idea which is obviously false. But it does mean surrendering the notion that we are somehow inherently or ontologically superior to “those people.” In fact, from the vantage point of the Christian faith, we were “those people,” reconcilable to God only by the cross of Christ.  If the New Testament  draws a distinction between the children of darkness and the children of light, it also makes it very clear that only the sheer grace of God makes that distinction.

It’s so much easier to work on advancing the world towards an ideal when you can vilify those who get in the way. But if God had adopted the attitude, none of us would be around. It’s natural to ostracize people we consider bad. But Christ let himself be ostracized in order to save bad people, so that no one has to “go away” in any final sense in order for the world to be what it should. That’s the miracle of grace.