As someone who lost her father to the violence of the front lines in a war perpetuated by America’s invasive foreign policy, I do not condone violence. I don’t even allow guns in my home because I am so anti-violence. We don’t watch violent movies. We don’t play violent video games. We don’t buy the grands guns of any sort, not even a water gun or nerf guns. Yep. I am the kind of wacky liberal mom and grandmother.

I was working in the newsroom the day Columbine happened. That left a mark upon me that affects me to this very day. Because I had kids the same ages of those murdered, I was horrified by the violence of that day. And I continue to be horrified by the violence that has unfolded at hundreds of schools since that day.

When I first started teaching I never once thought about what shoes would be appropriate for running. That changed after Columbine. After Sandy Hook. After Uvalde. After Thurston High. Now if I am going into a classroom, I make sure to wear shoes that won’t hinder me.

That I have to begin this post by stating my opposition to violence in the wake of the murder of Charlie Kirk but didn’t need to make such statements when writing about Uvalde or the assassination of Minnesota’s Legislator Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark, reveals alot about how the death of Kirk is being politicized by the media, by tech companies, and by politicians and Trump himself.

I have stood beside a lot of widows as a result of my writings on behalf of Gold Star families. I have interviewed dozens and dozens of widows over the course of my career – both Gold Star widows and some from 9-11 and others as a regular course of life’s happenstance. And, of course, my own mother was widowed at age 29. So it’s something I’ve borne witness to. Sadly.

Where do you go to be a 29-year-old widow? my own mother said to me once. She was trying to explain to me the difficulties she faced socially in the wake of my father’s own violent death. If I close my eyes and think upon it I can quickly recall the wailing sounds my mother made the day we learned Daddy was KIA.

I can also hear the soft tears of widows I’ve interviewed. One I recall distinctly is the one who slapped the Casualty Assistance Officer when he, along with a Chaplain, informed her of her young husband’s death in Iraq.

People grieve differently. Some do it quietly. Others loudly. Some never talk about the loss. Others can’t quit talking about it. As I have said to dozens of widows over the years, there is no right way to grieve, there is only healthy and unhealthy ways to grieve. Choose healthy if you can.

When she was alive my mom was honest that she didn’t always choose healthy ways to grieve. She, like a lot of people in trauma, took a self-destructive path for awhile. She never did get over my father’s death. I don’t think any of us ever have, nor do I think getting over a death is itself healthy. I think the thing we all need to do is come to terms with it. The acceptance stage of grief.

I’ve lived through a variety of assassinations in my lifetime. JFK’s is the first I personally remember. But, of course, America has a long history of such murders. Lincoln is the one we all studied in school even as we were living through the assassinations of Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, MLK, Bobby Kennedy, and later, John Lennon.

Gun violence is as American as the Stars and Stripes and the Rank Exploitation of the Word of God.

Public grieving is nothing new to me. I’ve seen it my entire life. Here in our country and in other countries. I have long said that America needs a wailing wall where we can collectively gather and grieve together. Wailing can be a healthy way to grieve.

What isn’t healthy, however, is the idealization of the dead. This is when we idealize the person who is dead – exaggerating their good traits and minimizing or erasing their faults. We make martyrs of them.

The way many in media, in churches, and online are doing right now with Charlie Kirk.

Right now what is happening is unhealthy for our country. Unhealthy for all of us. Performative grief is never healthy and that’s what’s happening. I’m not here to shame anyone for their performative grief, but I am calling it out. You know who you are. You are the ones declaring Kirk was a martyr for Jesus.

Nope. Sorry. Charlie Kirk was a lot of things but a martyr for faith isn’t one of them. He wasn’t killed because he was trekking into the wilds carrying the Word of God like Jim Elliott.

The truth is we aren’t exactly sure why Tyler Robinson reportedly murdered Charlie Kirk. We don’t know. We might never know.

But the other truth is that Charlie Kirk’s real religion was outrage. A college dropout, Kirk was making a menial salary until he discovered that making people outraged could earn him millions. And that is exactly what he spent his short life doing – building an empire solely dependent on rage.

There was no one Charlie Kirk would not disparage in pursuit of another dollar. At the time of his death, the kid who previously earned $27,000 a year was worth over $12 million. There’s oil in them thar social media algorithms that turn Americans against one another.

I doubt that Charlie Kirk believed half of the stuff he spewed over the airwaves but spewing that sort of stuff was money in the bank. The better the sound bite, the bigger the check.

Kirk wasn’t the first, nor will he be the last, to employ inflammatory rhetoric as a tool of financial manipulation. When you combine that gift with religious overtones, you have a sure fired pathway to success.

Of a sort.

Charlie Kirk was a performer. He was good at it. In another era, he would have been like Goatman, traveling from town to town selling an All Cure Tonic from the back of his wooden wagon, and leaving the people euphoric off the moonshine he just sold them.

Grieve him if you need. Just remember, the sooner you realize Goatman is more huckster than Saint the healthier for all of us.

Karen Spears Zacharias is author of Will Jesus Buy Me a Doublwide? ‘Cause I need more room for my plasma TV. (Zondervan).