January 28, 2026
I have an engineer friend whose art teacher noticed something peculiar about him in elementary school. When asked to draw a picture of their house, every student drew the front of the house as if looking at it from the street. Except for him—he drew an aerial, blueprint view, mapping out each room as if looking at it from above with no roof.
Different, huh? But also kind of genius.
I wonder if we ought to consider a similar approach when multi-layered tragedies unfold before us on the news.
Take Minnesota’s Twin Cities in recent days. An influx of ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) and CBP (Customs and Border Protection) agents to carry out deportations in St. Paul and Minneapolis. A church service disrupted because of a pastor’s connections with ICE. A woman protestor and a man protestor shot and killed. A photo of agents detaining a five-year-old boy with a blue bunny hat.
If you’ve read this far, you might be wishing I’d said more in the last paragraph. The five-year-old’s dad had bolted; you’re suggesting they leave an abandoned kid? Or, You should clarify that the deportations are targeting good neighbors, not just violent criminals. Or, You ought to have mentioned that Renee Good and Alex Pretti would still be alive if local law enforcement wouldn’t let Antifa exacerbate the situation. Or, You should have noted that Pretti never pulled his weapon.
And yes, there’s even more to say. And facts 100% matter. But in our rush to guard the narrative from being coopted by the other political side, we often skip a crucial, Christian step. Skipping this step can mean leaving friendships behind in the social media mayhem. Skipping this step makes us screechy and tone deaf.
“In our rush to guard the narrative from being coopted by the other political side, we often skip a crucial, Christian step.”
The step is grief. And not just front-of-my-house-from-my-street-view grief. More like remove-the-roof-and-see-all-the-rooms grief. Multi-layered grief. Grief that feels more than just my own side’s ache.
It’s Christian to grieve lawlessness.
It’s Christian to grieve death.
It’s Christian to grieve violence.
It’s Christian to grieve chaos.
It’s Christian to grieve church disruptions.
It’s Christian to grieve family separations.
And we could add more and more to this list, and that’s just on behalf of one bleeding metro area in one country. What’s not Christian is to spend nothing more than a nanosecond on grief on our way to lingering anger. As I’ve expounded on elsewhere,
- It’s right for Christians to hate evil—since evil destroys people we love (Romans 12:9; Psalm 97:10).
- It’s right for Christians to grieve evil when we see it played out (Joel 2:12).
- It’s dangerous for Christians to give into anger because sin easily grows in its overflow (Proverbs 12:16; Ephesians 4:26, 31).
- It’s wrong for Christians to execute wrath and revenge (Romans 12:17, 19, 20).
“It’s right for Christians to grieve evil when we see it played out.”
As usual, Jesus shows us the way. Jesus grieved for the city that killed his prophets—even as he grieved the prophets they had killed:
“You snakes! You brood of vipers! How will you escape being condemned to hell? Therefore I am sending you prophets and sages and teachers. Some of them you will kill and crucify; others you will flog in your synagogues and pursue from town to town. And so upon you will come all the righteous blood that has been shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah son of Berekiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar. Truly I tell you, all this will come on this generation. Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing. Look, your house is left to you desolate. For I tell you, you will not see me again until you say, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.’” (Matthew 23:33-39, NIV)
This is at the end of the Gospel of Matthew’s “woe” chapter (chapter 23), so what we see here is just a snapshot. But let’s take a moment to consider the multiple things Jesus grieved as he studied this photo:
- Religious leaders’ hypocrisy
- Religious leaders in hell
- Prophets killed/crucified
- Prophets flogged
- Prophets hunted
- Murder of Abel
- Murder of Zechariah
- Hardened hearts toward God
- Destruction of Jerusalem
- Desolation of Jerusalem temple
Having the heart of Christ means a bigger heart, and apparently a bigger heart includes the capacity to grieve more.
“Having the heart of Christ means a bigger heart, and apparently a bigger heart includes the capacity to grieve more.”
Please don’t stop chasing the facts. It’s always been hard because people favor narratives more than facts. It’s getting even harder with generative artificial intelligence. But in your pursuit of the facts involved in multi-layered tragedies, please don’t skip grief. And as you grieve, try to take in the whole picture.
