James Talarico

But like I said earlier, I always try to remind myself that every single person that I come across is a child of God, including someone who is...

praying for my death."

And so when you take that seriously, then you start to ask yourself, what leads a person to say that?

Where is their head at?

Where is their heart at?

What fear must they be feeling to lash out in that way?

And then you start to realize that, you know, we all feel those fears.

We're all worried about change.

We're all trying to grasp onto some kind of certainty, whether it's in our political ideology, our religion, whether it's with money and possessions and power and control.

Like, we're all those, you know—

fearful little people at times.

And so once you can recognize

that in yourself, it's, I think, easier to be compassionate.

And so that's why I put out that statement, because again, as a Christian, I'm called to love my enemies.

And it doesn't mean you don't speak truth to power.

It doesn't mean you don't hold people accountable.

It doesn't mean you don't stand up.

for your convictions, for your neighbors, especially your neighbors who are in harm's way.

But it means that we're supposed to do all those things while still seeing the full humanity in our opponents.

And as someone who talks about his faith a lot in public, I feel an immense amount of responsibility to try to model