The other side of outrage

She was all alone. The victim of unspeakable violence. Her fragile body abandoned and left to die. She was in the wrong place at the wrong time. And the circumstances surrounding her death represent a moral indictment against the nation. 

The image of 23-year-old Iryna Zurutska is seared into my mind. Not the one where she looks up with shock and terror across her childlike face, horrific as that picture is. It’s the image of her curled up in her chair, face in her hands, crying alone and afraid. The one where four bystanders just sit there as her young life wanes away by the second.

That one.

“Who have we become?” has been a recurring question since last week, both following the release of the heretofore concealed footage of Iryna's murder and the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. 

Iryna was a Ukrainian refugee, whose family emigrated to Charlotte, N.C., to escape the ravages of war. She was on her way home from work when she had the misfortune to sit in front of a man with a criminal record of 14 arrests and a history of psychotic delusions. He stabbed her to death and walked away.

In the 18 days it took for Charlotte officials to release the full video, media outlets were largely silent. As late as Sept. 6, CNN, NPR, MSNBC, PBS, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post refused to cover it. We may not have known Iryna’s name were it not for a few conservative voices on X and the public firestorm they ignited. And even then, left-leaning publications framed the story in terms of “MAGA outrage”—selective outcry aimed at fomenting anger against Democrat-led cities and their progressive policies. People are stabbed every day, after all. It was a local crime in an otherwise safe city like countless others. Tragic, yes, yet why should this story be different?

But this was different. It was a cultural tipping point, and one that has awakened righteous indignation. Who have we become?

We now have to ask that question. Instinctively—viscerally—we recognize that the injustice of Iryna’s murder is compounded by the circumstances precipitating it and the partiality it evoked. 

How a nation treats violence against women is an index of that nation’s spiritual health. That’s not purely sociological. It’s a matter of Biblical truth. 

Scripture tells the story of a woman who was left alone. The victim of unspeakable violence. Her fragile body abandoned and left to die. She, too, was in the wrong place at the wrong time. And the circumstances surrounding her death were a moral indictment against her nation. 

The book of Judges chronicles ancient Israel’s descent into moral anarchy. Within a few generations, the nation to whom the Lord gave His righteous laws had become as depraved as the pagan cultures they’d conquered. And when the narrator wanted his readers to know just how corrupt the nation had become, he narrowed his focus to one story. 

It’s among the most disturbing Biblical narratives. Judges 19 describes a concubine who was sacrificed to a lecherous mob, a woman whose social and physical vulnerabilities were exploited out of self-preservation. Isolated, alone, and subjected to heinous cruelty, she was abandoned by all who might have helped. She was little more than an expendable commodity, an “unfortunate and tragic outcome” to which bystanders were indifferent.

This was the story the narrator chose to depict the cultural depravity into which his people had spiraled. This was the index for how godless the nation had become.

It was a cultural tipping point, a national reckoning of righteous indignation. In the aftermath, they resolved: “Nothing like this has ever been seen. … Consider it, make a plan, and speak up!” (Judges 20:30)

So speak up, indeed. Speak up against the callousness that looks away from violence. Speak up against the corruption that tries to conceal it for political convenience. Speak up against the partiality that downplays crime that doesn’t fit a partisan narrative. Speak up against the permissive policies that leave the most vulnerable at greater risk. And speak up against the injustice that measures according to the demographic details of an assailant and his victim.

Indignation without action is not enough. We too can descend into moral anarchy, with everyone doing what is right in their own eyes (Judges 21:26). On the other side of outrage, who will we become?