Brian Thompson: A Sinner of Christ's Redeeming

Why we need grace in talking about complex policy issues.

Note: I did an audio version of this for my podcast Church and Main. You can listen to it below.

What surprised me was that Brian Thompson didn’t look like a CEO.

Ever since we heard the story of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson’s shocking murder in New York on December 4, I’ve been struck at how normal he looked. That was captured in the headshot of Thompson. Instead of a suit and tie, we saw a middle-aged man wearing a shirt and a quarter-zip sweater. He looked like a regular guy you’d see at Target on the weekend and not the head of a large health insurance company.

For whatever reason, I find myself identifying with this man. Maybe it’s because he lived just up the road from me in the Minneapolis suburb of Maple Grove. Maybe it’s because he is a few years younger than I am. Or maybe it’s because of his working-class roots, hailing from Iowa, the son of a beautician and grain operator who worked up the corporate ladder. The New York Times wrote a fascinating article talking about Thompson’s life and about the private funeral for the 50-year-old at Lutheran Church in Maple Grove.

Even in the horrible surveillance video, we see Thompson casually walking down the street to his destination like thousands of other people on the streets of New York. He had no idea what was going to befall him.

I was also fascinated by the story in the Washington Post about how Thompson acted during COVID. Congress set aside billions for healthcare providers struggling to meet payroll during the shutdown of everything in 2020. The problem was how to get the money to said healthcare providers. Thompson told Washington that UnitedHealthcare could do it through their banking arm. The article notes, “More than $135 billion would be distributed through the UnitedHealth-backed fund, which was credited with keeping thousands of hospitals and other health-care providers afloat during the pandemic.”

I’m not arguing that Thompson was a saint who did nothing wrong. The Washington Post article does note that the feds were investigating Thompson for alleged insider trading. But he was more than the greedy CEO caricature that some have made him out to be.

What has been disappointing (but not surprising) is how we have made Thompson an avatar for what’s wrong with the American healthcare insurance industry. Because he happened to be the head of a healthcare company, he is flattened to a representation of corporate greed. Progressives, who normally see themselves as caring and against guns, seem to be either praising or excusing the crime.

CNN Commentator Michael Smerconish noticed something interesting where Thompson probably breathed his last breath. He ticked off several killings where there were memorials to the fallen such as George Floyd. But for Thompson, there is no memorial. Just a barrier and a piece of police tape left over. I guess that isn’t surprising, because the healthcare insurance industry isn’t really loved. We think it is an industry based solely on greed and that its business is to simply deny needed care. So who cares that some CEO making $10 million a year was gunned down? This is why we see such glee and scorn for Thompson and the weird case where women throw themselves on Luigi Mangione.

Tim Whitaker, the host of the New Evangelicals podcast, did an Instagram Reel where he says that killing Thompson was wrong but then launches into the sins of the healthcare industry which he believes is based on greed. At one point in the video he says murdering healthcare CEOs is wrong, but so is the killing done by health insurance companies by denying claims. Whitaker quotes James 5:1 in the video,” Now listen, you rich people, weep and wail because of the misery that is coming on you.” This makes me wonder: is Whitaker insinuating that Thompson brought this on himself because he was the CEO of a health insurance company?

On the issue of healthcare in the US, we want to flatten things and make them simple, trying to excuse a killer and see the mess that is our healthcare system as the fault of cartoon-like villains. While the healthcare insurance industry is not innocent, it is not the sole reason for our mess. The reality is far more messy. Read economist Noah Smith and journalist Ben Dryefuss to understand how providers (hospitals, doctors and the like) also make our system more expensive. But it’s a lot easier to just flatten things out to a middleman like Thompson and UnitedHealthcare and think that stalking and taking out CEOs is going to create a better system.

I don’t think Whitaker’s hot take is the best way for Christians to deal with this issue. I don’t know what is the best way, but let me take a chance to try.

First, off I think Christ's followers have to say as clearly as possible and without reservation that assassinating a healthcare executive is wrong. (Some would go further and call this terrorism.) Don’t add a but after it. Don’t talk about how people are pushed to a breaking point. All that does is excuse the murderer. We are a nation of laws and Christians are called to abide by the law, especially the one that says murdering someone is wrong. Over the last few years, we have talked a lot about the rule of law when it comes to people like Donald Trump. I know Mangione isn’t a politician, but following the law matters. Mangione came from a privileged background where he could have used his position and education to help make our healthcare insurance system better. But he chose to take a man’s life. From January 6 to October 7 to Brian Thompson, too many people see violence as a legitimate tool to use in society. We need more people who are willing to say the ends don’t justify the means. When Jesus was unjustly arrested, he counseled against violence. If there’s someone who could have done something when his enemies wanted to do him in, it was Jesus and he still chose another path. Violence is a cancer to the wider society and sadly the right and left-wing is too willing to use and excuse it.

Second, we need to recognize the humanity of our enemies. Every human being is created in the image of God and therefore is a child of God. Every one of us is a sinner in need of grace. Looking at things in this way means that someone like Brian Thompson was a sinner, not because he was the CEO of the nation’s largest healthcare insurance company, but because he is human. Seeing people as sinners in need of grace means seeing them less as a cartoon character and more as human beings. When we see people as just avatars of evil, we strip them of their humanity, which is what so many did with Thompson, a father with two teenage boys.

Thompson’s normality is a way of seeing someone who is far more complex than the evil CEO trope that we see on social media. None of this means he was perfect, but he also wasn’t thoroughly evil.

Third is something that Frederick Schmidt said last week: we need to re-establish moral education. Schmidt notes:

For Christians that will require the recovery of moral theology – and understanding of ethical behavior that is not a system isolated from other forms of knowledge but which is grounded in our understanding of God and our place in God’s creation. We need to be forthright about that commitment. We need to recover the vocabulary of moral theology and we need to embrace it, both for our own sake and for subsequent generations.

Over and over in the book of Judges, there is a phrase that is used in the interregnum between the judges called by God to rule Israel. Judges 21:25 says, “In those days there was no king in Israel; all the people did what was right in their own eyes.” We are seeing that in the response to Thompson’s murder. When you have people celebrating murder on the streets of New York or Israel or downplaying the ransacking of Congress, something is amiss morally. We need pastors and other Christian leaders to teach how Christians and others should live ethically because otherwise, the world will provide other ethics that will form people.

Finally, political issues are complex. Healthcare reform is not a simple issue. It is very complex and even the solutions are complex. People should be open to the complexity because any change to the system here in America is fraught with trade-offs. Insurance companies like UnitedHealthcare are not simply villains. Do they do bad things? Most definitely, but check out the story Ben Dreyfuss writes about anesthesiologists and how they can cause healthcare costs to increase. I believe in original sin, which means that everyone and everybody is corrupted by sin. Nothing is as pure as the driven snow.

Thompson seemed like a normal guy who happened to lead a company not viewed well in society. He wasn’t perfect, but he didn’t deserve this. I’ve always loved the prayer in the Anglican tradition that is said in the death of a loved one:

Into your hands, O merciful Savior, we commend your servant N. Acknowledge, we humbly beseech you, a sheep of your own fold, a lamb of your own flock, a sinner of your own redeeming. Receive him into the arms of your mercy, into the blessed rest of everlasting peace, and into the glorious company of the saints in light. Amen.

May his soul and the souls of all the departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen.

Brian Thompson is a sinner of Christ’s redeeming. And so are you. And so am I. Let us remember that in the coming days.