On Wednesday, July 30, Shotsie Michael Buck Hayes entered the Showcase Magazine office in Danville, Va., with a five-gallon bucket of gasoline. The 29-year-old man had no previous criminal record, but he forced his way into the building around 11 a.m. and poured the gasoline all over Lee Vogler, 39. As Vogler attempted to run outside, Hayes set him on fire. After the incident, Vogler was quickly airlifted to a regional medical center to receive treatment. His condition is currently unknown.

At 24 years old, Vogler became the youngest city council member in Danville. He continues to serve on the city council today.

“Lee is a member of our City Council family. And today, that family is hurting,” Danville Mayor Alonzo Jones wrote in a statement. “Our prayers are with Lee and his loved ones. We are grateful to our first responders and law enforcement for their swift action. Our council is close. We’ve worked through challenges together — and now, we face this heartbreak together. Please continue to pray for Lee and his family. We’re standing with him — and with each other.”

Although Vogler is involved on the city council, the Danville Police Department has claimed Hayes and Vogler knew each other before this attack, and that the intent to kill stemmed from “a personal matter not related to the victim’s position on Danville City Council or any other political affiliation.”

The owner of Showcase Magazine, Andrew Brooks, called for an end to violence-inducing hatred.

“This type of senseless act of violence has to stop,” Brooks urged. “You do not have the right as a human being to get upset with someone enough to lash out and attempt to harm them in any way, much less this way.”

Lt. Governor Winsome Sears (R) asked the community to join her in praying for Vogler and his family. “Violence is never the answer and must be condemned,” she insisted. “Let me say this as clearly as I can: Violence has no place in our commonwealth,” declared John Reid, who is currently running to be Virginia’s next lieutenant governor. “No disagreement ever justifies hatred, threats, or brutality.”

Just after the attack, police arrested Hayes according to Vogler’s identification of his attacker. Hayes is currently being charged with attempted first-degree murder and aggravated malicious wounding.

When horrific acts of violence like this start making headlines, it’s typical to see officials publicly condemning and calling out the one who committed the crime. That’s right and good. After all, as people made in the image of God, we desire justice, and God gave the government the sword to enact just laws and hold people accountable for their evil deeds.

At the same time, it’s easy for us all to sit back and say with the Pharisee in Luke 18:9-14, “God, I thank you that I am not like other men.” We often condemn thieves, murderers, and adulterers who make our newspaper headlines, thinking of them as the worst of the worst. We would never be like them. We could never imagine doing what they did.

This is exactly what I thought when I read a headline over a month ago about Vance Boelter, a gunman who shot several Democratic state lawmakers in Minnesota. But Boelter was a conservative, and he called himself a Christian. He had been on mission trips to Africa, shared his testimony with many, and spoken out against abortion and homosexuality.

Of course, my first thought was that this man clearly was not a Christian. 1 John 3:15 says, “You know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him.” But King David set up Bathsheba’s husband to be killed, and Moses killed an Egyptian who was beating an Israelite.

In the same passage, 1 John 3:15, God tells us no murderer has eternal life abiding in him. He also reminds us, “Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer.” Just a chapter earlier, in 1 John 2:11, God tells us exactly how hatred can lead to murder. “But whoever hates his brother is in the darkness and walks in the darkness, and does not know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded his eyes.”

While we rightly recognize that murder deserves retribution from the state, we should let these kinds of headlines bring us to our knees. We may never have killed or attempted to kill a fellow image-bearer, but we have all likely struggled with hatred toward believers and unbelievers alike. Anger and hatred are not condemned in our culture. Our politicians and fellow citizens alike frequently post inflammatory articles online, which kindle our hatred toward those we simply have political disagreements with. What we often fail to recognize is that God likens those feelings to murder.

We should pray for the Vogler family’s comfort and healing. We should desire evil to be punished. At the same time, we need to remember that God has saved us only by His grace, not according to any goodness in us. But we are still sinners, and God is continuing to sanctify us. As we pray for the perpetrator’s salvation and repentance, let us also examine our own hearts and our own tendencies to hatred. God reminds us in the book of Luke that “everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.”

Let us seek to be like the tax collector in Luke 18 who couldn’t even lift his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast and cried out, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!”

Evelyn Elliott serves as an intern at Family Research Council.