I do not think it is shortsighted to call our modern day a time of trial and tribulation. The cost of living in America continually rises, mulching more and more citizens from the few remaining dregs of the middle class. Immigrants are being rounded up, detained, and even deported without due process; often times to great praise and mockery. We are told that the monsters are due on Maple Street and handed a pitchfork while our neighbor looks at us and says “they’re already here.”
Just last week, Charlie Kirk was publicly assassinated. I’d barely finished reading the headline when I saw Facebook friends calling each other demons, blaming the shooting (with a then unknown shooter) on the other side, and all manner of political nonsense. This was swiftly doubled down on in speeches from the President, condemning the other side and firmly planting the issue into a state of opposition and blame.
It’s Wrong. Full Stop.
What happened to Charlie Kirk was wrong. He should still be alive, and he should still be free to speak. That is what I believe first as a Christian, and second as an American. It doesn’t matter how different our opinions are, how wide the gap between us; at the end of the day he was still created in the image of God. That is the great challenge of the Christian faith, to seek that image in each other and to love one’s neighbor as themselves regardless of how their neighbor looks, acts, thinks, or feels. We have all sinned, we have all fallen short, and we all deserve separation from God. Yet God loved us enough to overlook that transgression, to take punishment upon Himself, and to give us a way out that we could never accomplish to on our own.
Last week a lone gunman took it upon himself to settle a score with a bullet. He made sure that two children would grow up without a father. He desecrated the value of a life and promoted himself to judge, jury, and executioner. This is unacceptable. Period. Charlie Kirk should still be alive. He should still be free to speak, to be a father and a husband, and be a vocal part of the melting pot that is America.
The Sin Instinct
I was exposed to this story in an atypical manner. The first headline I saw from the BBC, reporting that President Trump had broken the news, came right before I clocked into work. And unfortunately my first thought was not Christ-like in the slightest. My first thought in the moments when it was unclear if he’d merely been shot or had been assassinated wasn’t to think of the man or his family, it was to think of the repercussions and political reprisals. My first thought was not just wrong, it was sinful. And as it sat there in my mind, I was quickly convicted of it by the Lord. I prayed first for repentance, and then for the children that didn’t get to hug their father goodbye, the wife who became a single mother, and those that called Charlie Kirk family or friend.
The anger in my heart at what Charlie stood for was greater than my walk with the Lord for that fleeting moment. Politics usurped the Cross, and that is unfortunately more common than not in America’s current political moment. If I’ve seen anything in the days since, it has been that constant tension between liberal Christians and conservative Christians of politics and the Cross.
Thoughts and Prayers
As Christians, our first instinct should be to pray. Prayer is not just effective, but a requirement in our lives. It was Jesus himself who taught the disciples how to pray, who instructed them when to pray, and who Himself prayed in his darkest moments. As much as the Left would like thoughts and prayers to be little more than a jest, there is power in prayer and solidarity in thinking.
Thoughts and prayers are not a final measure, and the Bible does not present prayer as a shortcut to results. Prayer is important, yes, but it is almost always coupled with direct action. Think of Daniel, who prayed in private, but was forced to take a public stand by his God or be cast into the lion’s den. Even Jesus, as He prayed in the garden, was then tasked to stand down and let His arrest and death proceed. Abraham, when told to sacrifice Isaac, was not just drawn to prayer but tasked with sacrificing the ram as substitution. Moses was called not just to pray for deliverance but to speak it to Pharaoh himself. Gideon prayed for the fleece, but still had to march with his horns. Prayer is important, but it is not the full width of what God has called us to in our roles within our families and within society.
Inactive Prayers
In America, and specifically in American politics; thoughts and prayers are typically used only as an excuse for inaction. It’s a religiously appropriate way of saying, “I won’t do anything to change the matter, but I see you.” It is the spiritual equivalent of Nancy Pelosi kneeling with Kente-cloth draped over her shoulders. In the wake of yet another public shooting, are we going to continue to pray prayers we have no intention of following up on? Are we going to continue to ask for God’s help and do nothing with the tools, the reasoning, and the discernment He has gifted us?
When the news about Charlie Kirk broke, I saw a friend on Facebook share the article with the caption, “thoughts and prayers?”. It was clearly intended as a jab, and it struck a major cord with a lot of Charlie sympathizers in the comments. It got me thinking, because the people outraged in those comments resort to that same response anytime this happens in a school or in the public square. When turned ironically against them, can they now understand how empty it feels when they know there is no action behind it? Thoughts and prayers are powerful, but when a quick two-second prayer is all you’re willing to offer your opponent, what good are those prayers coming from a heart uncommitted to them?
Good Samaritans
Thoughts and prayers may be well intentioned, but more often than not they are used as an excuse to pass by the victim from a safe distance. I guarantee that the Priest and the Levite in the Parable of the Good Samaritan thought and prayed more than the Samaritan in the story. The person who was deemed unclean and idolatrous, of mixed blood, is the one willing to love their neighbor as themself. The titular Samaritan didn’t think, pray, and pass by. They got down on the ground, cleaned and dressed the man’s wounds, and footed the bill for his care on top of expensive anointings with oil and wine.
Christian Nationalism is a proponent of the Priest and the Levitical point of view in this parable. They view Americans outside of their sect as having polluted the bloodline and of abandoning their birthright. This isn’t a far stretch from the idea that immigrants are polluting the heritage of our nation; an idea espoused repeatedly by Charlie Kirk. He was a staunch advocate of the Great Replacement Theory, that non-white immigrants are coming to this nation to change its population and remake it in their own culture/beliefs. “The great replacement strategy, which is well under way every single day in our southern border, is a strategy to replace white rural America with something different.“1
Charlie Kirk did not espouse viewpoints that were in line with the Greatest Commandments or the teachings of Jesus as regards how we are to love our neighbors, shepherd our resources, and behave across social categories. In an onslaught of posts and shares praising his life’s work, his words speak in stark contrast to his newly found sainthood and post-mortem good will towards men.
Faith
One of the things that surprised me the most during the first few hours after the shooting was how many of my Facebook friends I saw posting about Charlie Kirk. I saw post after post praising him as a standard bearer of the faith, raising him to the level of sainthood far beyond my expectations. So I decided to scour the internet in search of his testimony or statements of faith. More than anything, I saw other people proclaiming him a great man of faith, but actual clips, statements, or quotes of his faith were much more difficult to find even when searching directly. What I did find, were many statements using Biblical language that were almost always immediately followed by America first ideology, or used as justification for passing on the other side of the road instead of loving your neighbor. More often than not I found pictures of him with quotes from theologians and pastors like John MacArthur designed to look like Charlie had said them instead. In the days since, that type of content has been further created to fit the narrative and flood the social media channels.2 3
That said, I did manage to find a few clips prior to the flood of post-assassination content that lead me to believe that he possessed at the very least a knowledge of salvation, if not a faith in Jesus Christ. I do think that Charlie Kirk evidenced with his own words a belief in his own sinfulness and faith in the resurrection of Jesus as the only way to overcome it. Unlike Donald Trump, Kirk seemed capable of expressing not only the need for but the means of salvation. Ultimately, it is not for me to decide whether Charlie Kirk was or was not saved, only God can do that.
Works
Only God can evaluate the faith of a person’s heart. Even if that faith is a small as a mustard seed, the Bible promises that nothing is impossible.4 However, the book of James5 also reminds us that works are the evidence of faith, and that a faith without works is dead. God gave us the ability to see and discern. Even demons believe that God is one, but what separates the saved from the fallen is the transformation that comes only through faith in Jesus Christ. Works are the Christian’s evidence of that faith and the church’s expression of that faith to the world. I cannot judge Charlie Kirk’s faith, but I can view his works and see just how drastically oppositional they are to the teachings of Jesus.
One of the main comments I’ve seen in Kirk’s praise is that “he would debate with anyone”. This presents his work on college campuses as a series of soft-hearted discussions, where he’s just some guy handing out information. Don’t be obtuse. Charlie Kirk built a machine designed to do exactly what conservative evangelical parents are terrified higher education is going to do to their children; to indoctrinate students with overtly political messaging. He made his fame and his fortune debating young students, so he could post edited clips online and make them look foolish. He preyed on the ignorance of youth to build a platform from which he regularly gave racist, xenophobic, dishonest, and un-Christian views. Not only has he enabled Donald Trump to continually lie about the 2020 election, but he has advocated praise for those who have enacted political violence against MAGA’s enemies, going so far as to even platform the offenders directly via Turning Point USA6. Charlie Kirk also helped compile a database of “woke professors”, resulting in death threats and witch hunts against people he deemed outside of his political circle. 7
He was never some minister preaching the Gospel to the lost. He was first and foremost a political pundit pushing a narrative, and one that made great use of Christian language and symbols. The work of Charlie Kirk’s hands was divisiveness, deceit, and dishonesty. It promoted divisions between Americans on the grounds of race, ethnicity, sexuality, and political allegiance. It preached a Gospel that taught its adherents to fear their neighbors and love themselves rather than to love one’s neighbor as oneself. You cannot think and pray while deliberately acting against the one you’re praying for.
Breaking the Algorithms
When I first set out to compose this piece, I already had an idea of who Charlie Kirk was. It was one that only engaged with him on the fringes, as dictated by my Facebook and TikTok algorithms. It, admittedly, was a negative view of Charlie Kirk. I don’t want to pretend for a second that I entered this reflection on the past week without that preconceived notion. That said, I made it a point when researching for this post to listen to my Conservative friends who were singing his praises and mourning him as one would mourn a brother. Romans 12:15, “Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep” came to mind. As a result, I am much softer on my opinion of Charlie Kirk than I was a week ago.
It was in this research that I was able to find genuine testaments of faith. It was how I learned about the clothing line run by his wife Erika, that donates sweatshirts to the homeless. I don’t agree with how this organization presents itself, or intertwines Scripture with America; but it would be foolish to pretend like clothing the unclothed is anything but positive. There are just as many people wanting you to view Charlie Kirk’s legacy as a total detriment, as there are others wanting you to accept nothing but praise. The answer isn’t in these extremes; it requires patience, listening, and discernment.
I’ve got a Facebook algorithm that is now bombarding me with pro-Charlie Kirk talking heads and a TikTok algorithm that is bombarding me with anti-Kirk talking heads. It is not just my responsibility, but my obligation to distill the biases between them before labeling one wholeheartedly true or the other entirely false. Charlie Kirk deserved death no more than any of us, and he deserved life just as much as the rest of us too. His life and works were far from all good or all bad. Even if my conclusion is that he caused far more harm to this nation than he did good, he still deserved to live. I take comfort and am humbled by the fact that one day we will all stand before the Lord accountable for our actions. The final verdict of Charlie Kirk’s actions is in the hands of that higher power alone to decide.
Political Violence
I had always seen Charlie Kirk as a powerful political force, but mostly one isolated to college students and Gen Z. I was surprised at how many people I saw posting about the shooting, about violence, and about the shock of the matter. I saw a lot of people who haven’t said a word about any of the other mass shootings or assassination attempts suddenly compelled to quell the hate speech. I saw people I haven’t seen post in months suddenly jumping up and mourning a violence that has already happened 300 other times this year. They didn’t speak on January 6th or October 7th, not when Israel responded to terrorism with genocide, or when the government gave ICE permission to enter their sacred spaces, nor when DOGE pulled critical funding from Christian charities and NGOs; but now they were compelled into speaking up. I was stunned more than anything by what my brothers and sisters in Christ deemed worth using their platform for after so much silence.
In contrast to this, I saw a few friends on the left celebrating and condoning this despicable act. However, I saw a lot more of my left friends speaking out against the assassination of Charlie Kirk rather than in support of it. Their voices were not silent, despite the fact that this particular shooting didn’t land on their doorstep. I can think of maybe one far-right friend I saw speaking out against the assassination of Minnesota Speaker Melissa Hortman. The truth is that Charlie Kirk was, and in many ways is more so now, an idol. He is a prop, a voice to be praised, and his death is treated like an attack on Christianity because of the idolatry of so many of the hearts sitting in the red, white, and blue pews.
Wolves, Sheep, and Sheepdog
Like so many in the MAGA movement, Charlie Kirk’s voice was used to promote a sheepdog mentality amongst the Christian Right. The sheepdog mentality promotes this idea of a warriorlike class of Alphas protecting the flock from the wolves. This establishes a hierarchy where you, the listener to these voices, are told to see yourself as the sheepdog. The people who aren’t listening, your wife and children, your neighbors; they are all the sheep. The wolves are the people who don’t think like you, the outsiders trying to corrupt or contort the ways of thought you are ordained with protecting. The rhetoric of the Christian right is laced with this mentality, and oblivious to the stark contrast between the same metaphor as presented in Luke 158.
There are no sheepdogs. We are all the sheep, and this sheepdog mentality not only erases the importance of the shepherd, it elevates the self proclaimed sheepdog in its own mind. It teaches us that protecting the flock is the purpose of our mandate, when the parable as Jesus presents it illustrates the community that Jesus exists to protect. The lost sheep is still a member of the flock, and not only does the shepherd pursue that lost sheep, but He does so at risk of leaving the flock unprotected. The salvation of the lost one is cause for celebration, not the rigidity of the flock.
This doesn’t mean that the sheep are defenseless, nor that they shouldn’t stand for what they believe in lest they become lost themselves. A great portion of the New Testament is dedicated to the Apostle Paul teaching the churches how to stand up and stand firm in their beliefs. In Zechariah, the Lord speaks of refining the remnants of the flock to stand firm in the days to come. The importance of the lost sheep’s repentance also cannot be ignored. The difference comes from the fact that political leanings teach us to look out for our flock, and Christian teaching forces us to confront our role beneath the shepherd. There is a great contention between what is Christian and what is American, and it is that line that has been greatly blurred in part by the works of Charlie Kirk. He is far from alone in this effort, but he cannot be ignored as a critical component of its success.
In the Christian Right, the Constitution carries more weight than the Cross, and the notion of having to leave the flock for the lost sheep, or cross the street and give up your freedoms to save a neighbor’s life is in direct opposition to American attitudes toward personal freedom and liberty. Thoughts and prayers are a sheepdog response that allows us to feel like we’ve contributed without having to do as the shepherd did and leave our flock.
The Constitution and the Cross
At the heart of Christian Nationalism is a misappropriation of divinity when it comes to the Constitution. Evangelicals seem to think that a document written by a gaggle of agnostics, deists, and unitarians was actually created with the Christian God at its center. There are absolutely Christian men with their names on that document, but that separation of church and state came from them just as much as the unbelievers in order to protect the sanctity of both. We forget that the Constitution was a protective reaction to European monarchies, theocracies, and empires; just as much as it was an invention of American democracy.
Personally, I think the Constitution is one of the greatest man-made documents ever written. It corrected the shortcomings of the Articles of Confederation, bolstered a national government, and created pathways for representation and legislation that had never before existed so freely. It found common ground between the Virginian and New Jerseyian interests of large and small states, it knit together colonies that had been founded for a variety of different religious, economic, and political reasons. More importantly, it evolved and grew over time to free slaves, protect the nation’s most vulnerable, give voices to the voiceless, and stand its ground over the changing tides of fascism and anarchism. As much as I believe in its foundation for this nation, not for a second do I believe it to be divine in any sense of the word. At the end of the day, it is a document written by man. It is a document that once denied freedom to slaves, gave grounds for rounding up and excluding minorities, ignored the freedoms it promised, and bent to the wills of those who interpreted it from the judiciary. The Constitution is not divine, it is a 238 year old piece of paper that is only as strong as the people defending it.
The Defenders
Right now the Constitution lacks strong defenders. The supreme executive in the land abuses his power, insights violence, and lies constantly as he hungers for more. He plays kid brother to Vladmir Putin, one of the most brutal dictators of the 21st Century. He refers to immigrants and people of other races and nationalities as less than human. He lauds them as rapists and murderers, denying them due process and often deporting them far from their countries or even continents of origin. It takes either self-induced ignorance or great stupidity to fail to see how much of the rhetoric of violence and hate spews from his mouth. He is not the only voice, but he is by far the loudest and most influential. Just last year he falsely accused Haitian immigrants of eating pets, leading to school closures from bomb threats and related threats of violence in the community. He rejoices at the internment of detainees and deportees, sharing memes about their suffering and destruction. There is a stark difference between the weight of what comes from people you don’t like on Twitter versus words from the mouth of our highest leadership. The dialogue from his mouth is so astoundingly vile that it cannot be compared to any other Presidential candidate, let alone President of this century.
The vitriol that Donald Trump spews on a daily basis was not even remotely reached by Joe Biden or Kamala Harris, not by Obama, Romney, or McCain; nor by Bush, Gore, Kerry, or either Clinton. And no, Hillary saying “basket of deplorables” once does not grant her opponent an unlimited hate speech pass. He was in front of a camera blaming the radical left for the assassination before the suspect had even been seen on film. In conjunction with that is the work of Charlie Kirk. Turning Point USA platformed Kyle Rittenhouse after he crossed state lines with a deadly weapon and killed two people. In 2022, he suggested it would bring a patriot great success to bail out the man who attacked and beat Nany Pelosi’s husband with a hammer. The Trump administration and its associates have not only condoned and celebrated political violence but have been complicit in it; Kirk and Turning Point USA being massive contributors to that national discord. Mere days after the shooting, Trump appeared on Fox and Friends praising the far right and demonizing the far left9. This was later followed up on by Vice President JD Vance, who urged a witch hunt for anti-Kirk activity from Kirk’s own podcast, while further blaming the far left for political violence10. Hate speech and violent rhetoric is absolutely plaguing both sides, but the difference is that on the right it is coming directly from the party’s highest leadership.
Poor Me
The sudden cry of convenience from my right-leaning friends in the wake of Kirk’s death reminds me of a quasi-movement in the summer of 2020. The killings of Ahmaud Arbery and George Floyd prompted a great backlash against the perceived wokeness of racial violence. An unfortunate figurehead in this movement was five year old Cannon Hinnant. This white boy was playing in his neighbor’s yard when he was shot point blank by his black neighbor. The perpetrator was arrested within 24 hours and eventually sentenced to life in prison. As far as a crime this severe can be, it was pretty open and shut from an apprehension and conviction standpoint.
Compare this to the murder of Ahmaud Arbery. Arbery was out for a run when two vigilantes took it upon themselves to assume he was a burglar, chase him, and shoot him in cold blood. Police spoke to the perpetrators on the scene, took their story at face value, and didn’t bother to arrest them for more than two months. The only reason that justice was served, was because the story went national and the District Attorney was forced into action.
In Cannon’s case, the justice system worked. The criminal was brought to justice swiftly, and completely. The justice system failed Ahmaud Arbery, and would have continued to do so without national attention forcing it into action.
George Floyd
In between these two events was the murder of George Floyd by Officer Derek Chauvin. This was the last breath heard round the nation, sparking the growth of the Black Lives Matter movement, and raising police violence to a level of attention it hasn’t been to since. 2020 was the first year I saw many of my Right-wing friends take racially motivated violence seriously. It was the first year I really saw it for the systemic issue it was. But it didn’t take long for talking heads like Charlie Kirk to label Floyd a scumbag and to paint the movement toward racial justice as an attack on white Americans.
Cannon’s Life Mattered
A byproduct of this whiplash against BLM and the George Floyd murder was the “Cannon’s Life Mattered” movement, which asserted that the national media was ignoring the story of Cannon Hinnant because he was a white child killed by a black man. Conservative outlets hijacked the grief of his family in pursuit of a means to combat what they saw as an attack on the racial hierarchy of the nation. They did so against the pleas of Hinnant’s own mother, as they used the death of a young boy as a political prop. It was quickly proven that the national media did cover his story, but because of how swiftly justice was served it lacked much in the way of development or repetition. In other words, it was open and shut. The killings of George Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery were anything but, going so far as to almost be cases where someone got away with it.
Persecution Complex
The truth of the matter is that Christian Nationalists suffer from a supreme persecution complex. Jesus was persecuted, so like his disciples we must also be persecuted. This creates an environment where Christians transitively associate any type of pushback as confirmation that they are doing the right thing. In a world where the cosmic war between God and Satan is a reality, if I know that I am on God’s side, then anything in opposition must be from Satan’s side. Christians are quick to dismiss the danger of this binary way of thinking; often trying to move God onto their side and Satan onto the opposing side. It misconstrues doing the politically Right thing with doing the morally or spiritually right thing.
The summer of BLM in 2020 flipped the script. Suddenly evidence of persecution against “the others” was everywhere. A generation ingrained with this Christian Nationalist way of thinking needed the spotlight of persecution back on them, because wherever that spotlight is the Lord must be also. Cannon Hinnant was just the prop they used to divert attention and feel safe inside their comfortable persecution complex. Thoughts and prayers are made easier with posts and shares, and sharing Cannon’s story was a way to feel like you were contributing without having to admit any legitimacy to the other side. It was a way to prove to yourself that your life was under attack and the dissenting opinions were biased and ungodly.
A Good Guy with a Gun
The United States faces mass shootings and gun deaths at a rate that is so astronomically higher than any other first world nation it almost doesn’t fit on the graph.
Clearly there is a problem that is effecting America more severally than any of the other first world countries. Before I dig into that, though, I’d like to address the counter argument to the data shown above. When people try to downplay mass shootings in the US, they will typically refer to worldwide gun violence data. The US doesn’t lead that list, but many of its South American and Central American neighbors do. These countries typically suffer from a multitude of governmental differences and socio-economic problems. In other words, they are second and third world countries with second and third world problems. Here is the data for the sake of presentation, but don’t let that mislead you.
Everybody Wants to Be Doc Holliday
Guns are a centerpiece of American cultural and political identity, and they were placed there very intentionally by decades of lobbying, propaganda, and media. With every mass shooting, the holdout argument against even the most basic gun reforms is veiled behind a thin layer of personal liberty. This is also the view espoused by Kirk. There’s a 2023 interview that his been wildly taken out of context by the Left, insinuating that Charlie Kirk’s position is to be in favor of a few gun deaths. By focusing on that excerpt instead of the whole, we not only spread dishonest information but miss the real dangers of his style of debate. In this debate, he’s cleverly implying that the only possible gun measure is to take away all guns, so the only logical solution is to do nothing because you may need to defend yourself from the government. Charlie Kirk was really great at erasing the middle ground, so that the extremes of both sides feel like the only option and viewers and voters are forced into a false binary between those extremes. Concurrent with that vail, though, is the cowboy spirit; that manifest destiny that has driven this country from sea to shining sea. It’s the desire to be the conquering hero, but it’s also the secret desire that gun owners have of being Doc Holliday.
Parallel to this Doc Holliday American ideal, and bubbling beneath the surface of Christian Nationalism is the idea of Seven Mountain dominionism. This belief is that there are social, cultural, and political mountains that need to be taken by Christians in order to set the world right and allow Christ to return. It’s basically the plot of a bad fantasy movie, as if Jesus is bound in some mystical cave and only the seven sacred gems of the devout sword can free Him so that He can rise from the Earth like a Kaiju and wreak havoc on the sinners. That way of perceiving the world has invaded and overtaken many of this country’s Apostolic and Pentecostal movements. Even if Evangelicals haven’t heard of the Seven Mountain Mandate, it is shaping, and it has a very vocal place in Trump’s cabinet and closest advisors. These combined forces succeed in flipping Jesus’ warnings of living and dying by the sword into a call to arms. That very call to arms seeps into the Evangelical reaction to gun violence; not because they see someone die by the sword but because they wish they had also been there to live by a sword of their own.
A good guy with a gun can only respond once the threat is present. And even if the good guy shoots the bad guy, someone still dies. The overlooked tragedy of this assassination isn’t just the inexcusable cold blooded murder of Charlie Kirk’s, but the reality that the shooter will most likely also be put to death. Those are two radically different people, but both made in the image of God, and both taken from this Earth because of the power that hate held over one of them. As Christians we are told that all mankind is made in the image of God, but we’re still more comfortable with the elimination of some of that life than we are with minor restrictions on who can access firearms and how lethal a Wal-Mart purchase can make you. That Doc Holliday mental cosplay that I might need to be the one to save this town is a huge factor in both direct and indirect Evangelical support of gun violence, but it does not work alone.
Image Bearers
God is the creator of all things. If He is the creator of all things, then it stands to reason that Satan can only be a manipulator or an imposer of alterations. (This isn’t my idea, C.S. Lewis goes into much greater detail of it across Mere Christianity and The Screwtape Letters). God created all hearts to be pure. Before sin entered the world, God looked at His creation and saw that it was good. It was only through Satan’s deceit that mankind chose sin for the first time and forever blemished the Lord’s canvas. As Christians, we believe that there is darkness in the world. However, I believe it is a great fallacy to believe that darkness is the primary agent in this world. There is sin and darkness on Earth and it will touch all of our lives both overtly and covertly, but before we were sinful we were made good. It is from this point of view that the idea of each of us being image bearers of God comes from. We are not valuable because of what we have or haven’t done. We are valuable because that is how God made us. We are valuable before we’ve committed our first sin, and we are no less valuable as we commit our last. That sin changes us, it changes our relationship with God too; but it does not posses the power to make us into anything less than what our Creator designed us to be.
Dark Hearts
One of the common threads I picked up on from posts by friends and family in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s assassination was that the darkness of the human heart needed to change. I support that 100%. I believe that thoughts and prayers are a valuable agent of that change. Yet it comes down to the point made earlier about thoughts and prayers coupled with action or inaction. I’m reminded of a quote from Morgan Freeman’s God in Evan Almighty. It’s a very rough and arguably blasphemous movie, but there is one line that I think perfectly hones in on the way God moves in our lives.
Let me ask you something. If someone prays for patience, you think God gives them patience? Or does he give them the opportunity to be patient? If he prayed for courage, does God give him courage, or does he give him opportunities to be courageous? If someone prayed for the family to be closer, do you think God zaps them with warm fuzzy feelings, or does he give them opportunities to love each other?
Thoughts and prayers are not a means to recuse ourselves from direct action. They are a tool for growing closer to God, for listening to His direction, for voicing our concerns. They are not the final step in loving our neighbor, they are how we discern where to start. Too often in Christian Conservative Politics, the solution is seen as just “we need to pray that God changes their hearts” rather than, God has given me the tools to speak into that person’s life, to pursue justice, and to structure our government and society in a way that will prevent this from happening. Jesus calls us to live sacrificially, but the moment that sacrifice is perceived to be in the way of our own political agenda we are magically only able to help via quick thoughts and silent prayers. There is a conflict between the manifest destiny of personal freedoms and the Christian walk that cannot continue to grow unaddressed. We’d prefer the freedom to be Doc Holliday rather than the responsibility to be Christ-like. We crave that freedom because we are often more afraid of the coming cowboys than we are assured of our ability to do all things through Christ. “Thought shalt have no other gods before me” includes political parties and even the American flag too.
Trans
For decades, the Right wing of this country was able to galvanize single issue voters over the issue of abortion. Republicans stood for abortion bans and Democrats stood for free abortion access. Yet in Trump’s first term he appointed Supreme Court justices who would overturn Roe V Wade after he left office. When it came time for the 2024 election, abortion was no longer the focal point of the Republican strategy. They needed a substitute and they found that in the transgendered population.
All during the campaign Trump was fueling rumors of females being run out of their own sports by trans men, students receiving sex changes in school, and all manners of spookiness regarding the flux of gender identity. Not all of his claims, particularly around trans-athletes, are false. However, they have been blown so wildly out of proportion by the Trump campaign that they bear little resemblance to the scattered few actual occurrences. Evangelicals pride themselves on the mantra of faith over fear, but in the transgendered movement Republicans found the reigns of faith over fear of others.
I don’t think this is an issue unique to Republicans either. Both parties struggle to find a cornerstone for their politics, and sexual ethic seems to be the most tried and true means of success these past few election cycles. On the Right it’s the rigidity of gender expression, and on the Left it’s consent as the only guiding sexual principle.
Sex First
There’s a young state representative from Texas named James Talarico. He’s seen as a rising star in the political world. He’s the grandson of a pastor and one of the few Democrats who doesn’t seem to shy away from their Christian upbringing. I’ve heard quite a few interviews of him sharing his faith and pursuit of the Lord; but the first clip I ever saw of him didn’t sit well with me.
He was recounting the opening of Luke, where the angel presents itself to Mary and lets her know of the coming Son. His argument was that the beauty of that story came from consent, and I nearly did a spit take. Of all the stories in the Bible where consent, or lack thereof, plays a significant role he chose the immaculate conception? David and Bathsheba, Samson and Delilah, Sodom and Gomorrah, and Lot and his nieces were all right there. Instead he chose to reframe the story as if God came down and asked Mary very politely if she would consent to bring his Son into this world.
This didn’t sit well with me because reducing the immaculate conception, even pregnancy, to its sexual connotations devalues both the divinity of the moment and the wonder of childbearing in general. To carry a baby is a miracle. The woman’s body is quite literally creating a new life with millions of cells splitting, coding, and reorganizing to create something that did not exist before. Its significance shouldn’t be wholly defined by the sexual act that triggered it. Nor should the birth of Christ be reimagined as this cosmic moment where mankind consented to receive its savior. When we fixate our politics around sexual ethics, we have a tendency to want to pass everything through that lens in order to justify it. It’s a pork barreling manner of politics that again forces us into binaries of extremes. We need to accept all of this platform because they are taking this stance on this issue, because we know that Jesus would want this so He must also stand for this. The Bible is not a prop, regardless of who’s wielding it; and the aloofness of it on the Right does not excuse doing so on the Left.
Stance
If I’m anti-anything in this political climate, it is how Christians clamor for faith to point our way rather than the way. It is how desperate Christians in this nation are for an earthly leader, how quickly they are to idolize the first person to hold up a Bible or mumble “Jesus” in front of them. We have a nation of milk level Christians being fed meat in the same manner that a mother bird feeds her chicks. It is a moment in the faith that lacks discernment, and is littered with mama birds delivering masticated gospels to unsuspecting chicks. Sex, both in regards to consent and to the transgendered movement are just some of the masticated bits of meat being chewed up and regurgitated by someone else for our consumption.
We have to learn how to ask the hard questions and chew that meat for ourselves. Is our job as Christians to defend the flock at all costs, or is it to follow after the lost sheep? Are we called to irradicate sin from this world, or to speak the life and light of Jesus? Are we called to sit at our own tables in our own customs or to dine with the others? Are we justified in passing by or are we called to stop and assist?
Red Shirts
What if tomorrow God came down and proclaimed indisputably that all red shirts were sinful and forbidden? What would our responsibility be as Christians? I’d assume that most would start with their own closets, scouring their wardrobes for any sign of red clothing and bagging it up for disposal. The Chiefs jersey would stay, I assume, because that shirt is different right? But what do you do when you walk out of the house and your neighbor waves at you in a bright red shirt of their own? Are we, as Christians, duty bound to remove that shirt at all costs? Is our mission in this life to tell our neighbor that the shirt is wrong until they take it off? Are we justified in pulling it off their heads and burning it ourselves?
The way the American church, the Christian nationalist movement, and Turning Point USA have charged the dialogue would indicate so. They’ve got Christians paranoid that their children’s teachers are forcing red shirts on them, that the only way to stay safe is to forcibly eradicate the red shirts here and now. They defend the faith the same way that Peter did in the garden, swinging their swords wildly and harming the vulnerable in their midst. I use the world vulnerable here because it wasn’t the Roman soldiers or the high priests that lost an ear, it was a servant whom Jesus immediately took pity on and healed. Our mission on this earth isn’t to wipe sin from the world, it’s to live above it, to value mercy, and to love our neighbor as Jesus loved those in the garden. Jesus broke bread with Judas, knowing full well he had already betrayed Him. Our task is to do nothing short of that, regardless of how red someone else’s shirt is.
Pork Barrels
The Transgender movement is presented as the end-all be-all to Christian America. The White House, Right-wing news outlets, and talking heads have Christians scared witless that their kindergarteners are being offered sex changes in the classroom. If that were true, I’d be pretty scared too. The Right presents this notion of a nation being invaded and secularized by the evil agents of gender fluidity, and argues that it’s worth any cost to stop that invasion. The Left presents a world where transgendered people are an identity group wanting nothing more than to live as if they had always been a commonplace in our society. Again, I think both sides have tremendous flaws in how they pork barrel their politics and their narrative with this sexual ethic at the head. Transgendered people, transvestites, transexuals; they’ve all been around for a long time. These are not people who crawled out of the Earth the moment Obergefell v Hodges went before the Supreme Court. Regardless of whether or not you want them to exist, they exist. Their existence and your offensive or defensive stance towards it does not justify the injustices of your other actions.
Boys and Girls
In a lot of ways, the transgender movement is a response to the strict hierarchy and regulations of traditional manhood and womanhood. For the sake of this post, let’s treat sex as a label for the parts you are born with and gender as how people with that label express themselves. I.E. I am a male because I was born those parts, but I am a man because I have a beard and drive a truck. Sex is typically a binary, though as with any species there are aberrations resulting in hermaphrodites and intersex people. Aside from those aberrations, people are either male or female. Gender is a lot more fluid, even if you only believe in male and female as its labels. It was less than a century ago when pink was seen as a masculine color, and yet in 2025 it represents the opposite. The way we express gender changes, that’s why its now okay for boys to be in dance and for women to wear jeans. These actions come with different social assumptions, but that doesn’t mean they must be social or gender limitations.
The Christian Right struggles with that flexibility, it is why the Trad Wife movement has grown so much. It’s why Charlie Kirk was praising Taylor Swift’s engagement so she could have lots of kids and submit to her husband. It is shortsighted to look at this attempt to restrict gender roles and not see the correlation between a movement trying to bring complete freedom to them. And the more we point the finger at the other side and justify our response by their response, the more we dial up the heat on an already tense situation. Transgender people face threats of violence, mental health crises, and discrimination at an alarming rate. Unfortunately Christians have done much more to further the problem than they have to solve it.
On the Left
Where I find contention with the Left is the idea that they’ve always been here and everyone should just be ready to accept deviant sexual behavior and gender identity like its the red pill from the Matrix. There’s a lack of empathy towards people who have suddenly found the things they’ve always taken for granted shaken up. Even if you believe those people to be wrong with every fiber of your being, the grace that we are called to extends even to those we’ve deemed socially or politically impure. I think it comes with great folly to pretend like heterosexual relationships with clearly defined gender roles haven’t been the norm for the majority of human history. Deviance in the way of expression or practice has always existed to varying degrees of tolerance and celebration, but that doesn’t mean the hierarchy should be expected to be completely restructured around it. Whether it is right or wrong, not everyone is going to get it and it is still our duty as Christians and as Americans to live in community even with those we despise. That doesn’t come without consequences or rules, but it does call us to show grace and to cross the street anyways.
At the same time, I have issue with the way that the transgender movement codifies certain behaviors or representations as masculine or feminine. It is a movement priding itself on freedom of expression, but I believe it to also place far too much weight on how expression or appearance defines us. I don’t think it’s healthy to encourage the idea that certain interests, hobbies, or feelings are relegated to one gender experience more than the other. There’s a lot of restriction on how we express ourselves and what that means regarding who we are that comes directly from this moment in gender fluidity and changing sexual ethics.
Additionally, I think the transgendered movement does create a difficult environment for our children. That is underplayed on the Left. It’s not because drag queens are reading story books to them or they might be one of the five girls cut from the team because of a transgender athlete, it is because there is a layer to their self-discovery that hasn’t existed for prior generations. Figuring out if I was a boy or a girl wasn’t something that was a remote consideration even a decade ago, let alone the decades when my parents and grandparents went through those same stages of life. Figuring out who you are is difficult enough when gender is treated as a default, I can’t imagine how complicated and difficult it is to distill when that question is heaped onto it. We have schools, families, and churches that are ill-equipped to process this sharp change in cultural expectations and it’s the upcoming generations that are bearing the brunt of it. I do not think that it’s appropriate for children to be provided medicinal or surgical transitions for the same reason I don’t think minors should be able to drink, drive, or vote; but if Marco tells their teacher they want to be called Marcia, what right does that teacher have to do anything less?
Fundamentalists
One corrosive thing that both parties share is extreme fundamentalism. Neither party wants to admit they are tainted by it, but the cancer exists in the donkey the same as it does the elephant. I have a friend whose parents are about as hardcore MAGA as you can get. This friend prides himself on being the exact opposite, a far leftist. The irony is that if you have a conversation with him or his parents, you can see how their brains work exactly the same way. They come to different political outcomes, but they both exercise the same black and white vindictiveness. The same hatred of “the others” rots them to the core.
Each party possesses a purity line and the moment you step a centimeter outside of it, see how accepted you are. We’ve become far too comfortable in both spaces at excising anyone we disagree with on a whim. It creates an atmosphere where both parties push everyone further and further from the middle out of fear of cancellation or being lumped in with those others. Criticize even a word of Trump’s on the Right or step even a centimeter outside the norm on transgender issues and watch how quickly those extremes rise to chew on your flesh.
What distinguishes the two parties isn’t that one side isn’t plagued by fundamentalism and the other is, but that one party’s leaders have managed to hold the line. The Democrats are not being whipped by the most radical among them, The Republicans are. Donald Trump is often spearheading the extremes regarding rhetoric and pushes towards censorship and authoritarianism, and the platforms that Charlie Kirk helped build are instrumental in normalizing that behavior and disseminating that sentiment.
On the Right
We get so tangled in the political weeds that as Christians we lose the value of treating people with dignity and respect in pursuit of wiping out sin. Even if you never convince someone to accept Jesus, the moment you refuse to meet them where they are at and treat them respectfully as who they believe themselves to be, you have lost all ability to be a neighbor to them. The moment you insist on calling Marcia by Marco, you’ve lost them. If your neighbor introduces themselves as Jewish or Islamic, you don’t insist on serving them pork. How little of a cost is calling someone by their chosen name or pronouns that we’re justified in being unwilling to do so? You don’t have to believe that gender and sex are separate categories or that their way of expression is the same as yours, but loving your neighbor means having a willingness to cross the street even when they’re not one of you. We all harbor sin, many of us even embrace it, does that give anyone else the right to treat us without the dignity and respect of someone made in God’s image? We’ve all distorted it on the inside just as much, if not more so, as we believe they’ve distorted it on the outside.
Escalation
One thing that has startled and frustrated me the most in the wake of the Kirk assassination, is how instantly politicized it was. I saw political he said/ she saids the same moment I saw the headlines. What scares me the most is how quickly it came from the highest executive office in the land. President Trump and Vice President Vance have been on a dangerous smear campaign since the moment the story broke, actively stoking fears of leftist violence and going so far as to anoint the far right as just while claiming that all far left are violent. Just this week JD Vance was on Charlie Kirk’s former podcast, advocating for the targeting, firing, and harassment of those speaking out against Charlie Kirk or celebrating his death. Charlie Kirk was murdered in cold blood, it should not be celebrated or praised; but it is an insult to the Executive Branch and to this country to have its highest elected officials actively using this event for political means and the instigation of further dispute.
We cannot continue to justify our own overreach, our own hatred, and our own retribution by how the other side upped the ante first. When all everyone does is dial up the heat, eventually the whole house will catch on fire.
Sparks
We have already seen tremendous crackdowns by the Trump administration and MAGA politicians on free speech. Trump has successfully weaponized DOGE to target government funded news and television via PBS and NPR. He is now using the Federal Communications Commission to attack public personalities that are critical of him. It is not a coincidence that certain anti-Trump personalities are fired when FCC Chairman Brendan Carr floats the idea of pulling licenses and opening cases against networks and their owners if they don’t take action against their late night hosts.
As crazy as it sounds, late night hosts like Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel have been some of the most consistent voices against the bigotry, corruption, and divisiveness of Trump, his administration, and its adjacents. Donald Trump was on national television, politicizing the assassination of one of his biggest supporters, and for merely calling out that fact, the FCC targeted ABC’s affiliate stations. The suspension of Jimmy Kimmel under threat of reprisal from the federal government is nothing less than a direct attack on free speech. JD Vance encouraging Americans to report their neighbors for dissent is nothing less than an attack on free speech. The first amendment was added specifically to protect the citizens from the federal government with their voices, their religion, and their expression, the same as the second was added to protect the citizens from physical reprisal with their guns.
It’s why the world would be a better place if Charlie Kirk were still living and speaking. Not because I agree with what he said or stood for, but because the fundamental thing that unites us is the belief that we all have the right to say it. Or, as Voltaire’s biographer put it “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”
What Do We Stand For in Jesus Name?
America is at what seems to be a never ending crossroads. American Christians are once again confronted with the idols they’ve carved and the sacrifices they’ve placed on pagan political alters. We’d be wise to remember Zechariah’s words in Zechariah 7:9-10, “9 “Thus says the Lord of hosts, Render true judgments, show kindness and mercy to one another, 10 do not oppress the widow, the fatherless, the sojourner, or the poor, and let none of you devise evil against another in your heart.””.
As we raze the perceived enemy, as we raise political leaders and bow before them; are we walking the righteous path or are we walking as Israel did in its time of Kings? Do we value integrity, kindness, and mercy? Do we lend our ears and our hearts to speakers who do, or do we lend them to those who harbor the same grudges and fears we do? Are we devising evil in our hearts or are we grabbing our oil as we cross the street? Is that bowl of Conservative soup really worth selling our Christian birthright for?
Letters
Chance the Rapper recently released his second album, and there’s a song on it that has struck me deeply. Chance has always been vocal about his faith, and the Gospel has been a big part of his music since he was still putting out EPs on SoundCloud. This song is a profound rebuke against the silent decadence of the church in America and I’d encourage everyone to give it a listen. It’s got some cursing in it, but it carries a fire that I think the Old Testament prophets would have been proud of. Rather than flocking to Christian celebrities of the moment like Kanye or Russel Brand, I wish people would pay more attention to the messages being delivered from artists like Chance who have risen with their faith rather than turned to it to distract from public discourse.
Conclusion
Charlie Kirk should still be alive. He should still be free to speak his opinions safely in the public square. There is no justification for what happened on September 10th, no circumstance in which his assassination should be anything but a tragedy. His death was tragic and unforgivable, but he should not be lauded as a bastion defender of the faith or Christian hero. Are we as Christians so desperate for an idol that this is who we’ll close our eyes and bend our knees to?
It’s time for the American church to repent and place its faith in Christ rather than in partisan talking heads. The idolatry of this man from the ground level to the oval office is alarming, and both the President and Vice President’s continued use of this to foment greater division must be rebuked unequivocally.
This is the longest post I have ever published in one go. If you made it this far, thank you. I hope you found some common ground to agree with. I hope you read things that you disagreed with. That common ground is what unites us, and that disagreement is how we sharpen and balance each other out. These are messages that have weighed heavily on my heart these past few days, and I hope and pray that they will be received by those who need to hear them.
Closing Prayer
One thing that I have been drawn to lately is the notion of corporate prayer. I would like to close out this post with one of my own.
Dear Lord,
I pray that you help us to see each other again. There is a deep seated hatred and a great violence in this world that knows no allegiance to political party, faith, or culture. It is one rooted in sin, and one that succeeds when we are encouraged to look passed each other instead of to each other. I pray for the family that is still grieving the assassination of a loved one, for the children who haven’t seen their father in over a week, and the wife now charged with keeping their life together.
I pray for the nation that grieves violent act after violent act. I pray for a nation filled with people trying their best to do what is right, but convinced that the person across the street is doing anything less. I pray thanks that all justice, all that is right and good was brought into this world by your hands, and I pray that you remind us of that today God. I pray that we seek not political ends or victories, but you, and that whether they believe it or not our neighbors feel your faithfulness, your presence, and your love. I pray that we be good stewards of the grace and the gifts you have given us, that others cannot look at us without seeing your influence in us.
I pray all these things in your name,
Amen.
Additional Resources
There are a few additional resources I’d like to share that helped refine some of my thoughts and also convict me of some of my own internal tensions. Please give them a listen and hopefully they can impact you as they impacted me.
Footnotes
- The Charlie Kirk Show March 1, 2024 ↩︎
- https://www.npr.org/2025/09/18/nx-s1-5544235/kirk-assassination-foreign-influence-disinformation ↩︎
- https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/security-analysts-flag-rise-russian-created-misinformation-posts/story?id=125640078 ↩︎
- Matthew 17:20 https://www.biblegateway.com/verse/en/Matthew%2017%3A20 ↩︎
- James 2 https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=James%202&version=ESV ↩︎
- https://ca.news.yahoo.com/fact-check-charlie-kirk-introduced-232000319.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAANKuq6jTJcIiB8Vucka4zlOUTPk4OcYcNbualgW64-spxqffOJ4dviKS62TXWIEfW0jfexmqrfAabSnrhIUnMhzHy6Pl8_u9mDKB-NhgAE03jcZS9byB3_ifxCsOqr8hilTkHxZ7YEfce0Xch1nXwyTHUiRoNNJMMnFiQHWo4YFe ↩︎
- https://www.theguardian.com/education/2020/mar/10/mccarthyism-uk-universities-academics-fear-shaming-for-leftwing-views ↩︎
- https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke%2015&version=NIV ↩︎
- https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-doubles-blaming-radical-left-after-vow-after/story?id=125509965 ↩︎
- https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn0r5y33pj5o ↩︎
Collin Willis 