The Problem with Charlie Kirk...and Us.

Like so many others, I've spent the past week or so trying to sort out my emotions and tamp down the dread that resulted from Charlie Kirk's murder. The moment I heard the news, I knew we were in for a mess. For me, the wildly polarizing rhetoric that resulted has been demoralizing and depressing in the extreme. In the powder-keg cultural milieu we're in, the last thing we needed was an event like this. It should be self-evident, but I want to make it clear on the front end that, despite my deep disagreement with so much that Kirk espoused, I find his murder shocking, horrendous, and inexcusable. Up to now, I have tried not to engage the subject because there was so much noise and vitriol in the public space. I also needed time to process both the event and the immediate responses I've seen from others, especially from those who consider themselves Christians.

And I have to be honest, those responses have troubled me nearly as much as the event itself. It seems this tragic event has and will continue to inexorably tempt professed Christians to espouse even more un-Christlike attitudes and perspectives toward our perceived cultural "enemies" than we already do. Heartbreakingly, in their outrage, fueled by siloed media's reporting, I hear many Christians thoughtlessly agreeing with people like ultra-right-wing "pastor" Andrew Isker, who, in response to the Kirk murder, said in an online sermon, "Now is not the time to love our enemies..."

And therein lies the foundational, bedrock error that lurks at the heart of the modern American version of the faith; what Jesus taught as mandatory and quintessential to what it means to be his disciple, we've determined is optional and conditional. This was the underlying problem at the center of Charlie Kirk's ideology and his approach to public engagement.

But to be fair, this error was certainly not of Charlie's making. It's what he was taught, just as it was what so many of us were taught who were either raised or educated in conservative American Christian institutions. I've sounded the alarm about this subject for the past decade in many blog posts, including "Syncretism and American Christianity and "Trading Our Birthright for a Bowl of Stew", both of which give background and context to what I want to say here.

The reality is that the gospel, as it has been presented for the past 100 years in our culture, is a truncated gospel. It's been stripped of its holistic nature by reductionism and rationalism, which concluded, "if eternity is forever, and people who don't receive Christ will die and go to hell, the only thing that really matters is that we get people to profess faith in Christ." The Great Commission of making disciples who would obey everything Jesus commanded was replaced with making converts who would profess to believe the right thing. The gospel itself, which Jesus said was "the good news of God's Kingdom that's at hand and available now," was reduced to "believe the facts about Jesus's death for your sins so you can go to heaven when you die." This move, despite the vital importance of the cross and forgiveness, had the effect of erasing the central catalyst for others placing their faith in Christ, namely, our Jesus-like witness. Jesus said plainly in the Sermon on the Mount,

14 “You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. 15 Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. 16 In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.

Over time, this shift also altered the test for what it meant to be a true Christian, from the New Testament's insistence on selfless agape love toward others and the embodiment of the Fruit of the Spirit, to being completely centered on what one believes. As long as a person professed, "Jesus is Lord," and that his death on the cross for our sin was the only way to right standing with God, that's all that mattered. The effect of this change has been to functionally eliminate the necessity of obedience to Jesus' clear and repeated teachings. What he said no longer mattered; the only important thing was that he came to die on our behalf.

I have, on more than one occasion, heard a Baptist pastor proclaim with conviction that the sole reason for Jesus' incarnation was to come and die. And I suspect that many reading this have heard, and even said the same, and are at this moment struggling with the fact that I'm even casting doubt on the idea.

That is why, when Charlie Kirk proclaimed things like this:

...it cemented his orthodoxy and his validity as a spokesperson for Christ in the minds of millions of Christians who had also been taught that this was the only issue of concern.

As a result, it didn't matter that much of what he said, what he espoused, and how he approached others directly contradicted Jesus's direct teaching and life example.

It didn't matter that he dehumanized various groups of people in his talks and seemed to relish belittling others in his public engagements.

It didn't matter that he chuckled during an interview as he made light of the fact that the people of Gaza "no longer have tall buildings" ending with calling them "stupid Muslims."

It didn't matter that he viewed the passing of the Civil Rights Act, which bestowed dignity and the right to vote on black Americans, as a mistake.

It didn't matter that he stated that black women were intellectually incompetent and incapable of real intelligence.

It didn't matter. None of it mattered. Not only because so many American Christians agree with his un-Christlike sentiments and biases, but because in this version of the gospel, Jesus's words don't matter. Just his death.

So the insistence for many professing Christians following his murder has been that Kirk "stood up for the gospel." He "proudly proclaimed, 'Jesus is Lord. So how could anyone question his Christian witness or not honor him?"

Inconveniently, Jesus answered that question when he posed a jarring, rip-away-the-illusion question of his own to those who, like many today, proclaimed faith in him without actually obeying his words. In Luke 6. He said,

46“Why do you call me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not do what I say?

Fair point, well made.

What Jesus said was that agape love, that kind of love that God demonstrated in giving his son (John 3:16), which abandons humanity's natural self-referenced orientation and point of view in order to prioritize the good of others, was to be the thing that marked out his followers. John 13:35 says, "By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love (agape). Elsewhere, he made the categories of who we are to love clear:

...our neighbor

...our brothers and sisters in Christ

...our enemies

In summary...everyone.

His closest associates and earliest followers reiterated this truth again and again, often in the starkest of terms.

I John 4

"God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them. 17This is how love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment: In this world we are like Jesus...

19We love because he first loved us. 20Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen. 21And he has given us this command: Anyone who loves God must also love their brother and sister."

As I presented in a 2022 blog, Loveless Christianity, is a profound heresy. Agape love, love that sees others, considers others, has empathy and compassion for others, and that lives to bless, help, and reflect the heart of Jesus to others, is at the center of true faith and allegiance to Christ. And yet, we've figured out how to make its absence the norm.

The problem with Charlie Kirk is the same problem that's caused the crisis in the American church that's pushed so many to lose faith, walk away from the church, or even oppose the faith in our culture. We rightfully lift up the cross of Christ and salvation by grace through faith, but with the same mouth and in the same sentence, we disavow everything Jesus taught and commanded by our words and actions. We've appropriated earthbound, cultural, and political ideologies about rights, immigration, self-protection, demonizing those who disagree with us, and much more, for doctrine, and then elevated those above the direct teachings of Jesus himself. The hearty support among so many Christians for rescinding people's protected immigration status (including many disciples of Jesus), ripping them from their families, incarcerating them in horrendous conditions, and then deporting them back to places they fled in order to avoid starvation, persecution, and death, paints a revealing picture of where our allegiances and values lie.

The profound irony is that in so doing, we - and Kirk - undermine our credibility to be witnesses of the gospel for those whom we claim to want to reach. We refuse to die to our Fallen Self and be the kind of people Jesus called us to be. Why would people take us seriously about what we say about Jesus and salvation, when we categorically misrepresent him in everything else we do and say?

Sadly, we as Christians are often blind to the gross contradiction, but they aren't. More and more, people who would not claim to be Christians are looking to Jesus and taking to heart what he said. They read the Gospels. They absorb the words in red, and then they look at our lives and listen to what we say, we who loudly and boldly claim to follow him, and can't reconcile the contradiction.

And rightfully so.

In the end, I do not believe that Charlie Kirk was an entirely bad person. I think he was a product of what he was taught and of the greater religious culture in which he was nurtured. I have no experience with him on a private level and so cannot speak to the kind of person he was. At times, he made observations that I think were accurate. But far more often, he espoused ideologies and approaches that were the antithesis of agape love toward others and allowed political alignment and those allegiances to overshadow and malign the name of Christ.

That's the problem with Charlie Kirk. And too often today, it is our problem as well.