What does Charlie Kirk’s death mean for America?

The murder of conservative activist Charlie Kirk continues to dominate headlines this morning.

The shooter who killed the thirty-one-year-old author and podcast host is still evading capture at this writing. A new video showing the suspect fleeing the scene was released last night by the FBI and Utah officials. Police also released new images of a “person of interest” wearing a black T-shirt with a US flag on it and Converse shoes as officials asked for the public’s help in finding the suspect.

President Trump said yesterday that he would award Kirk the Presidential Medal of Freedom posthumously, the highest civilian honor in the US. Vice President J. D. Vance flew Kirk’s casket on Air Force Two from Utah to Arizona, where he lived with his family.

We know what Charlie Kirk’s death means for his family: his wife is now a widow, his three-year-old daughter has lost her father, and his one-year-old son will not remember him.

But what does it mean for the rest of us?

“The dark fruit of passionate conflict”

We do not yet know with certainty the motive behind this tragedy. However, investigators have found ammunition engraved with expressions of transgender and antifascist ideology inside the rifle that authorities believe was used in the shooting. Three unspent rounds were also found in the magazine, all with wording on them.

Commentators are responding on the assumption that the assassin was motivated by political animus and opposition to Kirk’s beliefs:

• Political philosopher R. R. Reno writes in First Things, “In our history, assassinations are symptoms. They are the dark fruit of passionate conflict over the future of our nation.”
• In The Atlantic, George Packer calls Kirk’s death “a disaster for the country” and warns, “In an atmosphere of national paranoia and hatred, each act of political violence makes the next one more likely.”
• CNN headlines, “Kirk assassination is a national tragedy in a polarized America.”
• Matthew Continetti of the American Enterprise Institute agrees, writing in the Free Press that Kirk’s death is “the most stunning evidence yet that America is becoming two nations.”

Continetti observes that we are “divided not only by politics but by culture, lifestyle, psychology, and epistemology. Weak institutions, corrupted data, rampant distrust, political enmity, and an apparent inability to control criminality and the dangerously mentally ill tear us apart like a centrifugal force.”

How we became the “United” States

Violence is endemic to our fallen human nature, “a kind of dark matter inside the human race,” according to public intellectual Ryan Holiday. He describes this “dark matter”:

It is a kind of dark oppositional energy that goes from issue to issue, era to era. It’s rooted in self-interest, self-preservation, in fear, in not wanting to be inconvenienced, not wanting to change, not wanting to have to get involved. It manifests itself a thousand ways, but once you recognize it, you spot it everywhere.

Political violence is especially prevalent in a day when America’s external enemies are not strong enough to unite us and we therefore focus our “dark oppositional energy” on other Americans.

Partisan divides have existed in our nation from its founding. As historian Joseph J. Ellis notes in his Pulitzer Prize-winning book Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation, the arguments colonists made against being ruled by a distant power in England applied equally to a distant national government on these shores. The most likely outcome of the War for Independence was that the thirteen colonies would become independent nations linked together in a Europe-like confederation.

It was the threat of future conquest by European powers, the necessity of paying the national debt, and the drive to settle the western frontier that forged these disparate colonies into a “United” States of America. In the generations since, our unity has been strongest when we were fighting world wars, economic depressions, and terrorist threats.

In our day, however, partisan politics have taken the place of foreign enemies. More than three-fourths of voters now believe that Americans who strongly support the other side are a “clear and present danger” to our nation.

When you are facing an enemy, you feel motivated to do whatever is needed to defeat them. The resurgence in political violence of recent years illustrates this tragic narrative. Reuters has documented more than three hundred cases of politically motivated acts of violence across the ideological spectrum in the last four years.

“As you wish that others would do to you”

Here we find one of the most urgent reasons Americans need Jesus. He alone can transform terrorists like Saul of Tarsus into missionaries like Paul the apostle. He alone can turn racial prejudice such as what Peter harbored against Gentiles into passionate compassion for all peoples (cf. Acts 10). He alone can heal our broken hearts and divided nation.

Because Christ now lives in his followers (1 Corinthians 12:27), you and I can animate a movement that replaces partisan animosity with transforming grace. But this can happen only by the power of God’s Spirit, since the first “fruit” when he operates freely in us is “love” (Galatians 5:22), the passionate desire to seek the best for others at our own expense.

This means that Christians can be the catalysts for healing our culture needs most.

What are our next steps? Consider three interconnected facts:

1. We can measure the degree to which we love our Lord by the degree to which we love our neighbor (Matthew 22:37–39; John 13:34).
2. We can measure the degree to which we love our neighbor by the degree to which we love our enemies, since the two are so often the same (Matthew 5:44).
3. We can measure the degree to which we love our enemies by the degree to which we “do good to those who hate you” (Luke 6:27), seeking their best at any cost to ourselves (vv. 28–30).

In short,

“As you wish that others would do to you, so do to them” (v. 31).

Imagine the transformation if everyone lived by this simple mantra. Now imagine the difference when you do.

What do you “wish that others would do to you” today?

Quote for the day:

“Willpower does not change men. Time does not change men. Christ does.” —Henry Drummond

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