Thoughts on Charlie Kirk, what he got right, and where we go from here
A series of undercooked thoughts followed by a prayer. I recommend skipping to the prayer.
“‘What use are the best of arguments when they can be destroyed by force?’”
- Jules Verne, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
I don’t know much. I have not watched the assassination video. I prefer to keep gun violence in the fantasy world of video games—but maybe that’s a problem, too. May the Holy Spirit guide us in all things.
I’m here, briefly, to share an undercooked thought or two, or three.
The first thought goes something like this.
When I was in my twenties, my parents’ generation had no idea that the secular universities were and had been, for several decades, a battleground for the souls of our nation’s youth. If they had known or even suspected, they would have paused before throwing parties for me and my friends for getting “accepted.”
I struggle to recall a time in my life when I felt more unsafe than in a college classroom, where the instructor(s) had us watch porn. But it was a student film, or the women were scratched out to symbolize objectification—so that made it A-okay art.
That’s what I get for choosing the humanities.
After two semesters, I wanted to go back and tell all the parents I had ever known that they did not have a blankety-blank clue what they were celebrating when these institutions accepted their kids. But I held my peace.
I took two dreaded “W’s” on my transcript and never got a penny back for those classes. Thank God I never borrowed a penny, either.
I wish someone like Charlie Kirk had been speaking at college campuses then, prompting me to rethink my path. I had at least enough discernment to realize that something wasn’t quite right, that the whole enterprise had all the whiff and nonchalance of an entrenched racket. Maybe that’s why I steered clear of the loans….
Even so, I had to navigate that path with all its pitfalls alone. The best I can say is I now know how the secular university monsters operate, and I can guide the next generation in my immediate proximity. God willing.
My counsel is Gandalf’s to the Fellowship: “This foe is beyond any of you. Run.”
But, I must salute Kirk. That foe was not beyond him in the slightest.
My second undercooked thought follows.
Since my time in the fray, secular universities have become more religiously devoted to their secularism, and one result is that they have become adversarial to the Christian ethic, which should come as no surprise to anyone who understands secularism’s natural trajectory.
All signs have been pointing this way—I believe that may be why Kirk felt called to the university battleground in particular. He knew they had become ideologue factories with a mystifyingly self-destructive intent to undermine Western Civilization. But I think he also dared to hope that the days of the secular university as a bedrock American institution were numbered.
I unapologetically share that hope. The true scholarship Kirk embodied will live on and perhaps even thrive, but the American university as we have known it is a goner.
Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin…
Translation: Good riddance.
Third and final undercooked thought on the shooting.
Was Kirk’s murder conspiratorial or a one-off act of malice? No idea. We’ll get the official story, and I’m sure we’ll hear all sorts of alternatives to that story in the weeks, months, and years to come.
If it turns out to be conspiratorial, may the God who tramples demons watch over us, and may Jesus come soon.
But what if it turns out to be an act of isolated, individual malice? Well, it may be that the institutions known for equating words with violence have inadvertently created a new kind of zealot—someone who will take physical violence against a fellow image-bearer and believe it to be an act of goodness.
It is unwise to speculate, but the only valid response I feel to that—to all of it, really—after the seething rage, is a compulsion to pray like I’ve never prayed before. For the bereaved, our nation, our broken world, the quick and the dead, and everyone in between.
Closing.
Take what you will from these thoughts. Today, I remain convinced: The only way to resist evil is with the hope and power of the Gospel. I suspect Charlie Kirk knew something about that, too.
And now, a prayer. We could use one right about now.
In times of trial and times of joy, may our merciful and valiant God be with us in the person of Jesus and the life of the Holy Spirit. I trust He is, even now. Always.