On the occasion of the assassination of Charlie Kirk
A Pastoral Note
Friend,
The assassination of Charlie Kirk is a horrendous evil. More than anything else, Charlie was a human made in the image of God who was killed in a manner that was not of God. He was a husband, father, son, and friend. He was a person, and it is not God’s will that he was murdered.
Charlie is one of several higher-profile deaths and acts of violence during this past week, and their deaths are a very public reminder of the fragility of life and the overwhelming destruction that humans can inflict on each other.
Charlie is making headlines in his death because he made headlines in his life, and because of this political season that we are in (and it seems to have been ongoing for a long time).
I’m writing to you today because I want us to examine our hearts, our heads, and our future together. Let’s start with some things that I think most of us can agree on:
Charlie was influential. At 31, he had a following, had a successful organization, and had access and influence with political leaders.
Charlie was passionate about free speech and debate. His tour was entitled “Prove Me Wrong.” he advocated for free speech and practiced his beliefs in public.
Charlie professed Jesus as his Lord and Savior. You and I can never know what is in anyone’s heart, but through his words and writings, he was public about his faith.
Evil is present in the world. There is a power, not just an action, that is happening in our world. Evil exists. It’s powerful, and it’s within me and within us.
Violence is not the way of Jesus.
America is in a cycle of political violence in a country where gun accessibility is an outlier across the world. (There are 120.5 firearms per 100 citizens in the United States. The next highest country with over 10 million citizens is Yemen, with 52.8 firearms per 100 citizens, followed by Canada with 34.7 firearms per 100 citizens.)1
Charlie Kirk’s death had a profound impact on his followers. Because of how accessible he was, his use of social media2 (and traditional media), and the prioritization of politics in our society, people felt like they knew him in part because he tapped into how people felt and thought. His accessibility made people who never met him feel like they knew him.
Just because someone grieved his loss does not mean that they believe or agree with everything that he said or did.
People, including many American Christians, agreed with him on many things. And people, including many American Christians, disagreed with him on many things.
Part of Charlie Kirk’s appeal was his melding of his conservative politics and his conservative Christian beliefs, and presenting those things as necessarily linked. He was not just a political figure. He was not just a religious figure. He was in many ways the clearest representation of the American Christian Right.
In a world of statements (including unironically- me here), I want to invite us to look inward, upward, and forward. Let’s begin inwardly:
How did I initially feel when I heard about his death?
What led to that feeling? Why did I feel this way?
Did the people in my circles feel the same way or did they feel differently?
Did someone’s response surprise or disappoint me? Why did it surprise or disappoint men?
Did this shooting feel different for me than other shootings? Why is that?
What are my thoughts on evil? How do I recognize it in others? How do I recognize it in myself?
What fears do I have about the present? What fears do I have about the future?
How do my beliefs align with Jesus of Nazareth?
Let’s look upward:
The best thing I did this weekend was go to worship and actually worship. There was something transcendent as I sang,
O praise the name of the Lord our God
O praise His name forever more
For endless days we will sing Your praise
Oh Lord, oh Lord our God
I think a relevant challenge is to ask what my ratio of time is between our upward orientation (worship, scripture reading, and prayer) vs. sideways orientation (podcasts, social media, and news). And to adjust appropriately for you.
Finally, let’s look forward together.
First, This is Us. America is a place of toxic polarization and political violence. We are in a violence spiral that includes the presence of evil in the world, unprecedented access to lethal weapons in the entire history of the world, a high number of mental health issues, unprecedented access to extremist views through social media, and the normalization of political opponents as evil and not just different.3
That whole paragraph makes me heartbroken.
Grief is the appropriate initial response. I grieve for Charlie’s family and his friends. I grieve for Charlie’s disciples,4 including and especially those who are interested in Jesus or faith because of Charlie’s work. I grieve for those who felt marginalized by Charlie’s beliefs and teaching and are processing their own thoughts. I grieve for those whose loss is unnoticed and overlooked by others.
Grief, lament, and empathy are the way of Jesus. My goal is to move towards the people who feel lost, confused, downtrodden, and afraid. The movement of Jesus is the movement towards those who are suffering.
At the same time that I am moving towards people, I am also attempting to remove myself from our context. This feels intense because we live in 2025 in the United States of America, and it feels like the center of everything, but God stands outside of time and is omnipresent (in all places). The center of the universe is not America, and the climax of history is not 2025. I want to be a positive presence of Jesus in the world, but I am not tying my hope in Jesus to what happens in America in 2025.
The current American story is one where violence and violent rhetoric will continue. We’re deep into the vortex now, and neither “side” is in a position to stop, to see the other differently, and to want to come together. We’ve had opportunities to be shocked and awed by political violence, and while it is newsworthy, it has not shown itself to be transformative in bringing people together. Instead, we continue to retreat to our political and ideological camps, where it is safe.
So, I’m expecting more violence, more horrendous rhetoric, but I’m a person of faith and hope.
And so here is my hope:
That we, the people of faith in Jesus, would live as people whose faith is in Jesus.
That we would follow his teachings to love our neighbors and love our enemies.
That we would follow his teachings to be people full of grace and full of truth.
That we would surrender our dreams for America to his dreams for the redemption of the world.
And so, today I choose to do the hard and impossible5 work of bringing people together because we are all made in the image of God. So, I’m going to continue to encounter, love, and encourage people who see the world and believe in things differently than I do. I’m going to work passionately and diligently to be a peacemaker.6 I’m going to seek the common ground that is surrounded by quicksand. I’m going to sit with the grief of others and listen to their hearts. And I invite you to do the same. All this reminds me of a quote that was brought to my attention recently, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.” Margaret Mead
Love,
Aaron
My goal is to share things that I think we can agree on. And so, you are free to think this is a good thing or a bad thing, but it is a statistical reality. https://www.smallarmssurvey.org/sites/default/files/resources/SAS-BP-Civilian-Firearms-Numbers.pdf
This is one of the strange impacts of podcasting in our world. It used to be that only radio hosts or TV anchors (or maybe preachers) felt known, but because of the proliferation of podcasts and our tendency to listen to our favorite ones, people could have spent 100s or 1000s of hours listening to his podcast. After that much time with someone, you tend to a. agree with them and b. feel like you know them.
Nearly half of Americans believe that the other side is not just wrong for their beliefs, but downright evil.
I use the word disciple intentionally here. I did not personally spend time listening to his podcasts or teachings, but I do follow several podcasters “religiously.” If something happened to Steve Cuss, Malcolm Gladwell, or Bill Simmons, then I would feel a loss of someone that I felt I knew and that formed my thoughts on various things. To get really into the Aaron-Tiger-weeds, when NBA podcaster Zach Lowe was between employers and didn’t produce content for six months, then I didn’t trust my own ability to really know the NBA. I felt lost as a NBA fan.
Luke 1:37
It should be noted that by peacemaker- I’m referencing an understanding of peace that goes beyond the absence of conflict and includes the presence of wholeness.