Charlie Kirk is dead. Shot while speaking at Utah Valley University. Leaders across the spectrum condemned the violence as rumors raced online. The assassination appears to be ideological. The country feels brittle and afraid.
What happens to the public square when bullets fly instead of counterpoints? And who is prepared for a moment like this?
The answer is not viral takes. Our moment requires a generation that engages with a changing culture, shaped by the unchanging truth. Our moment requires a generation that converses with those they disagree with, creating conversations instead of conflict.
The team at Summit Ministries has had many interactions with Charlie. He engaged politically, but he couldn’t stop talking about Jesus while with our organization. Last week, Charlie met the Jesus he had never stopped talking about. Charlie emboldened a generation. Charlie was a motivated father, speaker, and leader who devoted his adult life to open conversation and courageous expression of conservative thought.
Shutting down conversation with violence, however, stems from a worldview that assumes individuals matter less than exercising power.
Put simply: When power outranks people, violence follows.
That creed is acid. It corrodes the image of God in our neighbor. All are at risk of this thinking, Christians and atheists, conservative and liberal alike. Christians who demonize neighbors in response to violence are betraying their witness. Instead, it is up to us to demonstrate a better way for society to function. Rabbi Jonathan Sacks writes in The Dignity of Difference that “The greatest single antidote to violence is conversation.”1
It is incumbent on us to find better pathways of formation.
Christians confess that every person bears the Imago Dei; that’s why violence against a neighbor desecrates more than a body; it wounds the civic soul. Our refuge and strength are not found in politics, platforms, or performance. Psalm 46:1–2 (NIV) says:
God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea.
Our generation is desperate. According to research from Dr. George Barna, recounted in Summit Ministries’ special report “The State of the Rising Generation,” three out of four young people are desperately searching for purpose that gives meaning to their lives.2
What holds when the world crumbles?
A word to my generation. Purpose is not found in raw political power. Purpose is not found in violent actions. Purpose is not found in amusement, meditation, or memes. Purpose is only truly found, as Charlie often said, in Jesus Christ.
Our world has felt desperate before. The night MLK was shot, Robert Kennedy Sr. addressed the nation, mere weeks before being assassinated himself:
What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence or lawlessness; but love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country . . . .3
How now shall we live?
Historian Tom Holland asserts in his 600-page tome, Dominion, that the Christian revolution has remade the world. He writes in his preface, “To live in a Western country is to live in a society still utterly saturated by Christian concepts and assumptions.”4 We may rightly ask, “What ‘revolution’ evoked this wholesale change?” Is it, as so many today assert about Christians, a patriarchal, power-mad, colonial expansion that used the religious impulse to subjugate the populace? By no means. The apostle Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 1:27, “God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise.” The first-century persecuted church was hunted, beaten, and crucified. They responded by training ordinary believers to become extraordinary neighbors. This changed the nature of society. As Tertullian recounts, and Roman catacomb records verify, the Christians in the Roman empire sought out the tiny bodies of abandoned newborn babies, primarily girls, from the refuse and dung heaps and raised them as their own. This intensely costly practice of caring for the vulnerable shifted the demographic balance of their society and contributed to changing the world.5
It would be utterly foolish for people of the light . . . to go out and act like the spiritual forces of darkness. Don’t take tricks from the playbook of the forces of darkness.
Some are already wondering, “Who is the next Charlie Kirk?” Wrong question. God does not photocopy the past. He forms individual servants for specific moments. As Mordechai challenged Esther, “Who knows but that you have come to your royal position for such a time as this?” (Esther 4:14). We don’t need to chase the biggest microphone. But we must cultivate soul depth. You were made for this moment.
Purpose is a Person. Truth has a name. If we want a different public future, we must help form young men and women into the likeness of Jesus. Only then can they hold fast when the world shakes and speak with grace when the room is on fire. If Charlie’s martyrdom does nothing but awaken us to the great need for formation, it will go down in history as a turning point.
Media platforms fade. Formation lasts.
The only revolution strong enough to outlast bullets is the one formed in the likeness of Jesus. Free from any need to eliminate external threats as a way to pacify an internal rage.
We must not let Charlie’s baton of faith clatter to the track. Together, let us place it in the hands of the next faithful ones. Those who are well-formed, not merely famous. If we start today, we won’t have to ask who will lead in the next crisis. We will know their names. And by God’s grace, they will be ready.