In the aftermath of Charlie Kirk’s tragic and wicked assassination, I’ve found myself seeking to understand the scope of his influence on young evangelicals.
My husband and I recently hosted a former student of ours and her roommate, both of whom attend a conservative Baptist university in the South. Since neither he nor I ever heard Kirk speak, we asked these young women if they could describe what Kirk’s passing meant to them both as conservatives and Christians. Their answers surprised and unsettled me.
Rebecca Johnson
“Charlie wasn’t afraid to speak the truth,” one said. “He always called people out, just like Jesus called people out. He wasn’t afraid to be a bold believer. That inspires me.”
The other said, “He spoke up for us and wouldn’t let us get walked on. He was real. He defended the truth even against atheists and Leftists. He said what I wish I could say, but he used better words.”
The first young woman chimed in again: “He was open in sharing his opinion. Nobody does that anymore. No one says what they’re actually thinking. They keep all their true thoughts bottled up until one day they just shoot somebody.”
“He always called people out, just like Jesus called people out.”
At face value, some of these statements aren’t too different from those I’ve heard before: How many of my evangelical friends and family members first appreciated Donald Trump because he “tells it like it is”? But the more I listened to these friends of mine speak, the more I began to pinpoint a fracture in how American evangelicalism engages with our national culture at large.
The main thing these women kept circling back to in their praise of Charlie Kirk was his uncompromising relationship with the “truth.” The very thing so many conservatives admire about Donald Trump is the way he speaks the “truth.”
And yet, even a cursory familiarity with the words of both men would reveal they have an estranged relationship with the “truth,” to put it very mildly. We are a truth-starved nation that, I fear, has become so disoriented and confused we cannot recognize the truth when we hear it. Just because something is offensive, loud or vulgar does not make it true. Just because something is confrontational does not make it true. Just because something makes listeners uncomfortable does not make it true.
Part of what worried me while listening to these students speak was the idea that Charlie Kirk called people out “just like Jesus called people out,” as if the main function of Christ’s ministry was confrontation with his interlocutors. These young women seemed to believe Kirk’s debates on college campuses were perfectly analogous with Christ’s preaching ministry in which he debated the Pharisees.
Have we erroneously caricatured Jesus as nothing more than a provocateur? Preaching the kingdom of God is an altogether different thing than owning one’s political enemies.
Classical philosophers often celebrated the related ideas of The Good, The True and The Beautiful, a triad of values by which mankind could move toward flourishing. Moral goodness, objective truth and aesthetic perfection worked together to attune the human soul in loving what is worthy of admiration. Christian philosophers agreed that The Good, The True and The Beautiful found their ultimate fulfillment in the God of the Bible who is the ultimate standard for goodness, truth and beauty. This three-legged stool of values created the balance necessary to point mankind to God.
“Preaching the kingdom of God is an altogether different thing than owning one’s political enemies.”
But the modern evangelical world in which I find myself and in which my young students are being raised does not affirm these values equally. One value is treasured to the exclusion of all others: We have elevated the idea of the True so much that it eclipses Goodness and Beauty.
We talk about protecting our doctrine. We talk about defending the truth. We talk about fighting against the lies of culture. We are far too willing to sacrifice moral goodness and spiritual beauty on the altar of Truth.
Perhaps this is a reflection of a Mark Driscoll and Doug Wilson flavor of Christianity. Fighting for truth, calling out enemies, turning over tables: this emphasis on conflict in the ministry of Christ fits comfortably with the call to aggressive masculinity in a way the tender gentleness of Jesus or the beauty of the created world does not.
Perhaps it is a continuation of the fear driven, apologetics craze of the 1990s: If we can just prepare our kids to win arguments against atheists and evolutionists and Leftists, they won’t walk away from the Lord when they go off to college.
Either way, it doesn’t encompass the full reality of who God is.
Now, in no way am I suggesting truth does not exist or is irrelevant in our spiritual lives. But when truth becomes a byword with which to beat our enemies into submission at the cost of real human beings made in the image of God, when we hold no responsibility for vile language as long as we cloak it in the guise of “speaking the truth,” we risk becoming like Pilate, engaging in philosophical wordplay about the nature of veritas before inflicting state sponsored violence on an innocent man.
If we hope to help our young people navigate a splintered nation and follow Jesus faithfully, our discipleship must more fully embrace all of who God has revealed himself to be, a God who is Truth, yes, but who is also Goodness and Beauty.
Yes, we worship a Savior who drove the moneylenders from the temple with a whip, but he did so much more than that. He healed. He fed. He nurtured. He mothered as a hen with her chicks. He prayed. He cried. Yes, he is certainly the Lion of Judah, the rider on the white horse whose name is Faithful and True. He is just as certainly the Lamb that was Slain, who blessed the meek, the peacemakers, the poor.
God is wide and wild enough to encompass both strength and gentleness, and our churches need to preach the multifaceted reality of God. May the goodness of the Lord lead us to repentance. May we be sanctified by God’s truth. May we dwell in God’s house to gaze upon his beauty. And may we teach our youth to do the same.
Rebecca Johnson has been an educator across three states in both public and private schools. She is currently a member of a Baptist church in Northern Oklahoma where she serves with her husband, Matt, in young adult ministry. They have two adorable kids.
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Was Charlie Kirk a martyr? | Analysis by Rodney Kennedy
Charlie Kirk was no King | Opinion by Joel Bowman
The morning after an assassination | Opinion by Mark Wingfield
How Charlie Kirk went from college dropout to Trump influencer | Analysis by Mara Richards Bim