Cider Donuts & Guns
“Unless a kernel of what falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.”
A whiff of fall arrived before I migrated south for home. The smell of cider donuts, the first nip in the air, and the slow fade of the drought-stressed leaves—I reveled in autumn delights, rejoicing that I would leave in time to miss its nasty side. Germs galore, a hard frost that kills gardens, and the installation of the Great Gloom of a northern winter.
What I Didn’t Expect
I didn't expect a pre-season assassination to kick us into Fall. Or to generate extraordinary opportunities to share the gospel. From child to senior to foreigner and stranger, the God of October was on the move in the Nutmeg State.
Unfortunately, I think the horrific assassination of Charlie Kirk catalyzed the move. Something snapped spiritually, globally, and personally for me. It hit me like a gut punch, though I didn’t know Charlie Kirk or follow his ministry. Erika Kirk called it an unleashing. Some call it a revival. One social media camera roved through a crowd in an Asian country. People were weeping before a large screen image of Kirk. They wore red t-shirts, “I am Charlie.”
Like blowing on a dandelion and watching its seeds disperse with the wind, the event reached every rabbit warren of the internet. News and social media blew up—driving me away from the noise. I had to grieve and meet with the Father. I wondered about my reaction and God's. How did he feel about Charlie Kirk’s murder? I could visualize Christ standing as he did when Stephen was martyred. I seemed to feel his passion and rage.
“Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his faithful servants.”—Psalm 116:15
Who was Charlie Kirk?
A Christian Nationalist? A danger? A mentor? An influencer? A hero? A threat to democracy? A hater, as his killer described him? You decide. To each his or her opinion.
I listened to the memorial service with my brother Paul. In silence mostly. A portrait emerged—from his staff, his pastor, his president, and his president’s son. Several cabinet members testified. The gospel was going out to millions worldwide. What was this—a rally or a revival? It seemed both at once.
Erika Kirk made two appearances in those first few days. I saw the steel in her and heard the word “unleashed.” At the memorial, she pulled a gut-wrenching statement from the bottom of her shredded soul: "I forgive."
A shot heard round the world.
Who was Charlie Kirk? For me, bottom line? A brother in Christ, shot down in cold blood.
The Next Day
I had an unusual opportunity to share my faith in a French conversation group. The most excited person in the room was a French woman who had ignored me the past two summers of my attendance. She asked if I knew about Erika Kirk's forgiveness, and I nodded—then shared a personal testimony of forgiveness. I met with no hostility (in a milieu where I usually receive it. No stone-faced silence, contempt, argument, or indifference. Heads nodded in agreement around the table—at least the ones who understood French. Our topic was no longer language but the power of forgiveness.
The French woman invited me for coffee and a trip to France with her! (Neither happened, but she has my number.) What’s happening, I wondered again.
When Politics and Spiritual Life Merge
Like or loathe him, Charlie Kirk fused two calls he felt God called him to: political life and proclamation of the gospel. He knew what it could cost, and he pursued his calls anyway—not reluctantly, but with passion. Only 31. He may have refined his views in time, but we’ll never know.
Was Charlie Kirk a religious martyr? Or was this a political assassination? I’d say both. You decide.
We’re left to tease apart the thorny complexities. How do we think Christianly about politics? How do we live a godly civic and spiritual life simultaneously? If we whittle it down further, how are we to govern ourselves, our communities, and then our nation? And in a culture gone tribal, with conversation between tribes nearly impossible, how do we survive?
More importantly, how do we obey the calls God places on our lives? The ghosts of past collaborations of church and state haunt us. But we cannot deny our calls. The ghosts must not blunt our calls.
How quickly Charlie Kirk’s death sank under the flood of 1000 other stories. Even an assassination can’t hold our attention long. Post your outrage, yawn, scroll, click.
Civics and religion share some values, but we’re too busy biting and devouring one another to figure out how to work together to govern ourselves. So we do it by rants and tantrums. Is there any hope for us?
The Vibe Now
I enjoyed a month of opportunities to share my faith—unique, unusual, unplanned, exhilarating. I much prefer it to tackling the conflating, confusing, manipulating, ghosting, and gaslighting conversations that inflame people against one another.
Now I enjoy a month of teasing apart all the things and working out my convictions in the way I communicate best: through writing. If we’re called anywhere, it’s to the ministry of reconciliation (2 Corinthians 5:18. Our civic and spiritual value systems are incompatible, but there is overlap. How can I exercise a ministry of reconciliation in that overlap? That’s my guiding question for the foreseeable future.
Life & Death
It’s always been about that choice, right? Which path do we choose—the one God calls life or the one he calls death?
Fall symbolizes death and rebirth for me—the death of so many pleasures but life in the seed falling to the ground, preparing the Spring.
Charlie Kirk’s life and death become a tale of risking your life to find the path of life. Which path are you on?
“But if serving the Lord seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve . . . as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.”—Joshua 24:15