Struggle: In the Weeks After the Death of Charlie Kirk

---

God sits in heaven, and laughs them to scorn. Shall God laugh, and we cry? They take counsel together on earth, but God hath a counsel in heaven that will overthrow all their counsels here.

Richard Sibbes, The Complete Works of Richard Sibbes, Volume 1, p. 383

I have tried to write this post half a dozen times now. I struggle to find the right words, and I’ve struggled with understanding where my heart is right now. Let me be as straightforward as possible.

I want the people cheering on the death of Charlie Kirk, calling for the deaths of others, and calling people like me fascist, to be defeated. I want to burn their ideological strongholds to the ground. I want open war with them on all fronts. I do not want unity with them. I do not want “peace” with people who call me a Nazi and then say that the only good Nazi is a dead Nazi. I want to win. I want them to lose. And then I want peace.

Do I hate them? Their hatred for me means killing those representing my religious and political views, branding me a fascist because of my Christian views, and actively working toward my death. But do I hate them in return? No, not even close.

Make no mistake, they are my enemies. But how am I towards them? Settled in opposition to the whole edifice of their god-forsaken thought-system. I want Leftism eviscerated from the face of the earth. And I want to see souls saved from it. My heart takes solace in the justice that is coming from God when it will be eviscerated finally and forever.

The day Charlie died, I wrote the words: “I really feel hatred towards these people.” That was an honest statement. My post was not directed towards the enemies that hate me, but to people like me, struggling. Despair and grief swelled in my heart that September day. Anger – hot, fiery anger – and dark, silent, tear-filled sorrow. I truly do want judgement for them, but not for my sake. For Charlie. For his family. For my family.

This I can say too in full honesty: to the best of my knowledge, the desire for a positive answer to this question has never left me, and this concern was at the forefront of my swirling emotion: “How can these people possibly be saved when they kill the people God sends to them? How can I do ministry, talking about anything that actually matters, without losing everything?”

I make no apology to them for struggling with this toward the Left. I cannot love my enemy if I do not feel the fire of their hatred of me – and I have felt it, in many ways. The more I see and hear every day, I feel it. In whatever ways my reaction has not been perfect, I have taken that to God. In the ways I still struggle with any hatred toward my enemies, I will take that to God. And I will love them.

As Ezekiel and Jeremiah, we go to a people that will not listen. We go, surely, to our doom. May I not be rebellious toward my God as they are.

Therefore, give me your Word, O Lord, that I may eat it into my heart, that the words I speak to them are not mine but yours. And may you speak from the heart you’ve transformed, so that they might know that there is a God in heaven who judges the living and the dead.

¹And he said to me, “Son of man, eat whatever you find here. Eat this scroll, and go, speak to the house of Israel.” ²So I opened my mouth, and he gave me this scroll to eat. ³And he said to me, “Son of man, feed your belly with this scroll that I give you and fill your stomach with it.” Then I ate it, and it was in my mouth as sweet as honey.

⁴And he said to me, “Son of man, go to the house of Israel and speak with my words to them. ⁵For you are not sent to a people of foreign speech and a hard language, but to the house of Israel— ⁶not to many peoples of foreign speech and a hard language, whose words you cannot understand. Surely, if I sent you to such, they would listen to you. ⁷But the house of Israel will not be willing to listen to you, for they are not willing to listen to me: because all the house of Israel have a hard forehead and a stubborn heart. ⁸Behold, I have made your face as hard as their faces, and your forehead as hard as their foreheads. ⁹Like emery harder than flint have I made your forehead. Fear them not, nor be dismayed at their looks, for they are a rebellious house.” ¹⁰Moreover, he said to me, “Son of man, all my words that I shall speak to you receive in your heart, and hear with your ears. ¹¹And go to the exiles, to your people, and speak to them and say to them, ‘Thus says the Lord GOD,’ whether they hear or refuse to hear.”

Ezekiel 3:1-11