In the deafening sound and fury that followed the murder and assassination of C Kirk, I found myself wondering how many who wrote articles on it had actually listened to his ‘debates’.
So many talked about what he said and what he stood for, including writers I respect, but after watching how Kirk engaged with a well-meaning Christian (with sound theology) on campus who did not align with his nationalist views (and less sound theology), I wonder how many of these writers have actually witnessed how Kirk regularly behaved during such engagements. As I watched it, I was not surprised many would feel repulsed by his tone and choice of words – even I who aligned with what he said his faith was – what more those who didn’t? It just struck me as utterly different from the grace and humility that other Christian ‘debators’ (such as Professor John Lennox who debated so effectively at Oxford with the likes of Richard Dawkins and Peter Atkins) regularly exhibit.
Of course, nothing is an excuse for murder, and murder is evil. I was just reminded that to what end is it to win an argument but lose a soul, or many souls?
Watching these ‘debates’ reinforced to me it is all too easy – to win an argument but lose the battle, and more heartbreakingly, to lose souls. For every person converted to the ’cause’ of Turning Point, how many were lost or pushed away from what’s most important, true faith in Christ? His nearest and dearest talk about how what drove him most was turning people to Jesus, but do they truly believe that speaking in such a manner and tone (mansplaining at best, riding roughshod and coming across as wanting to be ‘proven right’ at all cost at worst, gunning down his opponents with rapid-fire arguments riddled with fallacies and questionable hermaneutics) showed this? It is easy to pontificate on one’s aims, but actions always speak louder than words.
Sure, it is not popular to speak ill of the dead, and it is truly heart-breaking for children as young as his to lose a loving father. But have we swung to the other extreme of deifying someone who was at best a falliable human just like the rest of us? It is of course politically profitable, but is it right for Christians with no nationalist agenda, to make a martyr and saint out of someone who was clearly neither?
What is a truly Christian response? Where is the forgiveness and reconciliation? Not in any remarks I’ve heard.
And so hatred seems to perpetuate, when grace should abound.
He might have truly believed that his cause was right, but the execution of one’s beliefs, whether the fruit of the Spirit truly manifests in how you treat others across the table (as opposed to your own family, of which I have no doubt of his goodness towards), does matter too. To a watching world, the behaviour and attitude of a Christian speaks far greater volumes that whatever platform he stands on. True humility as modeled after Christ – where is it in the myriad soapboxes of today. Meekness and a willingness to truly listen and understand – was it there? Or was the driving compulsion that you could never “prove me wrong”?
Faith is not built on winning rhetorical arguments or logical debates. Faith is built on relationships, founded upon time spent with others where true love abounds, not intellectual superiority. How has arguing someone down ever drawn a person to Christ?
It is mind-boggling that this needs to continue, as his widow has vowed (for the organisation to get bigger and stronger). Let’s not even get to the hundreds of millions he owned from consorting with the powers of the day and running Turning Point (what does it really want people to turn towards? Conservatism has become a religion in itself). Where is the humility and simplicity of life, the denying of self and materialism that comes from being a Christ-follower? How does our Lord Jesus view the work of Kirk?
This was a tragedy, but on many more levels than Christian writers I love and respect have acknowledged so far. Christ’s love compels us to do better.
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