Turning Point?

This post isn’t really about Charlie Kirk or Donald Trump, though their names will be mentioned often enough. It’s about the church, the church I love, the church that introduced me to Jesus Christ and that I’ve spent most of my life trying to serve. Some are hoping that Charlie Kirk’s death will lead to a revival. I think we need something stronger – like a Reformation. Maybe even a Revolution, the kind Jesus talked about and lived. And the life and work of Charlie Kirk, as much as anything, may explain why.

“But can’t we just mourn his death?” I’m afraid that ship has sailed. Some on the right are talking about civil war. The more we sanitize his life, the more likely it is that extremists will take matters into their own hands. Addressing the “evil-doers” that Charlie Kirk’s wife, Erika, has blamed for his death, she said soon after her husband's assassination:

You have no idea the fire that you have ignited within this wife; the cries of this widow will echo around the world like a battle cry.

They should all know this: if you thought that my husband's mission was powerful before, you have no idea, you have no idea what you just have unleashed across this entire country and this world.

One man killed Charlie Kirk. There was no "they." There wasn't a group or movement of “evil-doers;” not “the radical Left,” or even “the Left,” but one troubled young man who said he’d “had enough of [Kirk’s] hatred.” Mrs. Kirk is full of grief, and one of the stages of grief is anger. She is proud of her husband’s work and wants to ensure it continues. I can only try to imagine what it must be like to be in her shoes as a mother of two young children, while being the newly appointed CEO of a political empire. Will she give herself time to grieve? I hope so, but that will be very difficult if she believes there is a war that needs to be fought, a war that took her husband out, even if it’s a spiritual war.

To her credit, during Charlie’s memorial, Erika movingly said she forgave her husband’s assassin. But Trump couldn’t allow Erika’s statement about forgiveness to stand without giving his own take:

[Charlie] was a missionary with a noble spirit and a great, great purpose. He did not hate his opponents. He wanted the best for them.

That’s where I disagreed with Charlie. I hate my opponent, and I don’t want the best for them.

Erika, you can talk to me and the whole group, but maybe they can convince me that that’s not right, but I can’t stand my opponent.

Now, I'm going to go biblical on you, which seems appropriate given the melding of religion and politics during Kirk's memorial service. If you aren't familiar with the Bible, you almost certainly didn't realize what happened between Mr. Trump and Mrs. Kirk. Even if you grew up with the Bible, you may have missed it. What got played out is a biblical narrative pattern called "The Test." The first and most familiar example happened in the Garden of Eden. On Sunday, Erika Kirk played the role of Eve, and Donald Trump played the serpent or snake.

The biblical story begins with the serpent questioning Eve about what God had said, and then implying that God couldn't be trusted. God had instructed the humans not to eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil because eating that fruit would result in death. The serpent told Eve, "You won't die, but will become like God, knowing good and evil." Eve eats from the tree and gives some of the fruit to Adam, who's been there with her all along, but who never says, "Eve, wait! We need to talk."

Now let's go back to the memorial service. Like Eve, Mrs. Kirk quoted the Lord's command – in this case, about the need to forgive one's enemies. Mr. Trump, playing the role of the snake, comes back with, "This is where I disagreed with Charlie. I hate my opponent, and I don’t want the best for them." We're accustomed to hearing such things from Trump. It hardly phases us anymore. Remember, this is the person Charlie Kirk had been teaching his wife and the rest of us to trust.

In Trump's world, only he knows what is good and what is evil. In Trump's world, even facts are whatever he says they are. In Trump's world, Trump is god; you give unquestioning allegiance to him, or you're out. (Remember, this is the man who once said that he'd never had to ask for forgiveness, but would if he ever had to.)

The question is: What will Erika Kirk choose to do – follow Jesus or follow Donald Trump? Will she and her movement become a prophetic voice holding Trump and his allies accountable when necessary, or will she fall into line? She is the head of the Turning Point juggernaut now. Thousands of new recruits are signing up. What are they signing up for?

Church, what about us? Let me put it to you bluntly: Are you going to serve Trump or Jesus? I think you have to decide. You've been excusing him far too long, and the future of our nation is at risk because of it. Do you remember how Trump waited for over three hours on January 6, 2021, to see what would happen at the Capitol? Church, is that what you're doing, waiting to see how this Trump thing plays out before you finally say, "Stand down, Mr. Trump." Do you really think he cares about you, that he hasn't been using you, like you've tried to use him?

What will be your "turning point," your off-ramp, I wonder? Will it be too late for the church and for the nation?

Over the weekend, Trump criticized Attorney General Pam Bondi on his Truth Social platform for not doing enough to pursue legal cases against his adversaries.

In the wake of Kirk's death, Stephen Miller, Donald Trump’s Deputy Chief of Staff and arguably the most powerful person in Washington next to Trump, said the following about left-wing political organizations:

It is a vast domestic terror movement. With God as my witness, we are going to use every resource we have at the Department of Justice, Homeland Security, and throughout this government to identify, disrupt, dismantle, and destroy these networks and make America safe again for the American people. It will happen, and we will do it in Charlie’s name.

Does anyone else find this chilling? Miller is the mastermind of Trump’s immigration strategy. Whenever you hear Miller talk, it’s clear he not only hates the fact that there are immigrants in this country illegally, he hates immigrants period. Sending them to a place called Alligator Alcatraz suits him perfectly.

At Kirk's memorial service, Miller shouted the following about the "enemy" (Trump's enemies? Democrats? The Left?):

What do you have? You have nothing. You are nothing. You are wickedness. You are jealousy. You are envy. You are hatred. You are nothing. You can build nothing. You can produce nothing. You can create nothing. And what will you leave behind? Nothing. Nothing. To our enemies, you have nothing to give. You have nothing to offer. You have nothing to share but bitterness.

This week, even Ted Cruz compared President Donald Trump’s FCC to the mafia in the case of The Government v. Jimmy Kimmel.

All this has been happening while the Kirk family is just beginning to mourn, while other people are being canceled and losing their jobs for discussing things Charlie Kirk said or did that were, to put it mildly, troubling.

One of the reasons I’m convinced that the church needs a reformation is that a majority of Christians, especially the evangelical church, but not just the evangelical church, chose Mr. Trump to be president – not just once, but twice. This makes no theological or spiritual sense. Unless maybe you think the other party is the devil incarnate, and you’re having to choose between evils. For example, Charlie Kirk said about the Democratic Party:

The American Democratic Party hates this country. They wanna see it collapse. They love it when America becomes less white.

My evangelical friends, is that really what you believe?

Then there’s a whole wing, many of them Christians, calling themselves MAGA, and they really like Trump. ("Well, maybe not everything he says, but what are you going to do?")

To my mind, this is spiritual insanity and utterly baffling. How is it possible that a thrice-married, casino-owning, six-times-bankrupted, sexual-assaulting, habitually-lying, law-breaking, loyalty-demanding, attention-grabbing, power-lusting, election-denying, corrupt, retribution-seeking, convicted rapist was elected and then re-elected – mainly because of the evangelical church? In a nation of 350 million people, was he the best we (or God) could come up with? Were none of our own people qualified? Are you certain Donald Trump was God's choice? Could he have been the candidate-of-choice of the other spiritual Power, the one described as a Liar and Slanderer, who comes to steal, kill, and destroy?

Trump is a spiritual and moral train wreck. He proved that without a doubt on January 6, 2021, and later, when he called the rioters who injured 140 police officers and vandalized federal property “political prisoners,” then indiscriminately pardoned all of them immediately after beginning his second term. There is no Christian way, no moral way, this man should have been reelected.

But because of 81% of the evangelical church, he was.

And Kirk loved Trump. His wife said so, soon after Charlie's death: “Mr. President, my husband loved you. And he knew that you loved him too." Kirk bought into Trump’s lie that the election had been rigged, despite Trump’s own Justice Department and top election officials, not to mention over 60 judges, many of them Trump appointees, saying such claims were false. Kirk arranged for busloads of young conservatives to be transported to Washington, DC on January 6, and pleaded the Fifth before the January 6 Congressional Committee.

I don't doubt that Kirk loved young people, his God, his family, and his country. I admire how he courageously entered hostile environments and engaged with students of all political persuasions, sexual orientations, and gender identities with relative respect, which is no small thing. But some of the things he said about people were not only divisive and inflammatory but dismissive, derogatory, and even cruel.

Over the years, did anyone within Charlie’s tribe hold him accountable for his incendiary statements? He was just a young man. Were there any supporters, any Christian mentors who cautioned him? Did anyone warn him about getting close to Trump, about the spiritual dangers of cozying up to power?

Or were the people around him glad that he was speaking with such disdain? Was Charlie giving voice to what many evangelicals were thinking but were afraid to say in public? Like calling George Floyd a “scumbag,” or branding Simone Biles a national disgrace for bowing out of the Olympics?

Words matter. According to Genesis 1, words create worlds. According to Jesus’ brother James, they set whole forests on fire. While policies can separate us, vitriol eviscerates us; it tears us apart. Charlie Kirk wasn’t just a firebrand; sometimes he was a fire starter, like Donald Trump – the man Charlie, as much as anyone, was responsible for electing, the man Charlie loved.

Were Kirk's words sometimes divisive? I think we can all agree that sometimes they were. But the most divisive thing he did was devote his political empire to seeing that Trump was elected and reelected, the president whose mantra these days is, "We're coming after you."

In case you’re wondering, I still consider myself an evangelical, just not the kind most of you are used to. I place a very high value on Scripture, the cross, conversion, and activism (Bebbington's four points of evangelism), although my take on these may be different from some of yours. I believe the gospel (evangel), properly understood, is incredibly good news, and that the Bible is a living word that speaks afresh to every generation. A moral guide, not a moral manual, a book that shepherds us toward wisdom. A book in which an inspired word is often not the last word on a subject, even within the Bible itself; where, as Jesus said, rules are at the service of the Story, not the Story at the service of the rules. For followers of Jesus, there is actually only one overriding Law. James calls it the Royal Law: to love our neighbor as ourselves.

Including our enemy. Including the stranger.

In the Hebrew Bible, God explicitly said that loving one’s neighbor includes loving the stranger as ourselves (Leviticus 19:34). Jesus’ last parable in Matthew’s gospel, the one about final judgment, says that when we love the stranger, we love Jesus, and when we fail to love the stranger, we’re in danger of being turned out or exiled ourselves in the coming age. The stranger, of course, is anyone who looks or feels “strange” to us. By the grace of God, when it's our own son or daughter who finally tells us the truth about themselves, sometimes we do choose to embrace the stranger – because now they have a face, and they are family.

Remember Paul’s words: If we don't have love, we are nothing. Nothing. Certainly, don’t sin, but be humble about your ability to discern with certainty what are actual sins, and what are mere differences in appearance, identity, or function. We must have the mind of Christ, which, according to Paul, is a humble mind – the mindset that led Christ to become nothing so that we might receive everything. This is the Christ who kept breaking rules, taboos, and expectations, and was crucified for it.

It's sobering to remember that evangelical Christians in the antebellum South, on the heels of a religious revival, employed an arsenal of Bible passages to support their cause. Those misguided interpretations of biblical texts, which needed to be understood in context, led to a civil war that cost 800,000 lives. Let’s not make the same mistake over issues the Bible hardly ever talks about. Let's remember that biblical rules are at the service of the Story, not the Story at the service of the rules. Rules are meant to be servants, not tyrants. They serve a purpose, often a temporary one. As Paul wrote: "We have been released from the law so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code" (Romans 7:6).

For heaven's sake, Church, try being curious, rather than being so quick to know what's best for people you've never met, whose stories you haven't heard. Let's try becoming like children, as Jesus said we needed to, to know our way around his kingdom.

God's kingdom, not Trump's. My brothers and sisters, it's time to jump the MAGA ship. It's time to stop traveling the wide road of Trumpism, and start taking the narrow road of the Sermon on the Mount. You need to choose between God and Caesar. This isn't about politics anymore. You're right: there is a spiritual battle happening, but friends, could it be that you're on the wrong side? Please think about it. Could it be that the evangelical church is being a Jezebel to this Ahab? Donald Trump is not making America great, he's diminishing us.

Have you read about Trump's speech to the United Nations? Full of boasting and patently false claims (e.g. that inflation and the price of food in the U.S. are going down and that in just seven months he ended "seven unending wars,"), as well as slanderous remarks about his predecessor. One senior foreign diplomat texted, "This man is stark, raving mad. Do Americans not see how embarrassing this is?"

And there was the complaint he made in his speech about the UN escalator stopping midway, which has now been turned into a conspiracy theory, not by online right-wing influencers, but by the White House and a Republican member of Congress:

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told Fox News Channel personality Jesse Watters that it looked like sabotage and she would personally see to it that there would be accountability, and Trump loyalist senator Mike Lee (R-UT) called for defunding the U.N. for “orchestrating escalator and teleprompter malfunctions.”

(The United Nations correspondent for the Associated Press, Farnoush Amiri, reported that “[a] UN official said the UN understands that someone from the president’s party who ran ahead of him inadvertently triggered the stop mechanism on the escalator. The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the White House was operating the teleprompter for Trump.")

As political commentator and three-time Pulitzer Prize winner Thomas Friedman said early on about the Trump administration: "These are not serious people."

I still can't fathom the evangelical church championing Donald Trump. But I do know this: Christ still loves his Church, still condescends to be wherever two or three of us gather in his name, just as he promised. He knows from experience the power of temptation, including the temptation to bow to power. He still identifies with sinners. I know that many of you, and many of your churches, are loving one another and your neighbors as much as you know how, and as your theology will allow.

But be warned: just a few decades after Jesus’ death and resurrection, five of the seven churches in Revelation were in danger of losing their lampstands, not because of wrong doctrine, but because of their lack of love and their love of money.

Let's not forget what Jesus said near the beginning of his ministry:

On that day, many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, didn’t we prophesy in your name, and in your name cast out demons and do many works of power?’ Then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you. Go away from me, evil doers!’

Church, will it be the wide road or the narrow road; the wide path of Trump or the narrow path of Jesus? It's still not too late to repent, to change your mind, and yes, be forgiven.

Church, if you're tired of being disrespected by the elite, then start acting respectfully. Act respectfully by choosing to be led by respectable leaders. Continuing to support Trump will only make us more of a laughingstock.

Church, could it be that we’re the problem? For example, our need for things to be black and white, our obsession with success and successful leaders, and our thinking that the ends justify the means (as long as people get "saved")? Could it be that we're the ones our country needs saving from right now?

As the apostle Paul wrote in yesterday morning's epistle reading: "What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside?"

Given the complexity of most issues, we don’t have to agree, including about Charlie Kirk's legacy. He was a complex person, full of contradictions, like most of us. His life was cut tragically short. I wouldn't want my life to be evaluated simply on what I was thinking and doing when I was less than half my age. But let's remember that vitriol eviscerates, whether from the Right or the Left, whether from the Oval Office, the pulpit, a podcast, or TikTok. These are perilous times.

I wonder what a Reformation would look like. Now, that’s something I would love for us to talk about.

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