Keep Right—Column by Ralph K. Ginorio, Co-Authored by the Reverend Todd H. Haines, Presbyterian Church USA, Arkport, NY
Christians believe that God reaches out to us human beings, offering meaning, love, and hope. Ultimately, God’s invitation can spark one of two responses. Hope in God’s providence and faith in God’s divine plan leads to us becoming humane.
Rejection initiates a descent into utter darkness. The rejection of Jesus Christ is not passive. When one hears the truth and then rejects it, that person is embracing a life without purpose that ends in an inevitable and meaningless death. In such an existence, there is no reason not to use any means to acquire the raw power necessary to tyrannize others while satiating every desire.
We human beings do not create ourselves, nor do circumstances make us either. We are crafted by a Creator who has made known his purpose, his laws, and his love. The fulcrum of one’s response to God’s offer is each person’s relationship with the very real and living God. Pretending God does not exist is the same as rejecting Him.
The freedom to engage in open conversation without fear, as Charlie Kirk did, is so important because of the nature of our God. Jesus Christ, the Word of God, works through words. So does God the Father. The universe was created with a word.
Jesus is a covenant God, relating to us in a mutuality involving the human acceptance of his divine offer. After Abraham proved his fidelity, God promised Abraham that he would teach and lead, while Abraham promised that he and his people would learn and obey to the very best of their ability.
This covenant is the basis of all three great Monotheistic faiths. Jesus’ life and ministry is an example of God’s irrepressible love, offered for us to accept. This mutuality means that Christianity is more than a philosophy. Christ’s faith is about more than analyzing and accepting his good ideas. Relating to Jesus involves interacting with a distinct individual, rather than grappling with human theories.
Jesus Christ in his genuine humanity is still reaching out to every human being who is lost in darkness. A saving Christian faith begins when an individual accepts his invitation to be led from this darkness into the light. It grows by building a relationship with God that has integrity which is grounded in God’s offer of love, purpose, and salvation.
Communication is the bedrock of all human relationship. Charlie Kirk’s vocation was to engage productively in a worthwhile discourse with all kinds of people. This vision was directly tied to his own faith in Jesus Christ, and in Jesus’ relationship with him and others. He is indeed a martyr of faith for, like Jesus, he died because he revealed the truth that life need not be a cosmic joke of accidental chaos ending in meaningless entropy.
Those living in darkness cannot tolerate any revelation of such transcendent truth. The death of countless Prophets, the condemnation of Socrates, and the murder of Miguel de Unamuno among so very many others all attest to this. Because misery loves company, those trapped in a living Hell reach out to isolate, confuse, and capture as many vulnerable innocents as possible.
I am so saddened for Kirk’s wife and kids and family. I am so sad for our nation. Truly this can be a turning point for us here in the USA. We are at a very delicate moment of choice where we, as an entire people, can say a better “YES!” to God’s loving offer. Or, we can reject, “IN GOD WE TRUST”, abandoning centuries of American identity as a tolerant Christian nation.
Good people can no longer remain silent. To remain silent in the face of an advancing darkness is not to be “good”; it is to be complicit. Our core freedom is to think and then express those thoughts that so often can lead us to accept God’s offer.
This is more tied to Christianity than it is to Enlightenment ideas. The cornerstone of American identity is the absolute truth that each and every human person, being of inestimable value to God, has been endowed with a God-given opportunity to live a worthy life of purpose.
We may choose to deny the truth, but while we may kill it within ourselves the truth will continue to abide in the wider world. When Kirk was debating a progressive about what it meant to be a woman, he was very clear. Truth is not something we can self-define. Just because someone yells something does not make it true.
Evil attempts to get us to deny the plain truth in front of our eyes for the very purpose of control. If evil ones can get people to deny the most basic truths, they can both pressure and confuse us into denying anything.
Our country’s essential identity is under attack. Individuals who speak boldly and spread the light are under assault. The central target of this attack is to confuse and destroy our capacities to relate with God, both as a nation and as individuals. It is this relationship between Jesus and individual human beings, and also with all of humanity, that most threatens darkness.
Charlie Kirk was a man of God doing the work of an authentic missionary. This is more important than his very real and important political work. He was showing how Christ can transform human life by being a faithful man in both his words and his deeds.
He died because he took up his cross and followed Jesus. His last name, Kirk, is Scottish for church. In his witness, Charlie was acting as the church should by bravely testifying to the truth among those in sore need of it.
We have two clear paths before us, both as individuals and as a nation. Either we Americans will continue to embrace the darkness and flee from the light, choosing the way of a broken nihilism where everything will in the end be dehumanized and torn to pieces. Or, we as a people will return to our shared traditions of accepting a life that is worth living rooted in Godly hope. None of us can escape this moment of choice.
Reverend Todd H. Haines is a Minister affiliated with the Presbyterian Church, USA who resides in Arkport, New York. He is an old friend of Ralph K. Ginorio, who normally is the sole author of this column.
