Yes, You Can Care More About Charlie: Here's Why

In the wake of Charlie Kirk's assassination there have been many reactions. Some are obviously evil, like celebration, others are obviously understandable and good, like grief. But there are those that will seek to make a person think twice about putting emphasis on this particular event. They will say something like "well, why didn't you care about X more than or the same amount you cared about Charlie?" For some, this is a dishonest question (and I will address those at the end of this post) but for others it is a genuinely earnest question and one that deserves a response. I believe that there are at least five reasons it is okay to have a greater visceral, emotional, and emphatic response to what happened to Charlie Kirk than other tragedies. Here they are:

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  • In no other situation was the violence celebrated. In the case of school shootings etc... there are critiques from both sides on the response but everyone agrees that these things are horrific and terrifying and evil. There were people actively celebrating Charlie's assassination. I have NEVER seen that before in my life (with the possible exception of the near assassination of Trump). When evil gets exposed like that the reaction must be to expose it, loudly, and mourn the loss and champion the good (Eph. 5:11).

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  • Assassinations are categorically different than other acts of violence. Assassinations are done on high profile people for very specific reasons. Usually, to shut them and their message up, so the response being loud is actually not only appropriate but necessary.

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  • A person cannot emotionally respond to every situation (even similar ones) exactly the same. We're simply not built that way. For every school shooting there is a stabbing, for every stabbing there is gang violence in the inner-city, there are cancer diagnoses, floods etc... Tragedy is everywhere and we simply cannot function if we try to respond to every tragedy with the same level of emotion every time. It is not healthy or good to do so.

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  • Somehow the Spirit is moving with this one. I don't know why or how God chose this moment to move in people's lives but he did and the Christian response should be to amplify that so that maximum amount of people can be exposed to the Gospel in a time of what seems to be tenderness to the Spirit's leading.

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  • There was a LIVE video of the moment that was gruesome and close up. Most people have never seen that up close. The shock, agony, despair and trauma from seeing such a horrific image will force it to be seared into your brain and you cannot unsee it. That makes this tragedy more personal, closer, and less ethereal than others. It forces you to grapple with the evil in its face. You can't ignore it.

So there are 5 reasons. I hope this clarifies for some people. But there is at least one other reason people bring this up as a response to the outpouring of response to this assassination and it's this: They don't like it when it seems like "their side" doesn't have the moral high ground and so they try to use emotional manipulation to make it seem like they have the high ground because they respond to other "death" better (in their eyes) than you do. They cared before you did, they care about ALL death, why don't you? It's emotional black mail and it doesn't take into consideration the 5 factors (at least) above. Now, not everyone bringing that up is using this tactic, but many are. Beware of them. I, personally, wouldn't even engage. The assassination of Charlie Kirk was an ideological assassination. It was an attempt to silence conservative values once and for all and to destroy a movement in the process. When people use this dishonest technique to critique your own reaction to Kirk's death remember that their issue is not really with you but with what you believe. In fact, many of these same people will deeply mourn the passing of a celebrity they love, and no one will bat an eye so why they do they call you out for deeply mourning Kirk? Because they are categorically opposed to the very things they think Kirk stood for and while they don't want to celebrate (because they are decent people) they also don't want Kirk to be celebrated because then it would mean they might have to assess whether what they believe about him and his movement is really accurate and that level of introspection is painful, difficult and worldview shifting. So, mourn and grieve Charlie Kirk. Honor his memory and do not apologize for doing so. I know I won't. Carry out his legacy. Not simply to engage in the political but to do so by embracing the theological. As Charlie would say: “aspire to get people to drink from the streams of liberty because once they do so they will want to know its source.” And to Charlie, his wife, and to us here at FreeThinking Ministries we know that source is none other than the God-Man Jesus Christ our Lord! The man who took on flesh and the man who knew no sin that became sin for us so that we may have his righteousness. That man died on the cross and rose again on the third day so that any who would believe in their heart and confess with their mouth that Jesus Christ is Lord will be saved. God bless, mourn well, honor Christ, and Stay Reasonable.