When Charlie Kirk was killed, I promised to write a blog about the importance of a healthy, non-violent political climate in our country and the way in which the assassination of any political figure strikes at the root of what a good society must be and endorse. Before I start, I must admit that I have never listened to Charlie Kirk speak nor read any of his books. I can’t say that I agree with everything I’ve heard he supported politically or theologically. These admissions do not matter because the main point is: No one deserves to be killed for expressing their opinions on religious or political issues in a peaceful way.

The Bitter Result of a False Narrative

In the past, I have written about what Walter Wink calls “the myth of redemptive violence,” or the false (demonic) idea that society can be improved through violence. [1]This mistaken belief runs deep in the American consciousness, perhaps due to the Civil War and the view that the First and Second World Wars were “just wars.” The first false narrative is that violence can create a just or stable society.

More deeply, the violence of our society, and the increasing lack of tolerance for Christians and others in the political arena, is also the result of the loss of belief in truth and justice, and the Nietzschean notion of the “will to power.” In a world in which there is a lack of confidence in the existence of truth and justice, there will always be those who resort to violence as a way of achieving their personal or political ends. The second false narrative is that the foundation of morals and society is power and the will to power.

That the political left is currently uniquely in danger of falling victim to the myth of redemptive violence is not the necessary result of its fundamental political views so much as it is because of the vulnerability of the left to revolutionary ideology and the popularity of Marxist thought in our society. However, the political right is not immune to the disease of believing that good things can result from evil means.  We live in a culture that often justifies the means by the desirability of the ends we seek to achieve. The third false narrative is that the ends justify the means.

The bitter fruit of these false narratives is the violence we seek daily in our society—a violence that threatens our culture and indeed many societies all over the world.

Conversation and Dialogue

Fortunately, many observers believe that the modern world is nearing its end, and something new is emerging. What we call “postmodernism” is just the beginning of change and could be better described as “Hyper-Modernism” or “End-stage Modernism.” The decline of modern thought into “hermeneutics of suspicion,” “deconstructionism,” and various forms of nihilism is essentially critical reasoning pushed to its limits. The false narrative of modernity must give way to something new. Hopefully, there will be a revival of reason, spiritual values, moral principles, and similar core elements in the slow development of a healthier society. The extreme corporatization of our society may change as a new form of socio-economic organization emerges. In the process, one hopes that the idea of a purely secular, materialistic, and scientifically managed state, prone to violence, will fade away until it finds its place within a more humane form of society.[2]

My understanding is that Charlie Kirk’s ministry focused on conversation and dialogue. A conversation is naturally communal and aims to build connections among people. It involves a relationship where two or more individuals share their thoughts and lives in a way that promotes cognitive, emotional, physical, and spiritual understanding, ultimately fostering a stronger sense of community. Hopefully, their ideas, thoughts, and commitments will align during the conversation, with the potential to resolve conflicts and reduce fragmentation in our culture. The word “dialogue” comes from two words meaning to reason through. The idea is that by sharing and reasoning with each other, we open the door to a deeper understanding of people, our society, and our world.

We need a national commitment to conversation and dialogue. As part of a healthy, society-wide dialogue and conversation, the community can be rebuilt, shared values can be discovered and affirmed, and a new sense of the importance of our society’s search for a just social and political system can be found. Moreover, if a sense of national conversation and dialogue exists among the various groups active in our political system, then freedom, including freedom of speech, can be maintained in a setting of mutual respect and understanding.[3]

A Better Narrative

In the past, I have written about how the materialism of the modern world and the idea of the world as a machine, rooted in Newtonian physics, has been replaced by a more relational perspective. Recently, this materialistic view has been replaced by a model that emphasizes deep interconnectedness, relationships, freedom, and inner sensitivity. It is an “organic model” that sees the universe not as a machine but as an organism or a process. In my view, and the view of others, this older way of thinking has led modern politicians, policy-makers, and intellectuals into many errors. Henry Sapp explains it as follows:

[We] are faced today with the spectacle of our society being built increasingly upon a conception of reality erected upon a mechanical conception of nature now known to be fundamentally false. … As a consequence of this widely disseminated misinformation, “well informed” officials, administrators, legislators, judges, educators, and medical professionals who guide the development of our society are encouraged to shape our lives in ways predicated on known-to-be-false premises about “nature and nature’s laws.” [4]

A worldview informed by quantum physics and relativity theory encourages us to see the world more like an organism than a machine. At a fundamental level, the world does not seem to be made up of matter and energy. Matter is a form of energy. Even more mysteriously, fundamental particles appear to be ripples on a quantum field. There is both freedom and uncertainty in this emerging worldview, both at a fundamental level (quantum uncertainty) and at an everyday level (chaos theory). Finally, all of reality is interconnected at a basic level. From a political point of view, while there is a “You” and a “Me,” you and I are also “We.” We are all part of one another. Like an organism, the world is constantly changing and evolving: In other words, it is not at all like a watch that is designed once and for all. Instead, the world is evolving, growing, and constantly changing.

The inevitable result of all this is that reason, spiritual values, moral imperatives, and similar factors will reemerge as important in a wise society. The vision of a purely secular, materially driven, and scientifically managed state will fade away until it finds its place within a more comprehensive and human-centered society. Just as the world consists of an intricately linked web of reality, governments will realize that human politics must begin with smaller units, such as the family, and naturally expand into larger organizational structures with important but limited powers.

The idea of the all-powerful nation-state that controls territory through legal, administrative, and bureaucratic force will be shown to be insufficient. A truly post-modern vision will emphasize social bonds and the development of shared values. Whether this occurs because of a major crisis and collapse of the current nation-state, world-state visions, or organically through the decisions of wise leaders, depends on the choices we all make. One thing is certain: a wise, healthy, and genuinely post-modern political order will value dialogue as much as debate and decision.

Toning Down the Rhetoric

If Charlie Kirk’s tragic death can help create a more humane and peaceful society, then he will not have died in vain. It is unhelpful to use his death to further divide and politicize our society. Sadly, on both the left and right, some people are exploiting this tragedy to rally their supporters in a way that increases polarization—and even more so if press reports are accurate. I am quite sure that Charlie Kirk would not want his followers to act this way—and I am 100 percent completely confident that the God he serves does not want any of us to behave this way.

Recently, there has been no sign that either “the chattering class” in the media or the “attention-getting and voter-mobilization class” in politics plans to make the necessary changes. This is unfortunate because we need more from our leaders, specifically a strategic and moral vision that can create profound change in our politics and help reconstruct our national community and unity.

[1] Walter Wink, Engaging the Powers: Discernment and Resistance in a World of Domination Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1992).

 

[2] G. Christopher Scruggs, Illumined by Wisdom and Love: Essays on a Sophio-Agapic Constructive Postmodern Political Philosophy (Hunt, Texas: Quansus Press, 2024) 4-155. This portion of the essay is based on the argument made in that work.

[3] Id. This entire essay flows from the argument I made in this prior philosophical effort.

[4] Henry F. Sapp, “Whitehead, James, and the Ontology of Quantum Theory” 5(1) Mind and Matter (2007) downloaded at https://www-physics.lbl.gov/~stapp/WJQO.pdf (June 16, 2020), 85. In this quote, Sapp is not speaking of the exact phenomena that I am concerned with here—the tendency to view all reality as a machine—but his quote is equally applicable to what I am saying in this essay. Sapp is concerned with the assumption of materialistic theory that our experience of human freedom and the efficacy of human thought is an illusion.