The response to Charlie Kirk’s death is revealing the subtext of our hearts

I tell stories for a living, and so subtext is something I’m fascinated by. What is this character saying that they don’t really mean? What do they mean that they aren’t saying? Subtext is often where the true heart of the character is. And this week, all across social media, people - Christian people, no less - have been betraying the subtext of their own hearts.

You discover the motive of a sentence in the second clause - the bit that comes after the ‘but’.

”I grieve for those poor children, but Charlie Kirk was against X, Y and Z.”

“Charlie Kirk was against X, Y and Z, but I grieve for those poor children.”

Same words, different order. Significantly different heart-stance.

The good guys

So many seem to think that political or ethical truth is binary, and that the consequences for not being ‘in the truth’ should be severe and unflinching. One of the things I enjoyed while reading George RR Martin’s A Game of Thrones (HarperVoyager) series is that he wrote it with the axiom of “no bad guys”. The idea is that nobody remains unrelatable when you know their full story.

Compare that to the old westerns of the 1940s and 50s, in which there were clearly delineated goodies and baddies, white hats versus black hats. Whenever I dive into social media these days, I see this lack of nuance writ large. Goodies and baddies. Us against them. How do we know who the goodies are? Simple. It’s the side that I’m on.

In stories, as in life, what really turns the screw is a lack of good communication. Take the mother whose daughter goes travelling but promises to keep in touch. After a week in Brazil and no contact, the mother starts to panic and assume the worst. Or the lad who has been texting back and forth with the girl he’s dating, only for her to start leaving him on two blue ticks. Instantly his thoughts turn to the idea that she’s texting someone else, or is with someone else. In both these scenarios, lack of dialogue leads to uncertainty, which turns rapidly into fear.

If we continue to use politics as spiritual methadone, we’ll find ourselves riding away on whatever cultural movement tickles our sense of self

But fear is not an action. People very rarely ‘act fearfully’. Rather, they act as a result of turning their fear into action. What we are seeing in the world of social media and beyond is fear turned into action - a deep insecurity in individuals and communities which could be mitigated by respectful dialogue, but is instead channeled into posturing, point scoring and cries of vindication. “We’re not scared, we’re fighting for truth and justice!” the voices cry out.

Are you? Or are you raging for power, ensuring that your worldview remains or becomes the dominant one? The whole world is aflame with ideological possession, it seems.

CS Lewis wrote insightfully about this recurring trait in humans in The Screwtape Letters (Collins). Writing to Wormwood, a junior demon, his superior says: “Be sure that the patient remains fixated on politics. Arguments, political gossip, and obsessing on the faults of people they have never met serves as an excellent distraction from advancing in personal virtue, character, and the things the patient can control.”

Unlike a lot of diseases, there is actually a cure for fear. Perfect love casts it out (see 1 John 4:18). Defiance, rabble-rousing and courage may submerge fear for a little time, while compassion and activism numb its effects a little, but what causes it to flee is having your identity so rooted in the God of love and justice that you are actually free.

Free to disagree without disliking, free to lament the loss of a life without eulogising it, free to be insulted without taking revenge. “The insults of those who insult you have fallen on me,” Paul says of Jesus in Romans 15:3. Without that deep-rootedness of who you are, of who the Good Guy really is, and a conviction that the story of the cosmos will end in eucatastrophe rather than catastrophe, all you have is a fight to survive as well as you can for as long as you can.

So you find a tribe, learn the war cries, mourn when one of your own dies, cheer when one of them does. Jesus did what he saw his father doing (John 5:19); humans do what they see their parents, elders, gang leaders doing. Maybe they switch allegiances, decide that the white hat is actually black, but they simply sing different words. The tune remains the same.

Talking to atheists

I’ve been hosting Unbelievable? on Premier Christian Radio intermittently for two years now. On almost every show we have at least one guest with whom I fundamentally disagree about the meaning of life. We often host atheists - people diametrically opposed to my own worldview. So many of them are fiercely intelligent, winsome, steeped in reason. Some of them commit their careers to driving people away from belief in the gospel - something which, one might want to argue, is far more fatal in an eternal sense than any human death.

Sometimes the non-Christian has better arguments. Occasionally the Christian is abrasive. But I’m not a rowing boat adrift in a sea of krakens. I am anchored in the only story of redemption available to humanity.

I don’t think atheism is preposterous, but I do think it’s boring, poorly rendered and, when it leads to nihilism (which logically it should) dangerous for individuals and communities alike. But Unbelievable? continues to exist because it is a rare platform where dialogue and dialectic doesn’t descend into a maelstrom of chaos. When you only have slogans, and you use those slogans as weapons, somebody with a better grasp of language or better research looks like an instant threat. Throw the slogans and return to base as a hero.

So many seem to think that political or ethical truth is binary, and that the consequences for not being ‘in the truth’ should be severe and unflinching

The night sky is not black through a telescope, though. The more you analyse your own worldview, notice its tight weaves and raggedy edges, and listen to the thoughtful reasoning of others, while your own view may well strengthen, you also develop an awareness of how someone might have reached a different conclusion, followed a different thread. And you cease needing to overload your adjectives when talking about someone with whom you disagree - tragic, abusive, reprehensible etc. You can leave the virtue-signalling aphorisms on Instagram where they belong.

The Book of James talks about taming the tongue, not simply tethering it (3:8). If, as Christians, we can’t draw our identity from the right well, or if we continue to use politics as spiritual methadone (shouting for justice without acting justly), we’ll find ourselves riding away on whatever cultural movement tickles our sense of self, and demonising those people who were made to judge angels.

We need medics, not mercenaries. We need to do what we see the Father doing.