I was sitting at my desk pondering the application of Proverbs 2 when the news that Charlie Kirk had been shot came across my phone. There are things I agreed with Charlie on and things that I didn’t, but I always appreciated that he was out there having the conversations with people whom he disagreed. He treated the people he debated with dignity and respect.

Just four days ago he posted this on X, “Jesus defeated death so you can live.”  It is a simple gospel maxim that says so much. Death comes from sin. Sin is evil. Evil destroys and kills what God loves. God loves us so that the eternal Son of God came into the world to kill death and sin, by dying himself. It is mind blowing what God did seeing that we were the ones who caused this problem through our rebellion in the first place. Billy Joel was wrong. We did start the fire. 

There are people who do evil and there are systems that perpetuate evil. We must not be naïve about the world that we live in. The call of Wisdom is the call to reject the ways of evil men and reject the “dark ways,” the evil systems, that wickedness creates. 

“Wisdom will save you from the ways of wicked men, from men whose words are perverse, who have left the straight paths to walk in dark ways, who delight in doing wrong and rejoice in the perverseness of evil, whose paths are crooked and who are devious in their ways” Proverbs 2:12-15.

When society rejects God’s Law as too narrow, too old fashioned, or too judgmental we are exchanging life for death. Obedience is safety. Obedience is blessing. Obedience is life. The Ten Commandments aren’t just a list of Christian dos and don’ts; they summarize God’s attitude towards the things that destroy us.  Evil is real and evil is deadly. 

“Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter” Isaiah 5:20.

When we accept the lie that some evil is actually good (some covetousness, some infidelity, some theft, some deceit, some killing, some idolatry) or when we play theological gymnastics to justify sinful behavior and attitudes (did God actually say…?), we are sowing the seeds of destruction in our own lives and in our society. The solution to what ails us is not politics. Good politics is downstream from good theology. Replacing “Blue” sins for “Red” sins is simply exchanging one form of death with another. What we need is to submit ourselves to the gospel of Jeus Christ. One pastor friend (Darren Carlson) posted this on Facebook in the moments after the shooting:

“The best reason not to murder those we reckon our political enemies has always been the fear of God and the sober awareness that every person bears his image. God is holy; people are sacred; vengeance belongs to the Lord (Rom. 12:19). Remove the fear of God, and the weight of human life grows light. If politics is ultimate, then enemies are not neighbors to be persuaded but obstacles to be crushed. We must practice the slow habits that put ballast in the soul: telling the truth, refusing contempt, blessing those who curse, guarding our tongues, praying for leaders we didn’t vote for, and breaking bread with neighbors we don’t agree with.”

As Christians we mourn the death of a famous man like Charlie Kirk and the less famous men and women, boys and girls, who suffer and die from the oppression of sin in our world. We do not mourn however as those who have no hope. We who know the Way, the Truth, and the Life must get up, dust ourselves off and get busy introducing a dying world to the one who died to give life.