Charlie Kirk and the Constitution’s resilience

“You don’t hate them enough.”

“They are going to pay.”

“They did this.”

“They want you dead.”

“They hate you.”

It was not uncommon to see some conservatives with large social media followings use some form of these phrases in the aftermath of Charlie Kirk’s assassination. On one level, I completely get why these phrases were offered up as a response. I do not doubt that large swaths of the ideological left hate conservative and Christian beliefs. Furthermore, given the audacity by many on the left to celebrate Kirk’s death, I’m certain there are some—a tiny few, I believe—who are willing to consider violence as a way of silencing conservatives. But on another level, these responses raise concerns that our legitimate anger at the assassination of Charlie Kirk could foment an unhealthy preoccupation with retribution.

But if we give ourselves over to this spirit of vengeance, we risk undermining both Christian faith and American order.

A part of me, at least my carnal side, resonates with this desire for payback. I am, after all, deeply angry at the horror of seeing a young Christian husband and father gunned down for having strong opinions and going about the very mundane action of daring to express them. The assassination of Charlie Kirk strikes at the very heart of the American project, a project premised upon the reality of difference, debate, and resolving those disputes through the peaceful actions of the voting booth.

On a spiritual level, however, my response is constrained by Christian ethics. Retribution does not belong to me in my personal capacity. I am called to vigilance and yes, of course, self-defense. But the bloodlust for retribution jeopardizes the Christian call to “if possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all” (Romans 12:18). So, too, the desire to exact wrath on the left can quickly jeopardize the American project if extreme measures are taken into our own hands. The beauty of the Christian faith is that it does not leave the soul’s or society’s longing for justice and rectitude without recourse to episodes of gross injustice like Kirk’s assassination—Scripture reminds us that retribution belongs to the Lord and to the state (Romans 12:19; Romans 13:1-7). It is biblical and right to see the accused assassin face justice—and if found guilty, face the full measure of justice, up to and including capital punishment. This is why the Constitution functions as an expression of ordered justice.

Allow me to suggest a path forward that keeps us from descending into the barbarous actions of leftist ideologues, a path that coincides with an easily overlooked national celebration day—Constitution Day, which is today. There is an alternative to bloodlust: recommitment to the very charter that has preserved ordered liberty in the face of division. If you want to see justice for Charlie Kirk, and if you want to see the left dethroned, demoralized, and relegated to even greater irrelevance and electoral loss, we should commit to the freedoms and mechanisms of the Constitution with even greater fervency.

Instead of meeting the left on its post-constitutional terrain, we should call it out and seek to persuade our fellow citizens that leftist hegemony only leads to further ruin. I can anticipate the objections already: The left does not play by the rules of the Constitution, so why should we? The reason that we must recommit to the Constitution is that unless we do, our nation will descend into further anarchy and lawlessness. All that protects this nation from becoming uninhabitable is the rule of law we must so zealously guard. We must understand the rule of law as an imperfect, though necessary, shadow of the way in which God governs His universe: by law, not sheer will. To let go of the rule of law is to set our society on a course for ruthlessness.

Very practically, this means we utilize the tools that the Constitution licenses. We debate with even greater persuasion. We muscle even bigger majorities. We demonstrate the negative consequences that stem from leftist rule. We guard our institutions. We do our level best to enter leftist-dominated institutions and subvert them. They’ve spent the last several decades marching through our institutions. Let’s have a countermarch. If that is an insurmountable task, let us create parallel institutions that offer a compelling and humane alternative to the social dogmas of the left. And we are already doing these things. Run for the school board or for local or state government. Go to church and invite others. Get married, have babies, and stay faithful. Use the examples of beauty to countermand the ugliness and sterility of leftism. Elect candidates with a substantive vision of the moral good. Exercise your political agency, an agency that far too few of us use to its fullest extent. Let us deploy every legal means at our disposal to form coalitions that usurp leftist sentiment. There is, literally, nothing stopping us from doing so.

My word of caution to those ready to dispense with Constitutional mechanisms to solve our national crisis is this: Unless we retreat to the Constitution and its freedoms, we’ll resort to the primal instincts that have racked civilizations since time immemorial. What keeps society from coming apart is our commitment to the rule of law. If the left is not interested in this, call it out. Name it for what it is and then use your individual and collective agency to vote it out. The Constitution is not merely a pragmatic compromise; it is a providential gift that restrains sin and enables ordered liberty.

We may not like the slow pace of reform that the Constitution affords. But I cannot snap my fingers and fire every leftist academic, television producer, or journalist. What I am left with are non-violent tools to marshal their loss of power and influence—to argue against them, not to fund them, to stop the spread of their influence in the spheres I have the power to oversee. Unless we accept those boundaries, we will eventually be no different than the shooter who so ghoulishly deployed violence against a fellow image bearer of God.

As Christians, we read that anger is possible without sinning (Ephesians 4:26). The Christian life is not an evacuation of our emotions. Be angry, but do not sin. Put down the temptations for violent score-settling. To entertain doing so would only tarnish the legacy of Charlie Kirk. The injustice done to Charlie Kirk, his family, and the integrity of American order is an occasion for us to pursue justice utilizing the very thing that Charlie Kirk spent his life defending—the Constitution. Christian patience prepares us to use constitutional means rather than primal violence.

For the first time in my life, it genuinely feels that the left is on retreat and playing defense. This is mainly of their own doing. Who can blame people for abandoning the Democrat Party—the party of statism, socialism, secularism, sexual radicalism, and subjective morality? Voters are fleeing. The jig is up. The leftist emperor has been de-clothed. Conservatism is making better arguments, and better institutions are forming—all within the Constitution’s confines. Press on with patience and courage.

Saber-rattling social media posts will not bring Charlie Kirk back. In fact, the spirit of such posts runs counter to the happy warrior ethos he so excellently embodied. The best way to honor Charlie Kirk is not to call for abandoning the Constitution and the rule of law in exchange for rage-posting. The better way is to maximize its potential. And let us understand that the temporal rule of the Constitution is but a mere shadow of the eternal rule of Christ.