A shaken moment

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MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Today is Friday, September 12th. Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Myrna Brown.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher.

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: how to process violence and grief, and how parents can help young people who lost an important voice in their lives. This week's assassination shocked the country. Charlie Kirk worked with and influenced many, many thousands of young people, and let's not hide from the fact that he was horrifyingly cut down right in front of them, whether they were on campus that day or not, because the video is out there. Our colleague Lindsay Mast joins us now, morning Lindsay, what a week!

LINDSAY MAST: For sure. It’s been a jarring, heavy week for so many families. I’ve got two college-age daughters myself, and I know friends whose kids looked up to Charlie Kirk. His death has left them shaken and searching for how to respond.

In fact, one parent put words to what many others are feeling. She asked: Who do I grieve with, and what am I grieving? My perception of a safe Christian society has been eroding for a while, but Wednesday’s events accelerated it. Do I grieve in front of my kids? And if I do, are they scared when they see me afraid?

So I got in touch with pastor and author Kevin DeYoung, who was kind to give us some time. And I began by asking him how he’d respond to that group of really good questions.

KEVIN DEYOUNG: And I appreciate that thought, because it gets to the complexity, not only of the situation, we understand that, but our own emotional responses and spiritual responses are not just on one layer and level. So we're trying to minister to students in a church or in a youth group or to our own kids, and we have our own sense of grief, and it is a fine line. I don't think we help our students or our kids if we completely turn ourselves inside out and show every last bit of anxiety and fear and trepidation we may have. I don't think that's being fake. That's part of being adults and helping people younger than us have some stability in a moment that feels very destabilizing, and yet absolutely we should be able to express and can be very healing to express to our our kids, “I don't quite know what to make of this either, and there are things about this that are really upsetting to me.” Obviously, the loss of life and the loss of a Christian leader and a husband and a father, but all of those bigger things, and I think to even to name them and put the category out there is appropriate. And it does register something. My mom, my dad, my pastor, my leader, is willing and is a safe person that I can talk to and I can grieve with and be okay if that's not now and it's just a short conversation, and be willing to have the longer conversation if the door, if the Lord opens that door.

MAST: I know young people in this generation suffer already from high rates of depression, anxiety, maybe a general ennui, many seem to have latched on to Charlie Kirk's messages about faith in Jesus, but also civic engagement and life purpose. It seems like the reaction could likely go one of two ways, either shutting down completely or being lit up to carry on Kirk's messages and, more importantly, the message of the gospel. So how do we encourage hope in dealing with this?

DEYOUNG: I mean, very, very practically, this may be one of those good times to encourage people, talk to your friends, talk to your parents. We want to, we want to be talking about this. And you're absolutely right to try to point people toward hope. And what's really helpful is here, I mean, some of the very last things over the last days and weeks that that Charlie Kirk said in some of the tweets were about Jesus died so that we can live, and that his message was, among other things, don't wallow in anger and don't resort to violence, but find joy and purpose. And yet here, even as I'm saying that here's the danger is that we can say that message, which is all true and gospel and hope, and we need to give that, but we also need to understand, if we do that in a, in a in a ham fisted way, it feels like a stiff arm to people's emotions, like, don't be sad, don't be upset, don't be scared, don't be angry. I mean, there's nothing worse, really, for a parent than to see your own kids sad. And so we start parenting out of our own desire not to be sad over our kids sadness, and so we start directing them away from what really could be healthy, normal emotions that they they just need to work through and understand that the Bible has lots of resources for the whole range of human emotions.

MAST: A couple of things, you talked about being destabilized. There were two things that I sort of noticed over the time since this happened. One is the very disturbing sense of celebration by certain people over, over what happened on Wednesday, and I think that can be very confusing for young people, for people of any age, but since we're talking young people, how do we help young people cope with the idea that there is a sense of celebration here among people who they may be going to class with, walking around the halls with, certainly online with.

DEYOUNG: I think we need a lot of help as Christians in having a theology of enemies. And I think we need more than one thing. We know that Jesus says to love our enemies, and that's really paramount, and pray for our enemies. But we're at a time, sadly in our country's history, there are real, tragically, some violent enemies to the truths of the Bible in the hope of the gospel. But Jesus talked a lot about this in his upper room discourse before he he knows he's going to die. One of the things he talks at length with his disciples is the world is going to hate you. Now we can own that in a way that feels almost proud and pat ourselves on the back, and we go out with a smugness, but it's there for a reason, because Jesus knew they hated Jesus. Now the answer there or the next step is not to say, well, good, the world hates me. And I guess I'm going to hate them back, because the Bible says we don't revile those who revile us in return. I think it is a moment to help young people and really ourselves remember that what we've had for a long time in this country is historically not the case for a lot of Christians around the world. That is a relatively friendly, peaceable cultural climate, and to see that there are those that genuinely viscerally hate Biblical truth, hate what Jesus stood for, hate the message of the cross and of Christ is something our kids need to understand, not to be fearful, but to be prepared. “Do not be surprised,” Peter says, “when the fiery trial comes” and to be for warned is to be forearmed. I mean, that that's part of it that doesn't solve it, but that's part of it to help our people and help our our kids understand. Because the next thing Jesus says after that teaching is and because of this, some people have fall fallen away. This is a reason that some people leave the Christian faith. We don't like to be hated. We don't, we don't, we don't want to be afraid. We don't like the what it does to us, emotionally, psychologically. And yet, Jesus teaches a lot about this, and we worship a crucified savior who was hated, and therefore his followers can expect some of the same.

MAST: You know, I think talking about this for most of us alive in America today, being bold for our faith until now, maybe losing a friend, maybe a job, even a career. Some people are calling Kirk a Christian martyr. I feel like you may be going there in your own line of thinking, and we're not. We don't know yet, of course, what motivated the shooter, if it was his politics or his faith or both. But how do we convince our kids that the cause of Christ is worth the ultimate price now that those possibilities seem much more tangible, I think, than they did three days ago.

DEYOUNG: Yeah, and I think it's important, as we we talk to our kids in this moment to realize we we don't have to say everything that can be said in this one moment. In fact, if we try to, we'll be saying too much. And we see that from Jesus too. There were things he flat out told his disciples. You're not ready to hear this yet. Now, we may not say it quite that bluntly to our kids, but if we try to give them a full, you know, theology of martyrdom to a 15 year old, I don't think that's what what they need. They need to know that Jesus is worth it. Is worth it for me. And Charlie Kirk believed in Christ and His resurrection, and we know the end of the story, and we know who wins at the end of the story. And you know we're right at the anniversary of 9/11 this week. And I think there's a point that maybe some parents can talk about their own experience. Say, you know, this was a, this was a moment in my life that we'll never forget, and some things really changed. And I just want you to also hear some things continued by God's grace. You know what? People went to school, they went to college, they graduated. It wasn't, it didn't mean the end of the world. We never want to normalize evil, but we are trying to normalize that God has been with his people and has been with us personally through difficulties, national tragedies, and that same God is going to be with you, and I think in this moment, often that's you know, whether our kids are going to respond to it right there. They need to know and hear from us a faith that we have, that God has not left the throne, that this did not take him by surprise, and that the end of the story has not yet been written for us, but it has been for God, and it's ultimately a good story, right?

MAST: I want to go back to one of the other things I found to be, I think, somewhat destabilizing, was there was graphic video of this murder online within minutes of it happening. It seems like we weren't meant to bear images like that in our minds, and yet, thousands, I don't know, maybe millions of people, and many of them, quite young, have seen something that they can't unsee. So how do we shake that image? Should we shake it? How do we how do we deal with that visual part of it?

DEYOUNG: You're right that we weren't. I mean, there's a famous letter from CS Lewis, and I'll just paraphrase, but he he was basically saying we were not meant to bear the evils that are perpetrated everywhere in the world. We have enough of them in our own local context. Of course, with the internet, this is not a new phenomenon. It's been happening for the last generation. We just we are bombarded with images. We're bombarded with pictures of evil and suffering 7 billion people. I mean, we can just get it every single day. So first of all, I want to say no. I mean, no one should feel like they're not doing their duty or they're chickening out not to watch the video. I mean, I'm in Charlotte and we had the stabbing was the news a couple of days ago, and who would have thought that would only be the second most horrible thing to be talking about? But I don't. I try to stay away from seeing those because they are so hard to unsee. And I think to help our kids, then, whether they've seen them or not, to say, Okay, what? What is, how do we think about not being ignorant of evil in the world? And yet, the image, an image strikes us in a palpable, powerful way. And so first of all, I hope they can avoid it. Most of them probably won't, in which case you know what, to detox as much as you can from this online ecosystem. And the only way you can't flush things out, which you can do is you can put better things in there, and whatever is lovely, whatever is good, whatever is beautiful, and a walk outside may be one of the very best things that you can do for yourself, spiritually, mentally and emotionally and these sorts of things.

MAST: Kevin, we don't often ask our guests to pray on the program, but would you end our time together, interceding for our nation and asking for God's comfort for the hurting today?

DEYOUNG: I’d be happy to. Our gracious heavenly Father. We're so glad that what Jesus taught us to pray, the first thing he reminded us is that we pray to a father, to a father who loves his children, to a father who sent His Son to die for us that we might live, a father who sent the Holy Spirit to comfort the grieving, to help the downcast, to equip us for a life of faithfulness. And so we pray to you not as a distant deity, not simply as a judge or even a king on the throne, but as our father and we pray that you would minister through the Lord Jesus as a sympathetic high priest to draw near to those who are grieving. And so we close our time here, Lord, believing that you love to hear your people pray and that you can do more than we know how to even ask or imagine for the good of your people in this world, for the good of this country, with all of our flaws, all of our sins. Forgive us, Lord, and ultimately, for the glory of your name, we pray. Amen.

MAST: Amen. Kevin DeYoung is senior pastor at Christ Covenant Church in Matthews, North Carolina, Kevin, thank you so much for your time.

DEYOUNG: Well, thanks for what you're doing, and an honor to be with you.

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