Culture Friday: Civilizational moments

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MYRNA BROWN, HOST: It’s Friday, September 12th. Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Myrna Brown.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. It’s Culture Friday! Joining us is John Stonestreet, president of the Colson Center and host of the Breakpoint Podcast. Good Morning John.

JOHN STONESTREET: Good morning.

EICHER: John, the story about Charlie Kirk was breaking so fast. And one of the things I was really struck by, I do think that he has been flattened in some of the reporting as just a very provocative political activist.

But the thing I noticed as the story was being reported, several of the sources who came on—as he was clinging to life, as they were treating him, trying to save his life—more than a handful of people I heard saying, “I know Charlie, and we want to pray for his life to be spared, but I know Charlie knew Christ, and if he doesn’t make it, he will step into the presence of the Lord.”

So I was really encouraged by that, even as I was horrified by hearing the story.

STONESTREET: Yeah, and that’s what evil is. It’s horrible. And when we politicize it, or put some other lens on it outside of the reality described in Holy Scripture of the kind of world we live in and the kind of creatures humans are—literal image bearers, those who are God-like, to quote C.S. Lewis, and by the way Scripture—and when that loss happens, and when the image is so defaced, there’s no other word for it than horrible.

And it’s still horrible, even though we can have trust in Christ that he has Charlie Kirk in His presence. And that’s what’s so hard right now, to get around the hate and the vitriol that has been lobbed at him, even in the midst of his death, where you have news networks like MSNBC blaming it on Charlie himself, you have Governor Pritzker blaming it on January 6 rioters and politicizing it almost immediately, and it feels so horrible.

And there are some of these events that just seem to kind of gut punch you, and this is one for many of us. I didn’t know Charlie, so it’s not because of that. There’s just some of these moments where the horror just stands out.

And it’s horrible on many sides. It’s horrible that an image bearer’s life is taken. It’s horrible that a young woman is now a widow way too early, raising children by herself. It’s horrible that these beautiful little kids are without a dad. It’s horrible that someone could actually do something as bad as this. And it’s horrible that people can immediately jump and celebrate the horror.

All of that’s horrible. And to kind of have this view that the world’s better because this horror happened, as many have expressed, is just such an example of being so absolutely confused.

But make no mistake, now that we’ve had two tragic murders, there’s so much about this week and the horror of it that points to the fact that we are in such an incredibly volatile cultural moment. If I needed any evidence that we were in a civilizational moment, as Os Guinness has said, this week seems to just, seems like we’re on the precipice. We’re so precarious. If we can’t all agree that that’s horrible, what the heck are we doing? And that, to me, is what has stood out about this.

BROWN: Yep. You mentioned, John, the heartbreak of this week. And you know, I’ve been sitting here thinking about the brutal slaying of Iryna Zarutska. She’s the Ukrainian refugee stabbed to death on a train in Charlotte, North Carolina.

And you know, I cannot stop seeing her face on that video of her attack. And as the mom of young adult children myself, and as someone who has used public transportation when I was single—and there were times when I struggled to know what to do. Do I make eye contact? Do I look away? And I’m going to tell you I was afraid.

So how do we respond, John, as Christians? I mean, is fear the appropriate response?

STONESTREET: I think that’s a really hard question. In both cases, we know at least that there is a cultural mood that groups entire people together and wants to eliminate them, both with our political theories, also with the way we think about race, and the way we do it without grounding it at all in a common humanity.

It’s shown in the video that you mentioned, not just in the horrific, terrible act of what happened to this beautiful young woman, but in the indifference of those who were spectators—the indifference of those who either weren’t aware that it was happening because they were trapped on their screens, or who were taking the posture that a whole lot of people have taken in the face of evil, which is to ignore it and to walk away and to not get involved.

And all of that comes from this mentality that basically groups people up like this.

And I think often of something that Os Guinness has said: are we going to have a human-friendly future? And I’ve kind of thought about it in terms of AI. I thought about it in terms of technocratic, you know, our integration with machines. But I think it’s even more fundamental than that.

In other words, are we going to have a future in which we actually see people for being made in the image of God?

Now, your question was a little different. Your question was, how do I think about my own safety? And that’s a different answer for me than it is for you as a woman. It’s a different answer for my daughters than it is for a grown man.

We might all be in a situation where we have good reason to fear, but that points to the reality that human beings are male and female, that there’s something about us.

So I think one of the answers to your question is these may be signposts this week of a time where, in more situations than 10 years ago or 15 years ago or 20 years ago, we should be aware and maybe even rightly afraid.

But I also think that one of the answers to your question is that Christians, of all people, have to begin with a clear understanding of what it means to be human, and then allow that truth to guide how we interact. So that it would never be true of us, that we would be trapped on our screens and not even aware of a vulnerable situation.

That we may, to the best of our ability, see a young woman like her sit down and then just be aware and go and grab her and move her to a different seat out of kindness. You see what I mean?

Listen, I’m not saying that anybody could have prevented this. I’m just saying that we do not have a human-friendly culture right now. And when you do not have a human-friendly culture, there’s no preventative measures. There’s not the same barriers and obstacles to these great horrors that there are in other times and in other places. And I think that has something to do with the kind of world we want to build.

EICHER: I want to jump back to what happened to Charlie and what it means, the bigger picture. Culturally, are we on the brink of serious political violence in this culture? What do you think?

STONESTREET: You immediately reminded me of a scene in the movie A Few Good Men, when Tom Cruise asked Jack Nicholson about a particular Marine being in danger. And he said yes. And he said, do you mean grave danger? To which Jack Nicholson replied, is there another kind?

And it’s a funny line in the movie, but it’s not a funny line here. When you ask if we’ve now reached a violent political moment—yes. There’s evidence of this that goes back years. The question is, is this becoming more mainstream? Is this becoming more of a threat across the board?

I’m just, you know, in this kind of civilizational mode right now because of the privilege of working on the Truth Risingfilm with Os and thinking about this. But one of the big observations here is we tend to think of civilizations as things in the past. And we tend to think about what happened to them as if that’s what happened in the past without applying the real lessons to the moment.

Civilizations cannot hold without solid ground. Civilizations cannot hold without common definitions of life and value and truth.

I guess my question has less to do with are we on the verge of political violence and to say we’re there. Or do we mean by that something resembling civil war? I mean, I hope not. That sounds crazy, right?

But at what point do we start to realize that we see things so differently in this nation, and we don’t have any other common language or common ground? We look at the act of abortion, and one side calls it women’s reproductive health care, the other side calls it the taking of innocent life. How can we talk about the same thing, and one side call it health care, and the other side call it murder?

The trans surgeries: one side calls it gender affirming, the other side calls it mutilation. And we’re not talking about two different things. We’re talking about the same thing and calling it two completely different things.

Yeah, and that’s the level of divide. And all political violence starts with an ideological divide. That’s why it’s so crazy when you have explanations of, oh, it’s the gun’s fault. No. People are believers.

To be made in the image of God is to be a believer in something. We’re incurably religious. We give our religious allegiances to something. And when those things get divided at such a fundamental level, it’s just hard to bridge that gap and hold things together.

BROWN: John Stonestreet is president of the Colson Center and host of the Breakpoint podcast. Thank you, John.

STONESTREET: Thank you both.

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