Culture Friday: Stadium-size legacy

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MYRNA BROWN, HOST: It’s Friday, September 19th. 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: Well, coming up this weekend, John, I can’t believe it’s only been just a little over a week. Tens of thousands of people are expected to show up in Phoenix for Charlie Kirk’s public memorial. A young man is in custody for his killing. The charging documents leave almost no doubt about what the motive was. The shock of this assassination has stirred grief and conspiracy theories and raw political division. John, what do you think the scale of this memorial tells us about the role of Charlie Kirk in American life, particularly among young Christians? And you deal with young Christians all the time. How do you interpret his death in light of the courage that you really try to promote among students like that?

STONESTREET: Yeah, you know, this is going to be an incredibly big event. It’s going to be an event that I think will undermine the negative narrative about this—that he was racist and homophobic and bigoted and stuff like that. I think you’re going to see an amazing diversity in the turnout.

I think that it’s part of a larger story. This was kind of a catalytic part of a story that we have been noting recently, even here and in other places where, you know, a decade ago, you might even say when Charlie Kirk started, the main religion story was the rise of the nones. And this in America was often accompanied with a great bit of baggage against Christianity and against church life. There was an awful lot of deconstruction going on. And not that that doesn’t exist.

But the most important religion news stories of the last three years is the rise of the religious, particularly among the young, particularly young men. Some people are calling this the story of re-enchantment, coming off of the disenchantment of modernism. I think that’s going to be an interesting thing to watch. And certainly Charlie’s influence played a role in that.

I think also the story of the shooter goes beyond our right versus left narrative. And I’m not saying that silly talking point that’s been said over and over, like political violence is the same on both sides—because it’s not. But I do think there is another example here of something that we’ve also talked about, where the theoretical becomes the existential, where the hypothetical—“if you believe this, then fill in the blank.”

All of these things were theoretical observations of the worldview and apologetic theorists of 15–20 years ago. And now we’re seeing a lot of this stuff come to pass. Kind of the same way that Friedrich Nietzsche in the parable The Madmantalked about all the implications of the death of God, and then says, “I’ve come too soon. This is on its way, but it’s not here yet.”

A lot of those things that Nietzsche describes as being on the way are now here. The deep-seated nihilism, the idea that everyone is a law unto themselves, is a category. And we’re now even putting language to it. There’s the “nihilistic, violent extremist,” the NVEs as we’re hearing this language, to categorize people who are now living out this extreme postmodern view.

It is tainted by critical theory: that if someone is part of the oppressor group, they’re irredeemable, and if they reach a certain point, they need to be eliminated. That certainly is reflected in the statements about motive. The deep-seated “I’m going to pursue my own happiness and my own definition of reality and let everything else and any other opinion be considered evil and harmful.”

This stuff is starting to bear fruit now. This is poisonous, extreme fruit. But we’ve also seen examples of people actually trying to live this philosophy out. And that’s what people do with philosophies that they embrace: they try to live them out. I think we’re seeing the really poisonous fruit of nihilism, postmodern despair, a critical theory mood, and several other things at work here.

BROWN: Well, as Nick said, it is hard to believe that we were right here one week ago, trying to gather our thoughts as we were coming to terms with Charlie Kirk’s assassination. One of the things you said, John: civilizations cannot hold without common definitions of life and value and truth. Well, I want to follow up on that, because I heard something that goes right to what you said.

Now, this is someone with very different definitions. Have a listen.

PREACHER: Seeing the flags of the United States of America at half staff calling this nation to honor and venerate a man who was an unapologetic racist and spent all of his life sowing seeds of division and hate into this land {applause} I am sorry, but there’s no where in Bible where we are taught to honor evil. And how you die does not redeem how you lived. You do not become a hero in your death when you were a weapon of the enemy in your life.

Well, I have not been able to identify that man. What I can tell you is he delivered that message from a church pulpit, and 4.9 million people have viewed it on social media.

Now I want you to listen to this message recorded by a random TikTok user.

WOMAN: Anybody, especially black people that are saying Charlie Kirk was racist and was not for black people and did not know black people, I am 100% convinced that you have never sat through a full debate of his or watched any of his debates with a sound understanding. Black people are always so quick to want to be a victim of a situation that they can’t thrive. And this was one of the things Charlie Kirk was exposing to black people. We have such a cap on us because we think we’re limited because we’re black or because we’re women and because we think our ancestors, whatever they went through, it’s still impacting us today. But we are not there anymore.

Well, that video has about 22,000 views. Doing the math on this—actually Nick did the math.

EICHER: So it’s my fault if we’re wrong!

BROWN: That’s less than one-half of 1% of the views. So John, how should we as Christians respond to nonbelievers who may be confused by these two different portrayals of Charlie Kirk, by people who both claim to be offering a Christian view?

STONESTREET: You know, I guess what encourages me is less the comparison between these two videos—although that’s super interesting. But I’m one of the many that have been down this rabbit hole almost nonstop for the last week. I’ve seen far more Charlie Kirk videos after his death than I ever saw before his death, even knowing who he was and appreciating many of the things he was trying to do, most of the things he was trying to do.

And what I am seeing overwhelmingly is a response like, “I went looking for the hate and the bigotry, and I didn’t find it.” But none of this means that we have to say that Charlie Kirk said everything perfectly. And especially when you do the sort of thing he did, you’re going to say things that are going to be easily clippable and at times even just unwise. I think there are some of those things floating around. Everything changes a lot more when they’re put in context.

He was doing something that was really difficult, but there was no other way to do what he was trying to do without doing it this way, if that makes sense. You take that risk. He was no dummy. He calculated that risk.

I was actually just talking about this with a friend I was having lunch with, who knew Charlie personally. He was talking about how he would have never wanted the Plexiglas. He would have never wanted the hyper-editing—that’s another way of saying the physical security is the Plexiglas; the virtual security is the high editing and making sure everything is just perfect—because it would have undermined the sort of thing he was trying to accomplish.

The conversations about security and whether it was wise, and like, well yeah, if he wanted the security they said he should have, then it would have been different, but that would have kept him from having the event he wanted to have and the connection that he wanted to have. So I appreciate that, and I think there needs to be an incredible amount of respect for trying to make that attempt.

Many people have noted—Dr. Mohler noted this, I think many others—that he got a lot better at it as he went along. I think he got a lot better at seeing the person that’s right in front of him. He got a lot better at digging below the idea that the person was espousing, understanding that it came from somewhere.

So I appreciate that. And I guess, honestly, there’s a group of people that are more right now among the most guilty of this kind of narrative imposing and refusal to see other things. And that is center-left Christians who assumed he was wrong going into it, believed the narrative, particularly because of his association with the president.

It’s always amazing to me when you see, like, okay, so he was not allowed to be wrong about that. But then there is a complete dismissal of other believers who somehow it’s okay that they don’t believe in the inerrancy of Scripture, or the exclusivity of Christ, or that marriage is between a man and woman. The selective outrage to me is really, really striking.

I’m not saying that Charlie Kirk was above critique. He wasn’t. He took plenty of it when he was alive. He’s taken more of it now. But I think the good-faith narrative is winning on this, and part of that is because of the strategy that he employed. He put so much of this out there. You don’t have to wonder.

If you’re sitting here wondering, “What did he believe? Did he really have these sorts of views? Was he really hateful?”—the good news is you can go find out everything you need to know right now, all for yourself. And I’d encourage you to do that.

BROWN: But here’s the thing, people: we are a sound bite culture, and we don’t want to do the work of listening to the whole thing. Because I almost fell into that. I almost fell into that. You know, we had some letters to the editor, and there was that one sentence about black women—you know …

STONESTREET: Well, listen, and I get it. Some of those things are really hard to understand out of context. And a few of them—even in context—are hard to understand, right? There’s got to be a good-faith effort, and there’s not.

I appreciate those people who are trying to promote the good-faith effort. And you will influence many, Myrna, in your own willingness and ability to go and check things out for yourself and come up with a conclusion that acknowledges that the guy’s not perfect, and yet he’s certainly not the person he’s being portrayed to be by many who want to see his legacy lost.

EICHER: John, I want to ask you a personal question, because you do appear in public. I know you don’t travel with burly guys with automatic weapons. You ever worry?

STONESTREET: I don’t really worry. I haven’t really worried. I don’t think I’m that big of a deal. I certainly get hate mail and things like that, but that’s all kind of part of the gig.

I tell you, the people who were really scared, and it was almost to a person, it was wives. There were a lot of scared wives this week. There was a lot of heartbreak for Erica. I mean, some of those images in the days after, of Charlie with his little girl—I got three daughters, man, that breaks your heart.

And one in particular—I can’t even explain this—but some of my best memories are when my daughters, when they were really little, they had those infinitely pliable knees that never got tired. They could always crouch down. And when you would tell them something, and they were studied and locked in on it, at two or three, and you just realize their minds are being captivated.

There’s one image in particular of Charlie and his little girl on the beach when she’s crouched down like that. I don’t know—those are my memories with my daughter, and maybe that was the connection. It’s a sense of loss, and I think a lot of wives were fearful. But no, not personally.

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