Welcome to Breakpoint, a daily look at an ever-changing culture through the lens of unchanging truth for the Colson Center on John Stone Street. Unsurprisingly, on September the 11th, 2001, I wept. I also wept, unexpectedly, on september eleventh, twenty eleven. Perhaps it was delayed grief, but mostly it was delayed realization. sitting that Sunday morning with my young daughters, who were only six, four, and two at the time, it struck me just how differently their world was from the one that I wanted for them.
I had that same sense strike me this week, on september tenth, The assassination of Charlie Kirk seems to mark a new era, a world that no one wants, but may very well be here anyway. Calling the murder a tragedy for all of us, UK comedian and commentator Constantin Kissen wrote this, quote, I hope I'm wrong, but tonight feels like some sort of invisible line has been crossed. that we didn't even know was there. To murder a young father simply for doing debates and mobilizing young people to vote for a party that represents half of America? That's something else.
Charlie's death is a tragedy for his wife, his children, and his family. I don't pray often, he says, but I am praying for them to night. but I fear his murder will be a tragedy for all of us in ways we will only understand as time unfolds. I hope I'm wrong. I fear I'm not.
End quote.
Well Kisson is not wrong that lines have been crossed. though the Christian must not fear. We must, however, squarely face the sober realities of this cultural moment. Kirk's murder followed another this week in Charlotte of a young woman from Ukraine riding a public train. Irina Zarutska was stabbed by a man who should have been in prison, or at least institutionalized.
And she was then left to die by people too engrossed in their screens to notice. or too jaded to care. Together, these atrocities reveal realities about our culture and how it shaped those within it that many of us will find unthinkable. but we'd better think about it anyway. Sirutska's killer is a terrible example of the mental and social brokenness that permeates modern life.
The bystanders who did not come to her defense or to her aid are, like the social media commenters and media personalities who callously commented on Kirk's assassination, examples of a rabid and pervasive dehumanization that has infected the Western world. In a recent breakpoint commentary released prior to the atrocities of this week, Abdou Murray argued that this, and I quote, post-truth world that elevates feelings and preferences above facts and truth has collapsed the distinction between a person's ideas and their identity. And so the social erasure of cancel culture has calcified. into something darker. At something darker, he went on to argue, is assassination culture.
He then continued, and I quote again, unmoored from that objective standard for human value, We've made gods of ourselves, and therefore justify eradicating any who dare to have any other gods before us. And that's precisely what Oz Guinness warned about in the new film Truth Rising: that the West has squandered a unique heritage. A civilization that was built upon the ideal of human dignity with a mixed and troubled history of working out that ideal has now replaced the ideal with something completely different. But racialized, sexualized, politicized conceptions of human dignity Those only produce victims. George Orwell is often credited as saying, in a time of deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.
Charlie Kirk was a committed truth teller, with a remarkable gift for exposing and answering deceit. and yet even as he did that he treated the deceived with the dignity they had as image bearers of their Creator recognizing that they too were victims of their own bad ideas.
Now there's a cost to telling the truth. Our Lord told us to count that cost. If Kisson is indeed correct, that cost is higher than we may have imagined. This is indeed a civilizational moment. But it's to this moment that we've been called as God's people, and as His people we know that this moment is not some fatalistic inevitability.
nor does it determine or somehow redefine the story of which we're a part. In a video that's now circulating on social media again, Charlie is asked why he went on campuses to talk with and try to persuade those who disagree with him. Charlie responded, quote, because when people stop talking, that's when violence happens. It was a prophetic moment, but Kirk also demonstrated that we need not accept its inevitability. He showed that the conversation can be had.
He showed that it must be had. He showed that the truth can still win hearts and minds and that lies can still be opposed and that it can all be done with a big smile. It takes courage to tell the truth, and to, as Paul wrote, regard no one from a worldly point of view. As Murray wrote, only the ancient biblical truth about what it means to be human can heal our contemporary sickness. then it can be healed.
That's not wishful thinking. That's the hope that Christ secured for us all in His death and resurrection. as the banner on the Turning Point USA website proclaimed Charley Kirk has been received into the merciful hands of our loving Saviour. who suffered and died for Charley. For the Colson Center.
on John Stone Street with Breakpoint. For a version of this commentary that you can download, print out, and share with others, or to receive these daily commentaries in your email inbox, go to breakpoint.org.
