Some Christians believe that Charlie Kirk was a martyr, and that his words were actually a martyr. We ll respond to that today and look at what the Bible says about martyrs. Also, Pope Leo has some choice words about those who are pro-death penalty while also being pro-life. Surprise, surprise, surprise!
00:01:20.820And unfortunately, she blocked me on social media.
00:01:25.860I never even talked to her directly or talked badly about her, but have talked about our differences and disagreements.
00:01:31.960And so, when many of you sent me this clip about Charlie Kirk and about what some people call Christian nationalism and wanted me to respond, I'm happy to do so.
00:01:44.400I'm not trying to aggravate the differences that we already have or any, like, anger that may already be there.
00:01:54.820Like, I don't feel angry, but I continue to disagree with her perspective and the way she approaches topics like this.
00:02:02.360But I also wasn't necessarily surprised about how this conversation went down.
00:02:07.500Their episode was titled Neither Blue Nor Red, Being a Disciple in a Culture War.
00:02:12.780And they were talking about Charlie's death.
00:02:15.660And I just want to say, like, this is a clip that they posted on social media.
00:02:19.480This is not me extracting something, intentionally decontextualizing anything.
00:02:24.260This is a clip that they themselves posted.
00:02:54.580But it's also, I hear other things alongside that that don't give martyr.
00:02:58.820OK. So, he didn't give martyr in some of the things he said.
00:03:03.840And I will say that there is another part of that clip.
00:03:05.840You can go look at it on social media.
00:03:07.480We can't play the entirety of it on this podcast.
00:03:10.980But we didn't take in out anything that was relevant.
00:03:15.080The other part was mostly about Christian nationalism.
00:03:17.960So, there's a few things I would say to that.
00:03:20.480Yes, Charlie is going to seem to some people harsh because of how unwaveringly clear he was.
00:03:27.700When it comes to things like abortion, I know she said she appreciated his stance.
00:03:31.920But when Roe was overturned, when the Dobbs decision was published, I remember a lot of people were asking Jackie Hill Perry to comment on that and to say something about that.
00:03:42.080And she made a joke about it when people asked her, you know, what do you think about Roe?
00:03:48.660And I believe that she believes in the sanctity of unborn life, of course, as a Christian.
00:03:53.500But she has also claimed that that is a very nuanced topic.
00:03:56.080So, that tells me a lot about how she approaches issues that is very different from how Charlie approached issues, how I approach issues, that might lead to that kind of gap in understanding there or any kind of brashness that she might perceive from Charlie, which was actually just strength and clarity.
00:04:17.600But I want to get to the bigger point here, which is really important.
00:04:24.120She says that other things that he said didn't give martyr.
00:04:27.900And I take issue with how that is phrased because that's such a, like, a flippant way to be talking about the assassination of a brother in Christ.
00:04:36.560But here is the first question I would ask, and that is, what other things?
00:04:44.460If we're talking about whether a brother was martyred or not, like, I want to know specifically what were the things that he said that weren't, quote, unquote, giving martyrdom.
00:04:54.120And then we have to get into what is actually a martyr.
00:04:58.900What does the Bible say that a martyr is?
00:05:02.120When we look at the etymology of martyrdom and that word, what does it actually mean?
00:05:09.260Is a martyr someone who only says things we agree with?
00:05:12.440Is a martyr someone who never says things that are offensive?
00:05:16.620Is a martyr someone that has to be perfect and totally sinless?
00:06:23.060So, knowing these things and looking into not only this definition, but the words into the definition, in the definition, what is a martyr?
00:06:31.440A person who endures death because they affirmed the truth of Christianity.
00:06:36.060Someone who is placed on the witness stand and made to testify to the truth of the gospel and then executed for doing so.
00:06:44.420Now when we look at this definition, what is not the definition of a martyr?
00:06:48.220What is not the definition of a martyr is someone who always agrees with us.
00:07:08.640Not when we look at the original root of the word and also not when we look at scripture.
00:07:14.020So let's look at some martyrs in scripture.
00:07:16.140Let's look at John the Baptist and let's look at Stephen.
00:07:18.840Let's look at their words, their attitude, people's response to them, and then weigh whether or not they were a martyr.
00:07:26.080Either by this podcast definition of what a martyr is and the actual definition of what a martyr is.
00:07:32.580But first, let me remind you guys, Share the Arrows is coming up.
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00:10:13.060And now Herod, the ruler at the time, imprisoned John the Baptist, and not primarily or explicitly for preaching the gospel, but because John was calling out Herod's sin of marrying his own brother's wife, Herodias, while his brother, Philip, was still alive.
00:10:28.760And Herodias, this incestuous woman, convinced her daughter to seduce Herod.
00:10:38.420And convinced Herod to behead John the Baptist.
00:10:41.500Herodias didn't like being called out for her sin, so she exploited her daughter sexually in order to seduce her husband to execute John the Baptist.
00:12:06.540And Stephen, full of grace and power, was doing great wonders and signs among the people.
00:12:10.700Many religious people rose up and disputed with Stephen, but they could not withstand the wisdom and the spirit with which he was speaking.
00:12:17.680And they stirred up the people and the elders and the scribes, and they came upon him and seized him and brought him before the council.
00:12:24.640And they set up false witnesses who said, this man never ceases to speak words against the holy place and the law.
00:12:30.420And then they also noticed, this is verse 15, that his face was like that of an angel.
00:12:35.400I always just think that's an interesting part.
00:12:37.880I'm not trying to directly compare that with anyone.
00:12:40.420I just think that that's interesting that he was so calm in the face of these accusations.
00:12:45.980So the high priest at the time asked Stephen to defend himself.
00:12:49.520And then Stephen becomes a witness, testifying to the truth that he knows, the truth of the gospel.
00:12:55.800And in so doing, he decides to this Jewish audience to go all the way back to Abraham.
00:13:00.680He goes through the history of the Jewish people, what God had done for them and how the Jewish people in general rebelled.
00:13:07.160Then he says this to these Jewish leaders in the audience who are chomping at the bit to call him a blasphemer.
00:13:13.540He says, you stiff-necked people, uncircumcised in heart and ears.
00:13:18.200Now, that would be a big deal to say, since circumcision was a sign of the Jewish people, of their set-apartness, of their holiness.
00:13:25.340And yet he says, basically, you might be circumcised in that way, but you're uncircumcised in heart and ears.
00:13:31.320You always resist the Holy Spirit, as your fathers did.
00:14:06.300But they cried out with a loud voice and stopped their ears and rushed together at him.
00:14:11.300And then Stephen says, with his dying breath, do not hold this sin against them.
00:14:17.660Now, I'm not even making a direct comparison here.
00:14:21.960I'm not saying that Charlie was saying these exact words when he died.
00:14:26.240I'm not saying that Charlie is the exact same as John the Baptist.
00:14:29.420But I'm looking at the principle of martyrdom here.
00:14:32.480We have people who today might be criticized for saying things that were considered offensive, might have been criticized for their tone.
00:14:40.420You have some people, I'm not even saying the people in this podcast that we're responding to, but I've seen similar sentiments in other places where people are like, well, you know, he was a little harsh.
00:14:49.800Well, he said something that was kind of racially insensitive.
00:14:52.280And I could just see those people back then when Stephen was martyred being like, well, he didn't have to call him a stiff-necked people.
00:15:02.960He could have been a little bit nicer.
00:15:04.880He could have been a little bit, I don't know, more winsome, more persuasive.
00:15:09.660John the Baptist didn't have to go after his marriage.
00:15:12.280Which, I mean, really, like if you're going to preach the gospel, at least be nice about, like you could see.
00:15:18.080And again, I'm not saying that this conversation we're responding to is saying exactly that.
00:15:22.580But I just want to speak to a lot of the sentiment that I've seen out there of people saying, well, Charlie's not a martyr because, you know, whatever he said that we didn't like.
00:15:32.000And I just wonder if you would have had the same response to these people, the martyrs of the Bible.
00:15:39.280Maybe if they had just talked more about love.
00:15:41.520Maybe if they had just never gotten into these controversial issues, then maybe they wouldn't have been killed.
00:15:46.980And yet Stephen is described as full of grace and power.
00:15:49.940Jesus is described in John 1 as full of grace and truth.
00:15:52.640These are descriptors that we would want.
00:15:54.540Think about being called full of grace.
00:15:59.120And yet these people were completely unwavering in the truth.
00:16:04.240And John the Baptist and Stephen completely unabashed in calling out sin.
00:16:09.720I think there are so many lessons for us to learn there.
00:16:13.220But again, going back to what a martyr is not.
00:16:16.600A martyr is not someone who's perfect.
00:16:18.380He's not someone who never talks about politics.
00:16:20.300He's not someone who never offends you.
00:16:23.900Stephen and John the Baptist may have said a lot of things that were offensive.
00:16:27.280They probably said things that were true and untrue.
00:16:30.320But they were killed because they spoke the truth and they called out sin and people didn't like it.
00:16:34.940Charlie wasn't killed because he called Kamala Harris an idiot.
00:16:39.560He wasn't killed because he said that Joy Reid didn't have the brainpower to get the job that she has.
00:16:46.160And by the way, I think Jesus has much harsher words for people like Kamala Harris and Joy Reid.
00:16:51.060For other reasons, for the state of their heart and for the evil that they perpetuate and promote.
00:16:57.300Far more offensive seeming things than that.
00:17:01.340Charlie wasn't killed because he criticized DEI.
00:17:04.020He wasn't killed because he liked Trump.
00:17:06.720Charlie was killed essentially for repeating what the Bible has to say about gender and marriage, sex, and most of all, the gospel.
00:17:15.540And I just want to say that if that happened to anyone that I disagree with on race and social justice and things like that, but they're Christians, they're preaching the gospel, they're saying what is true about gender and sexuality and marriage, and they got killed in the midst of doing that, I would not be quibbling on a podcast three weeks later about whether or not they're martyred.
00:17:43.140It's not what you do to the body of Christ.
00:17:45.100It's not what you do as a human being.
00:17:47.740And I just want to say, too, like, this is the last point that I want to make on this, because I got some messages from people saying, well, you know, at least they're not celebrating.
00:17:57.800At least they, in this podcast conversation, said, you know, we shouldn't be celebrating the death of an image bearer of God.
00:18:30.880That is bare minimum compassion that we expect from even non-believers, okay?
00:18:37.900Like, that's not power of the Holy Spirit grace, okay?
00:18:42.680That is, like, because we have all been given the common grace of being human, that we can access not being absolute monsters by cheering on someone's death.
00:18:52.520So you don't get an attaboy from me for not cheering on the slaughter of a human being.
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00:20:36.520You know, another thing I was thinking about after I saw that clip, and I do think, like, all three people in there, I mean, Justin Giboney has been on my show before.
00:20:46.480He's the head of the AN campaign, which, like, I do believe exists to make Christians vote Democrat.
00:20:51.800I just do, and to make them less convicted in their, you know, in their conservative perspectives on politics.
00:21:01.100But I did appreciate him being willing to come on, and I do think that in a lot of ways, like, I do think that they really mean well.
00:21:09.480But I do wonder, after George Floyd died, and I hate to even make this comparison, but as we're about to get into, this comparison is being made.
00:21:18.700After George Floyd died, if I had come on here three weeks later and be like, you know what, just, like, in the name of nuance, you need to understand why I don't care about that death as much as, like, the rest of you guys do.
00:21:30.120Because that's, in other parts of this podcast, this is what they're saying, like, you need to understand, like, why we didn't relate to his death as much as, you know, some of you white conservatives out there are doing.
00:21:45.520And if someone had three weeks after George Floyd died said, okay, y'all just need to understand that, like, I don't care about this as much, and I don't think this is as big of a deal, because I didn't like him.
00:21:56.780And let me just remind you, three weeks after his death, of what a horrible person he was, and that you guys don't need to be lionizing him in any way.
00:22:05.300And by the way, like, George Floyd was actually a horrible person, but no one was even willing to say anything negative about George Floyd for at least a year after he died for fear of backlash and just to try to be sensitive to the situation.
00:22:19.400I think there was a lot more sensitivity when George Floyd, a criminal, died than when Charlie Kirk was assassinated for saying things true.
00:22:30.900When Charlie Kirk is assassinated for saying true things, rather, there's all of a sudden there's this nuance.
00:22:36.880Well, we just need to really talk about how he was possibly a racist.
00:22:40.120We need to really talk about, like, all the things he possibly did wrong.
00:22:43.500But if you tried to add nuance or another layer to the conversation in the immediate aftermath of what happened to George Floyd, even saying things as I did, which got me so much pushback at the time,
00:22:55.420oh, guys, like, I don't think that we should be, like, looting.
00:22:59.140Like, I don't think that we should be burning down cities and essentially punishing people who did nothing wrong because of the actions of a police officer over there.
00:23:18.700And I even, like, tried to temper that as much as I possibly could to be as sensitive to the situation as much as I possibly could at the time and still so much blowback.
00:23:28.580And yet, after a father of two gets brutally murdered by someone who hated him because of the true things he said,
00:23:37.020oh, let's just talk about all of the things that offended us, that Charlie Crick said, that weren't giving martyr.
00:25:05.620For many on the left, Floyd's asphyxiation turned a flawed and desperate man into a Christ figure, someone who bore the weight of the world's failings and is so doing clear to path to fix them, he wrote.
00:25:16.460And, of course, that was true at the time.
00:25:20.740But then he says the right is doing the same thing, that it's a mirror image of what happened with George Floyd.
00:25:25.140He said the right is using Charlie Kirk's name to advance illiberal aims and silence opponents.
00:25:29.580He uses the example of Irina Zarutska, the woman—this was right before Charlie was murdered.
00:25:34.800I thought that was going to be the saddest thing I talked about that week.
00:25:38.220And then, of course, Charlie was assassinated right after.
00:25:40.400She was the woman who was brutally murdered on a train in Charlotte, North Carolina, by a career criminal.
00:25:47.600And he said that we're using that, that we were looking for a martyr.
00:25:51.800We were ready to position Zarutska as a martyr, but then Charlie Kirk's murder overshadowed her story.
00:25:56.580He refers to the efforts to honor Charlie Kirk as canonization.
00:26:00.200For example, Trump ordering flags to be lowered at half-staff.
00:26:04.500Some Andrew Colvitt referring to the bullet not leaving Charlie's body and killing someone else as a miracle.
00:26:09.340He also points out a difference between today and 2020, and that back then, it was only social media mobs calling to cancel George Floyd detractors.
00:26:17.200But recently, figures like J.D. Vance and Representative Randy Fine, Brendan Carr, the Trump-appointed chair of the FCC,
00:26:24.540have bolstered support for reporting and firing people who have celebrated Charlie Kirk's death.
00:26:28.300He concluded saying today, like five years ago, a controversial man has been transformed overnight into a one-dimensional state,
00:26:34.240marshalled in a culture war that precludes measured thought.
00:26:38.100Once again, Americans are being asked to genuflect before an idol.
00:26:43.400He says, Kirk has been reduced to slogans and half-truths that obscure the real tragedy of his death.
00:26:48.320But if Americans are to learn anything valuable from the deceased, both sides will need to find the courage to reject such opportunism.
00:26:56.980There are many problems, of course, with this line of thinking.
00:27:01.240I can appreciate his, you know, efforts to be fair.
00:27:05.740However, when you both side something, you end up minimizing the real objective differences between good and evil.
00:27:12.980And that, of course, is what is going on here.
00:27:15.960You've got on one side, you've got George Floyd, who actually was a career criminal.
00:27:20.780I'm not saying that if he that if he had been murdered, that that murder was justified.
00:27:27.520But when you're talking about someone that shouldn't be lionized, that shouldn't be canonized as a saint.
00:27:33.480I mean, he was arrested multiple times for drug possession.
00:27:36.340He was arrested in 2007 for aggravated robbery with a deadly weapon, a home invasion.
00:27:42.780He allegedly held his pregnant girlfriend at gunpoint and pointed the gun directly at her unborn child in her womb.
00:27:51.820He had multiple other arrests from 1997 to 2019.
00:27:57.240And, of course, there is debate about how he actually died.
00:28:00.760He had fatal levels of fentanyl in his system.
00:28:03.980He was already saying mama, mama before he died.
00:28:07.200It's actually also reported that that was the nickname that he gave to his girlfriend and was not actually calling out for his mother.
00:28:13.900Also, when you look at other angles of how George Floyd died, it doesn't look like the police officer was leaning on his neck, but was actually leaning on his back.
00:28:23.740And so there is actually much debate about how George Floyd died.
00:28:27.260Now, you can still say, even knowing those things, that you think that he was mistreated.
00:28:32.720You can even try to deduce that he was being mistreated because of the color of his skin.
00:28:36.780But we don't actually have any evidence of that.
00:28:38.760Like, we don't have any evidence that George Floyd was mistreated based on the color of his skin or that there was some racism that was at play in this situation.
00:28:49.680We can still acknowledge the tragedy that someone died, the tragedy in a lot of ways of his life.
00:28:56.200But it wasn't his skin color that put him in that particular situation as far as we know.
00:29:02.520And yet it was immediately assumed what the motive was.
00:29:05.600And then that motive was assigned not only to Derek Chauvin, but to police in general, and then to white people in general, and then to Trump voters in general, and then to evangelicals in general, like with no connection whatsoever.
00:29:19.940And all of these corporations and these institutions and these churches all bowed down at the altar of BLM, posted the black square, repeated the BLM mantras.
00:29:30.560Because no one dared criticize the movement for a long time.
00:30:23.760We saw violence and we saw chaos and we saw many Christians excusing that violence and chaos in the wake of George Floyd's death based on a completely unproven narrative that systemic racism caused his unfair death.
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00:33:34.860And the aftermath of George Floyd dying when he was almost overdosing or perhaps did overdose on fentanyl.
00:33:43.220And Charlie Kirk being assassinated, supposedly by some kind of pro-trans, anti-fascist left-wing activist, as he just finished arguing for the authority and the sufficiency of scripture.
00:33:59.640Not only are the crimes different, the aftermath is different.
00:34:23.060Another thing that I heard in that podcast earlier was, oh, I saw these people in my timeline on social media cheering when Charlie Kirk died.
00:34:33.220And, you know, I had to tell people, let's not cheer.
00:34:35.240I'm like, I've never had to tell my audience not to cheer when someone they disagrees with dies.
00:34:40.600Like, I've never had to chastise them in that way.
00:34:42.760When Ruth Bader Ginsburg died, I and a bunch of other conservatives said, you know, that was a monumental life and, like, may God be with her family.
00:34:54.420That's what you say when someone dies who you didn't agree with.
00:34:58.500And, you know, maybe you pray for their family, but you don't quibble about whether or not you felt like he was an offensive racist.
00:35:08.720But that's what we see from the left versus the right.
00:35:11.660We see a bunch of chaos and division and violence from the left when their guy dies.
00:35:18.360And then when our legitimate, like, hero in a lot of ways dies, you see people preaching the gospel, believing the gospel, getting baptized.
00:35:27.060My DMs are filled with people who are saying, I reconciled with my dad.
00:35:49.240I'm no longer connected to that person because of their reaction or, like, what they, they weren't sufficient and, like, denouncing their white privilege.
00:36:03.960Pastor Virgil Walker of G3 Ministries, he's been on this show as well.
00:36:07.880He wrote a good article for Blaze Media just contrasting the reaction to George Floyd versus Charlie Kirk.
00:36:16.100And he said, you know, Kirk's death was met with prayer and gospel proclamation, and it reflects the spirit of God.
00:36:21.280While riots after George Floyd's death reflect a destructive spirit of rage masquerading as justice, and that is absolutely true, let us not forget that there were people who were murdered in the wake of George Floyd.
00:36:32.480Antonio Mays, David Dorn, Sequoia Turner, those were all Americans who happened to be black who were murdered by BLM rioters who were apparently, supposedly, trying to promote justice for black people.
00:36:47.620The secular narrative of justice that justified looting, arson, and autonomous zones as expressions of the oppressed, that's what we see from the left from a Christian perspective, this exposes the folly of worldly ideologies that reject biblical justice, Virgil Walker says.
00:37:01.260The same voices behind the riots called for defunding the police, and what did that bring?
00:37:10.580We had Michael Brown, of course, we had Kenosha, Jacob Blake, that ignited nights of arson and looting culminating in chaos that left the city smoldering.
00:37:20.720The reaction to Charlie's death reflected everything that he stood for.
00:37:56.960But when we look at the fruit of the ideologies of both sides, we see the reactions and responses to, like, two very different people in two very different situations.
00:38:08.640We see that there is a real underlying difference.
00:38:12.760And, like, there is a different standard for human decency on the left and the right.
00:38:16.660And, again, like, I just don't understand the so-called moderate and nuanced position of, yeah, it was bad that he was murdered, but he also is kind of racist.
00:38:25.220That doesn't make you a decent person.
00:38:27.240That's really, really scummy and really calloused.
00:38:30.960So, again, no congratulations from me.
00:38:33.400I think that that shows that there's not, like, a whole lot of moral and theological and, like, intellectual clarity when it comes to the loss of life like this and what I believe is true martyrdom.