If you have to resort to violence, you’ve lost the debate. The assassination of Charlie Kirk two weeks ago was a case in point. They couldn’t defeat him at debate, so they killed him.
Charlie’s slogan, as seen on the white tent he was in when he was shot, says it all: “Prove me wrong.” Anybody who may claim he was “proved wrong” by being shot subscribes to the view that might makes right.
I once heard about an English tourist visiting China about a 100 years ago who recounted how two laborers were having a heated argument in the street. After watching and listening for several minutes, the tourist remarked that he expected the two men would begin fighting any moment, but his guide replied, “I doubt it, you see, the man who strikes first admits he’s lost the argument.”
Reformer Martin Luther said: “I will preach, speak, write the truth, but will force it on no one, for faith must be accepted willingly, and without compulsion.” Also, he said about those who light the wooden sticks to burn heretics at the stake: “If fire is the right cure for heresy, then the [stick]-burners are the most learned doctors on Earth; no need we study anymore; he that has brute force on his side may burn his adversary at the stake.”
Resorting to violence to ensure conformity is an act of tyranny. The Christian worldview condemns violence. Not that Christians have always lived up to that.
For example, in 1777, Thomas Jefferson wrote a very important act on behalf of religious freedom. It was adopted in 1786 when he was in France. It is the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom.
He basically argues that Jesus, “the holy author of our religion,” has given us the freedom to accept or reject Him. Who then is the government to try and force religious conformity? It simply produces hypocrites.
Jefferson pens, “Almighty God hath created the mind free, and … all attempts to influence it by temporal punishments, or burdens, or by civil incapacitations, tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness, and are a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, who being Lord both of body and mind, yet chose not to propagate it by coercions on either, as was in his Almighty power to do, but to extend it by its influence on reason alone.”
His argument is predicated on the notion that Jesus is divine. It is also predicated on the notion that God has given people free will. If the state tries to impose religious conformity, that involves the threat of violence.
Of course, we’ve seen in the last 200 years numerous instances of godless states, like the French Revolutionaries or the Communists, use violence to suppress religious or dissident opinions – killing millions in the process.
The late Paul Johnson notes in”“Modern Times” (1983), the 20th century totalitarian state has proved to be the greatest killer of all time. In his book, “The Quest for God” (1996), he calls these governments, like Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union, “godless constructs.”
Why allow open debate, when a bullet will do?
In the above-mentioned act, Jefferson asseverates: “Truth is great and will prevail if left to herself; that she is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error, and has nothing to fear from the conflict unless by human interposition disarmed of her natural weapons, free argument and debate; errors ceasing to be dangerous when it is permitted freely to contradict them.” [emphasis added]
“Prove me wrong,” argued Charlie Kirk. His leftist critics could not, so one of their own resorted to violence. The alleged killer wrote in a text to his trans-lover: “Why did I do it? I had enough of his hatred. Some hate can’t be negotiated out.”
So Charlie Kirk was an inveterate hater, and, therefore, he deserved to die. Tragically, this kind of thinking prevails among many young people today. They have rejected a Judeo-Christian viewpoint and have embraced meaninglessness (nihilism) as the meaning of life. And if there is no meaning, power prevails. We see the results.
What a different reaction we see in the act of the widow of Charlie, Erika Kirk, telling the world that she forgives the shooter. Trying to emulate the Savior, who said from the cross, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do,” she forgave Charlie’s assassin.
Dr. Richard Land, president emeritus of Southern Evangelical Seminary, once commented: “Americans must always reject the resort to violence in pursuit of political goals. It is literally ‘un-American’ to engage in, or resort to, violent disregard of the law. This is not a question of conservative versus liberal or Democrat versus Republican. This is right versus wrong.”