True Radicalization Is About To Be Unleashed In Our Nation

Reflections from my own experiences with radical transformation

The horrific murder of Charlie Kirk is having a profound and widespread impact on our nation. The responses have been varied to the extremes. People are struggling to fit the moment within their worldview

I have seen his death celebrated as a victory in a zero-sum political game. I have seen panic at the dread of the rightwing backlash. I have seen people call for that backlash. I have seen people say that it was the botched outcome of a staged event. I have seen people say that it was faked. I have seen people say it was a false flag, an accelerationist plot by governments or shadow cabals.

I have seen far more people weep, grieve, and mourn the tragic loss. Many felt it necessary to preface their remarks with disclaimers that they did not agree with all of Charlie’s views, a sad reality of our divisive times.

But the bullet that pierced the flesh of Charlie Kirk and spilled his lifeblood on the earth continues its work, cracking and shattering lies and illusions.

I have witnessed the moment of his death from several angles, committing it to memory, alongside that of Iryna Zarutska just days prior.

This is the new iconography of martyrdom. It reveals both the sacred value of contemplation, and the limitation of symbolic portrayals. The reality of lifeblood flowing freely from an unexpected wound is different from the Hollywood effects produced by blood squibs and CGI. The reality of bodies succumbing to lethal force is different from the dramatic portrayals of living actors.

One man and one woman, in the prime of youthful vigor and beauty. Neither died in an instant, but at some crucial moment of suffering, the regenerative energy capable of sustaining decades of cellular division and multiplication gave up its effort to heal and make whole, and their bodies began their return to the dust of the earth.

Death is a horror that cannot be explained. God could not explain to Adam and Eve, and they could not understand it until they witnessed it. Many of the younger generations had not witnessed the reality of such unprovoked violence before this week. Some of them have entered the cocoon of shock; others have been shaken out of passivity. Witnessing death produces transformation– metamorphosis. This transformation is radical– a return to the root.

In the radical transformation of a tree, the structure is cut down, and regrown from ground up, while the roots remain undisturbed. Humans require death and resurrection. This is the consequence of encountering the crucified Christ. The old man dies, and a new one emerges.

As for myself, I became radicalized on February 14, 2018, right around 4 pm. This was not a spiritual rebirth in the sense of a conversion, but one man died, and another took his place. This did not happen in a church, but in a hospital room. I did not encounter death, only its spectre; first, it threatened the life of our first child, whose heartbeat began to fade.

Then, I feared for the loss of my wife, taken to an operating room I was forbidden to enter. Cast into the darkness of the unknown, I cried out to God. Then, I encountered an unknown face, one that I had imagined in shadowy visions and imagined projections, but had never seen. Something that cannot be explained; the reality was utterly new.

It was the face of my newborn daughter, a combination of many familiar features, yet completely unique. As I held her in my arms, another eternity weighed on my mind. I did not know the fate of my wife. For the first time, I contemplated the overwhelming weight of caring for this innocent child all alone.

In the span of less than an hour, I had encountered the threat of two deaths, and three tragic possibilities, life without one, the other, or both.

The moment of crises subsided when I received confirmation that my wife was recovering successfully, but the radical transformation had only begun. Over the next two years, the structure of my thoughts and assumptions began to regrow, taking a very different shape. Fatherhood radicalized me in many ways.

I was outraged by discovering the subtle lies I had been fed about fatherhood. Lies that were never explicitly spoken from a pulpit, but were widespread in my Christian environment, they seeped in through the influences of television and popular culture, and spread through casual conversation.

Lies that fatherhood was a drag, that kids were gross and annoying. That it ruined your marriage, that the fun of being a dad was a consolation prize at the end of the honeymoon, something to distract you from the boredom of the same boring sex with the same boring person, or the lack thereof.

I had understood that those lies were lies, in the same way someone who has never witnessed death understands that death is bad. In other words, I didn’t understand at all. But when I did, I became furious.

Fatherhood was a revelation. Though I had worked in churches for years, it was the first time I truly understood what ministry is. When I bathed our daughter, or changed her diaper, I understood the joy with which Christ washed his disciples feet, and why he did not shy away from touching the unclean. I understood what separated the sheep from the goats, as I imagined Jesus taking on the form of an infant, identifying with the least of these. How could anyone deny food, or clothing, or shelter, or comfort to one such as these? In seeing my child, I finally saw myself as the helpless creature that God loves.

As my experience with fatherhood continued to grow, I began to understand why God called David the man after his own heart; the notoriously “bad” father who couldn’t bring himself to discipline his children, preferring to walk away from his kingdom rather than opposing his own son. I still struggle to find the balance between giving my children what is good for them, and fulfilling their childish desires.

But this joyful experience of radicalization began to hit roadblocks in our increasingly politicized world. Everywhere I looked for a path forward, I encountered messages of fear. Fear of totalitarianism on the right, climate fears on the left, eschatological fears in the church.

In each instance, the fear led to suspicion, and ultimately hatred of the opposition. It was exacerbated by the pandemic. Fear of those who don’t wear masks, hatred for those who do. Fear of being cancelled, hatred of SJW’s. Weaponized compassion, toxic empathy, and “no enemies to the right” became mantras to combat the justified violence of “mostly peaceful” protests. On every side of every debate, people were claiming the cause of Christ.

I felt compelled to do something, so I began writing an anonymous blog, trying to interject some biblical wisdom into the conspiratorial space. My goal was to inspire Christians to take certain threats more seriously, and to point those who were already convinced back to Christ as the solution. But anonymity is a parasitic creature. It hides behind the spectre of legitimized fear.

In that time of fear, my “faith” took the form of certainty in a political outcome, and a belief that good guys were working behind the scenes. After my worst political fears were realized, I became overwhelmed with the thought of caring for two small children in a Police State hell bent on impoverishing and persecuting Christians.

In the midst of a panic attack, God spoke. The Holy Spirit recounted many words of scripture, such as Jeremiah’s words to the exiles in Babylon,

“Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Marry and have sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters. Increase in number there; do not decrease.”

The message that cut through the fog was the certainty that being a father was good. Marriage was good. Life was good. These good things were transforming me into the kind of Christian I had longed to be.

But this message of hope came with a cost. Christ was asking me to speak against the spirit of fear that gripped every institution. Not by minimizing the seriousness of the threats, but by relying on the greater power and assurance of Christ’s victory.

So I decided to step out of anonymity, and speak out in my own voice. I made it my goal to speak the truth, without denying the seriousness of the political realm, or the reality of evil, but to trust the promises of The Father, to whom I am a precious child. “Little children, you are from God and have overcome them, for he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.”

I moved forward under the conviction that the fears of cancellation, of losing jobs, or suffering violence might be genuine threats for those hacking away at the roots of corporate and political power structures, but there was still enough goodwill in our culture of free speech and religious liberty that a message of hope, affirming the goodness of life posed little danger.

If I was wrong, if the affirmation of the straightforward truth of the gospel, in its fullness, was too controversial, then it was all the more crucial to speak out. I had full confidence that if speaking out something as relatively uncontroversial as the goodness in becoming a husband and father would place my life or my livelihood at risk, God and his people would provide.

But because I think things all the way through, I had contemplated the worst, including the possibility, however unlikely, of a martyr’s death.

This was not the first time I had considered that outcome, having spent my life in pursuit of advancing the kingdom. When I was a young man, single, and on fire for the Lord, the possibility of a martyr’s death had a certain romantic appeal. It is perhaps the one thing noble enough to forgo the pleasures of marriage and family. That bold image of a man alone, refusing to denounce his faith or bend the knee, shapes the image in our mind of a martyr, like Stephen, staring up in wonder at the glory of the heavens above. “For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”

Americans view martyrdom as a young man’s game. Fathers have a responsibility to provide and protect. They can’t take the frontline risks.

I never had a life worth holding on to until I became a husband and father, and I knew that clinging to it in fear and worry was the surest way to lose it.

I still struggle with the responsibility of raising children right, of knowing how to balance discipline and indulgence. But I recognized at that moment, when I first decided to speak out, that a man could easily use fatherhood as an excuse for cowardice. So many of our current problems can be laid at the feet of cowardly fathers.

I refused to let that be an option.

If it came down to a decision, it would be better for my children to lose a father they could respect, than keep a father they resent.

Five years ago, I came to the conviction that the only thing that might avert the potential disaster was a willingness for fathers to stand up, and speak the truth. I believed that free speech and the rule of law still provided a pathway to change. For the last five years, my conviction has proven right. I have suffered no consequences for writing and making videos in my own name, speaking the truth of the goodness of God. But the risk factor has changed. Fathers are not a target, but the target.

Charlie Kirk was not a political radical. Politics was not at the root of who he was. At the root, he was a Christian, who affirmed the goodness of the very same things that I became convinced were the most necessary to celebrate and support. Marriage, fatherhood, life.

As people struggle to cobble together explanations for his death, they are avoiding the simple truth.

Everything he did, he did in service to Christ, to his wife, and to his children, to his country. The beliefs he held about politics, and about family life, were all of one. Charlie Kirk was a man of integrity.

He could have found a way to work behind the scenes, to provide for his family in safety and comfort. He could have had an influence in many different ways. But he publicly and boldly went into hostile environments and spoke the truth, as a Father, a Husband, and a Christian. He saw boldness as a duty of a Father, a Husband, a Christian.

His party affiliation, policy positions, and what he said about hot-button issues are not the most important thing about his life and his witness. A man with that kind of character and integrity could have held drastically different political views, and he would still be a great man. His death would still be a tragedy. Indeed, the ideas of the left could, and would succeed– if the men and women who held those beliefs had the character and integrity of Charlie Kirk.

If there was a young leftist speaker who devoted his life to the cause he believed in for the sake of his God, to set an example for his wife and children that he loved, it would be no less a tragedy. But there are no young leftist husbands and fathers. And this reveals the reason why Charlie was hated, and targeted for death. Not just by the young man who shot him, or the people who cheered. He was targeted by spiritual forces that hated him as a Christian, a Husband, and a Father.

There are spirits at work in the world that are utterly ambivalent towards the cause of republicans and democrats, of conservatives and liberals. These spirits will aid and assist, or confuse and distract anyone to frustrate the plans they oppose.

These spirits reveled at the thought of the death and corruption of Adam and Eve, and rejoiced in the spilt blood of Abel. They seek to corrupt and tarnish the image of God in man, and they saw a particular threat in the exemplary form of Charlie Kirk.

I had not paid much attention to Charlie prior to this week. I had moved on from the political scene a long time ago; making the U-shaped journey from right to left and back again. Part of the reason was the cynicism and insincerity I encountered on both sides. Everyone tries to use you for their cause, none of them have our best interests in mind. It was only when my understanding of the gospel was reattached to the root of God’s first words in Genesis that my life began to make sense, and I could see the path forward.

Charlie, ten years younger than me, came to recognize the goodness of that life before I did, pursuing the goodness of marriage and fatherhood at an early age. He should have had decades longer to speak the truth of that message, in the fair and respectful way that he did so well. But his life was not his own. It was bought with a price; and he lived as such. Indeed, it was not Charlie who lived, but Christ who lived through him. Everything He had belonged to Christ, his organization, his family, his life - his blood. His blood is Christ’s blood, which speaks a better word than the blood of righteous Abel.

Charlie counted the cost of following Christ. He would have gladly given his life for the sake of another. My prayer is that his killer would come to know the God that Charlie served, so that the words of Joseph might echo through eternity in Charlie’s voice: “you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today.”

In her impassioned speech, Charlie’s widow Erika said that if he ever ran for office, his priority would have been to revive the American family, citing Ephesians 5:25 as one of his favorite verses:

“Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her,”

There are many ways in which Charlie’s life and accomplishments were far superior to my own. But there is one point of similarity. He spoke the truth with courage as a father, and a husband, for the sake of his wife and his children. I for one am more convinced than ever that this is my duty as a father, and the duty of all fathers who love their families.

We are not all called to martyrdom; but we are all called to offer our bodies as living sacrifices- to live a life that is not our own; to live life in the fullness of joy, of excellence, of courage. It is a life lived in service of those we love. The result of such living is metamorphosis; radical transformation, the renewal of the mind– “that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.”

Charlie sought and discerned the will of God. He found what is good, in marriage, fatherhood, and service and he lived it. He put his life on the line, accepting the cost of service. Now he has been perfected, standing before his savior.

Charlie’s death has radicalized me once again, and that radicalization will continue.

May it continue in the lives of fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, sons and daughters.

May we follow his example, not to pick up stones in anger, but to lay down our lives.

May we raise up seed for our fallen brother.

May his hope for our nation, the revival of the family, become a prophecy fulfilled.

May our transformation be radical.

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I also recorded a video including some of these thoughts. You can watch it here: