And So, The Narrative Battle Begins

Monday, September 22, 2025

For most people, a memorial service is the point where mourning ends and building a life without the lost soul begins.  But after the Charlie Kirk memorial service, the narrative battle has begun in earnest.  That fact alone is deeply troubling.  There is nothing to fight over – this was an evil act, executed by a miserable and perverse soul.  We should be able to unite around those few incontrovertible facts.  And, by and large, no one disputes those facts.  But that said people are rushing over them, trampling them even, to get to their political point.

MSNBC, unsurprisingly, has been particularly disgusting in this rush to paste their preferred narrative onto these recent and horrific events.  Their “compare-and-contrast between Erika Kirk and President Trump is so vapid as to be beneath comment.  This story is; however, deeply troubling:

The federal investigation into the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk has yet to find a link between the alleged shooter, 22-year-old Tyler Robinson, and left-wing groups on which President Donald Trump and his administration have pledged to crack down after the killing, three sources familiar with the probe told NBC News.

The story is really about the fact that there seems to be no evidence that would enable federal prosecutors to bring federal charges.  Fair enough – but in crafting this lede in this way, they want to make it look like the shooter was just a crazy.  So the guy never joined a group or went to a meeting.  It seems clear he sat at home and ingested in large quantities the stuff that pours out of such groups.  This story seeks to exonerate left-leaning ideas and thought, which is as perverse as the thinking of the shooter himself.

Both Erica Kirk and SecSate Rubio tried to cast the narrative in the right direction, with SecState just flat out preaching the gospel of Christ while Erica lived it.  The gospel is the way forward.  With their comments they ended the mourning and pointed to a good life moving forward – as is appropriate for such a setting.

But that said, what do we do about those that refuse to join us on the journey forward?  I still ponder the question I asked last Thursday, “But these people that cannot let go of their perverse understandings are like great weights that would hold us back.  How do we respond?  How do we insure that our responses do not drag us deeper into the darkness?”

William Bennett penned marvelous piece over the weekend in which he sounds remarkably like me:

Let me advance an unconventional thesis: Charlie Kirk died because we have forgotten how to hate properly. G.K. Chesterton observed that “the true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind [or next to] him.” We fight not for hatred of our enemies but love of our fellow soldiers and the ideals of our country. We have inverted this wisdom. We teach our young people to hate their opponents rather than love their own principles. We have made politics a blood sport precisely because we have drained it of transcendent meaning. When you believe in nothing greater than your own righteousness, the only thing left is to destroy those who challenge your certainty.

OK, to be fair, given our relative positions on the political commentary spectrum, it is probably me sounding like him, but the point remains.  His piece focuses primarily on the university and the inability to debate on campus by telling the story of his own son’s struggles in graduate school.  He said:

This is what we have done to our young people. We have made the cost of conviction so high that capable, principled people retreat from public engagement entirely. We have created a world where it is safer to be silent than to speak, safer to conform than to question, safer to hide than to stand. There is a certain relief in that. But it does not come without a cost.

I think the place to start to deal with those that refuse to join the journey forward is to stand firm on our convictions.  In the end, that is the essence of Christ’s ministry – He stood on the truth when all around Him denied it.  He did so to the point that it cost Him His life.  In light of that does a failing grade in some silly history class really seem so high a price?  Once you explain the circumstances to some potential employer out there, if they think it matters, you do not want to work for them anyway.

We need to remember that all their rhetoric, all their shaming, all their dominance of the airwaves does not change the simple truths that we hold dear.  We do not have to get into people’s faces, but we do not have to be silent either.

Jesus said, “You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden; nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all who are in the house.  Your light must shine before people in such a way that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven.”  That’s all we have to do – let the light that God has given us shine.  We don’t have to preach, we don’t have to “take to the streets.”  We just have to be God’s people living the lives God would have us live – without shame and without fear.