There is no such thing as "holy deception"

 

There exists a range of views among Christians on the sin of false witness so I want to be specific in this post.  I don't mean to attack people for "white lies," though there is not a blanket exception in the Orthodox faith for such.  I also don't mean to discuss here people who lie because they are weak.  I'd like to think we all struggle with this at times, but perhaps I'm the only one.

What I'm discussing is a very specific phenomenon, mostly spread on the internet, but which I've observed in real life.  The concept that there are times, in order to protect the faith or the Church (or, more accurately, one's preferred view of the faith or the Church), that it is actually virtuous to lie to people.  

I've seen this most notably in the case of those who favor reception by baptism over reception by chrismation in the case of previously baptized converts.  Not universally, but there are some who actually instruct such people to lie to their priest or bishop so that the candidate, not the clergy, will have the final say in how the candidate is received.  This is posited as some sort of opposition to evil and preservation of the truth, rather than what it is -- open rebellion against the authorities the Church has placed over the candidate.

There are other examples, but the example is not what is important -- I offer it only to highlight what I'm discussing.  The principle is the issue, and the principle is simply this -- the Scriptures and the Holy Fathers teach us to be honest in all we say and do.  Jesus has harsh words for people who are not honest:

You are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father you want to do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own resources, for he is a liar and the father of it. (John 8:44).

Solomon calls lying "an abomination to the Lord." One of the Ten Commandments warns us against bearing false witness.  This ought to be uncontroversial.  And yet for some reason it is not.

Guard your soul.  One who lies so reflexively will eventually ask you to lie too.  There will be something in you that knows this is not right, whether you are repeating the lies or being asked to create new ones.  The truth will be repackaged as hateful attacks.  You will be asked to defend this gaslighting rather than to call the liar to repent.

Again, this is not to condemn liars writ large, for we are all liars.  Go to confession.  Receive absolution.  But always keep things in proper order and be watchful.  "Holy deception" is no virtue.  It is no less than prelest to consider one's self such a mark of holiness that one's lies become virtuous, and the refutation of those lies sinful. As we will sing in a few short weeks, "beware therefore O my soul, do not be weighed down with sleep, lest you be given up to death and shut out from the Kingdom.  But rouse thyself crying, 'Holy, Holy, Holy art Thou O Lord.'"

More Graceless People

 

Keith Olbermann, the former Sports Center announcer turned MSNBC icon turned grumpy old man/town drunk, has made headlines.  Again.  After legendary coach Lou Holtz died, Olbermann called him a "scumbag."

Holtz's crime?  He disagreed with Olbermann about politics.

I won't belabor this, because it really isn't healthy for us to dwell on such low rent behavior.  I do want to point out, again, we can choose to be better than this. If your politics is more important to you than common decency, then you are a slave to your politics and you should repent and beg God's mercy and forgiveness. Put simply, the "scumbag" in this situation isn't Lou Holtz.

I don't expect someone with no religious training to speak of and no interest in being kind or fair to others to understand that.  The rest of us can tune out when he speaks, though.  And we should.  We used to be a graceful people.  We should try to recover that.

"Resisting" the lure of Orthodoxy? Try authenticity.

 

The more I read "objections" (or in this case, "resistance") to the Orthodox faith, the more I come to realize that the Protestant framework is very tightly bound.  By which I mean, writ large, Protestantism only makes sense if there are innate presuppositions that are not questioned.

An article making the rounds right now is a good example of this.  Written by Jonathan Clark for "By Faith" magazine, it is entitled "Resisting the Lure of Catholicism and Orthodoxy."

I cannot, and will not attempt to, speak about how accurate or inaccurate his views on Catholicism are.  The fact that he dumps us together with them is enough to give me pause.  But as to Orthodoxy, he mixes some of the same old tropes with some fresh new ones, but still begs the same old questions.

Interestingly, he admits: "One student told me, 'It’s real. What they are doing is the stuff that matters, and the smoke machines at other churches just don’t compare.'"

The student told him what it was that attracted him to the Catholic or Orthodox Church (Clark doesn't specify which the student was referencing).  Clark begins his reductionism by separating the attraction into two components -- what Clark calls the "aura" (or "smells and bells") and the "lore" (history).  Having artificially set up his students' attraction to more historic traditions, Clark then pooh poohs the value of both.

When confronted with students interested in Catholicism or Orthodoxy, Clark says he draws them back to Scripture and explains how each tradition supposedly contradicts what the Scriptures say.  And this is precisely the problem. First, he takes it as a given that his view on Scripture is correct.  As evidence of the errors of Catholicism and Orthodoxy, he offers "justification by faith alone, Real Presence, the authority of Scripture, Mariology, and the adoration of the saints."  He concludes "every time, students listen, but I can tell they remain unconvinced."

Well, is it any wonder if it is presented that way?  "Justification by faith alone" is a Protestant construct.  We in the Orthodox Church do not believe we are "justified" (as Protestants mean that term) by anything other than grace, or through anything other than faith.  We explain that patiently to our catechumens.  The problem is, Clark's formulation leaves no place for good works, and that is simply not a Christian, or a Scriptural, position.

I've said before, every Protestant worth his salt knows Ephesians 2:8-9 by heart:

For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast. 

We agree!  No doubt about it, we are saved by grace, through faith.  Neither grace nor faith is based on our works, but they are gifts from God.  No problem so far.

So what is the problem?  Nobody ever wants to talk about verse 10:

For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.

So we are saved by grace, through faith, and for good works.  And for the Orthodox, and I'd wager the Catholics too, this means salvation starts today.  Salvation isn't something we hope for when we die.  It begins right now.  It begins in baptism.  It begins in chrismation.  It is strengthened and fed in the Eucharist, and it is restored in absolution.  We're not sacramental in order to give an "aura" of piety.  We are sacramental and pious because the sacraments are the very things of life itself!  We don't do good works to "earn" salvation.  We do good works because salvation itself is a life of good works.  We are saved precisely for that purpose.  So when we are justified by God's grace, through faith in Him, what does that mean?  For the Christian, it means we are called to enter into a life, to literally participate in God Himself.  What does it mean that good works were "prepared beforehand that we should walk in them," but that God prepared them so that we should actually walk in them?  We aren't saved because of our good works.  But we will not be saved without them either.

And justification is but one example.  Take "the authority of Scripture."  I'd wager we in the Orthodox Church read more Scripture in one Sunday than most Protestant churches read all week.  That's not to denigrate them -- I admire the zeal with which evangelicals can bring up passages from memory, and take seriously the holy obligation to read the Word of God.  The point is, we don't have a problem with the authority of Scripture.  They have a problem with the authority of the Church, which is to say the Apostolic authority and therefore the authority of God.  I'm not saying this to be mean, I'm saying it because it's true.  And to deal with that, you have to deal with the anachronistic way in which sola Scriptura usually meets us in today's world.  I'm not going to get into all of that here, because it is probably its own series of blog posts.  The short version is this -- most Protestants (not all) view the Scriptures as the source for doctrine, but they were not written down until after the Church was established, and the Church decided which were canonical and which were not.  To say all doctrine is decided by Scripture is to say that there was no doctrine before the Scriptures were written down, distributed, and canonized.  And that is clearly not the case if you know anything about Christian history.

Not dissuaded by these problems, which I assume he does not recognize, Clark also does himself and his own tradition a disservice by dismissing the attraction to Orthodoxy and Catholicism.  He suggested Presbyterians like himself could offer higher liturgical services and more smells and bells, but then immediately discarded the idea, saying "the average PCA church cannot (theologically and practically) offer the experience of the Mass or Hours; and second, it just feeds the problem. Like kids on a beach, the next pretty shell makes them drop all others."  If he's right about that, and these young ones are really only delusional children seeking pretty shells, then I guess he has a point.

But if he's wrong......

And I definitely think he is wrong.  We have a lot of young inquirers, catechumens, and converts in our little mission parish. We always ask "so what attracted you to Orthodoxy?"  Not one of them has said "oh, it's so pretty!"  Not one.  They do tell me they began to study Church history and realized something in their own Christian formation was off.  The non-Christians often tell me they see in Orthodoxy a holistic theology and practice that makes sense to them.  Most of our converts are Protestant of some stripe or another, but from Pentecostal to Presbyterian, all of them see in the Orthodox Church a fullness that they find lacking elsewhere.

That's what drew me here.  As I wrote in the second-ever post on this blog:

Over time, what we have seen in our months among the people of St. Stephens and what we have come to believe (or, rather, to recognize) is that she has a rightful claim to be the historic Church of the Apostles, the New Testament Church founded by Christ. We have therefore come to believe that the Orthodox Christian Church maintains the faith of the Apostles in the fullest, most authentic sense.

Reducing that to "the next pretty shell" is dismissive and insulting to those seeking the fullness of the faith.  If Clark recognized this, then he wouldn't be so confused about why his arguments are rejected.  He's insulting the very people he hopes to retain. But he apparently doesn't recognize this, which is sad.

It seems to me that we in the Orthodox Church spend a lot less time trying to woo people from the Presbyterian Church and other denominations than they spend trying to keep their people from coming to us.  Every couple of years one of these articles pops up (the last one I noted was from a Lutheran and I wrote about it here).  It's the same, scared, antsy presentation each time.  "We can't compete with their beauty and mysticism and historicity, so how do we tell these rubes who are so easily distracted by shiny objects that it's wrong?"

It isn't a good look.  It's no wonder it doesn't work.  I wish people who want to critique Orthodoxy would take the time to actually put in the work and try to understand it.  As long as they refuse to, the exodus will continue.  Young people aren't stupid.  Treating them as if they are is no way to convince them you're right.

For our part, we simply love them and try to be truthful with them.  We fail, because we are sinners.  I can only hope they appreciate the effort despite our failings.  Because really, that is what Orthodoxy is about.  Neither the aura nor the lore can replace love.  And love begins by showing basic respect.  Be who you are, be kind and loving, and stop worrying so much about what's wrong with us.  If that doesn't work, no amount of railing against our beauty and history, as if those are bad things, is going to do any better.

The Mission of Fatherhood

 

We have a priest!

Well, we've always "had a priest."  We had Fr. Gabe as our priest-in-charge from the inception of this mission, up until last month.  He served honorably and loved us and guided us well.

And we also had Fr. Tom, from this past June until last month, serving as our visiting priest, ensuring we were able to have Sunday communion services and confession without having to go to two different places to get all of that.  He also served honorably and loved us and guided us well.

This is different, though more in scope than in kind.  Fr. Seth Earl is now our priest-in-charge and is formally attached to our little mission.  He is serving honorably and loving us and guiding us well.  But he is ours.  We are his.  That was all true with Fr. Gabe and Fr. Tom as well, and both of those fine priests always treated us as their own, and we loved them as our own.  But neither of them was called to devote their full attention to us, and not because they did not want to.  Fr. Gabe is the rector of a very busy parish in Atlanta.  Fr. Tom is retired.  St. Patrick could not be first priority for either of them.  They were our fathers, and they were fatherly, but they also had their own flock and their own lives.

That, in itself, is good in its own way.  It teaches us that we are not so very important.  It teaches us to defer to our brethren, whether those at St. John the Wonderworker who shared a father with us, or those in Fr. Gabe's or Fr. Tom's respective families who would like to see them on occasion, or simply to one another. It teaches us to be patient and wait for the Lord to act.  I am certainly not complaining about not having a full service life or priests who look after our every concern.  It is good for us, and it is good that the Church sends us shepherds as she has the ability to do so.  The alternative would be sending shepherds who are not ready, or who cannot keep up with the demands of too many sheep.  We have been blessed beyond measure by the shepherds she has sent us. 

But now she has sent us our very own shepherd.  And he is another blessing.

I have heard many people speak of how missions sort of spin their wheels and mark time up until they get a priest, and then things begin to really move.  There are reasons for that involving practicality -- a parish seems "real" when there is a clergyman there who can do everything any other parish can do, and it seems somehow "less than" if it cannot do everything any other parish can do.  That's normal.  You might give a new dentist a chance if he has a meager and modest office, but probably not if he starts pulling drills and picks and scalers from the trunk of his car and asks you to sit down on the curb and tilt your head back.  There is a "marketing" aspect to having a full liturgical life and a priest of your own.  There is a worldly sense of authenticity and competence.

But beyond practicality, I am convinced that there is a spiritual component to it. There is a concreteness to having the diocese send you a priest, put him on the church's website and say "this man is attached to this mission" for the world to see.  There is no confusion, and no overlapping magisteria.  There is no division of priorities and no overwhelming the pastor with the responsibilities of shepherding dual parishes.  We have one priest who is in charge of the entire mission, entrusted by our Archdiocese to be our pastor.  This binds us all together as a parish family, with a spiritual father.  And fathers are important, in the parish as much as in the home.  We think of a parish having a "head," not in terms of worldly responsibility, but in the sense of binding it all together, as the Father binds the Holy Trinity in Himself, and is its fount and source.  Fathers are not merely deciders.  Fathers are the glue that holds the family together as one.

Fr. Seth's first services with us as our pastor came this past weekend.  With them, there was a sense that this is finally real.  Someone is now in place to care for us, to protect us, and to ensure that the Church flourishes in our little corner of West Georgia.  We are his sole priority in terms of shepherding.  And while in the world, some of those things are administrative functions, in the Church (as in the family and in the home), they are also spiritual and ontological.  Fr. Seth isn't just our leader, or our boss.  He is our father in Christ.  Like most priests, he is fatherly in his approach. Which is to say, he leads gently, but firmly.  He loves.  He is kind and patient.  When we err he forgives us.  When he eventually errs, we will forgive him. We learn to become spiritual children, not in the sense that we've all done it before, but in a day-to-day sense.  We learn to submit, and to honor, and to return the love Fr. Seth shows forth to us, because it is the love of Christ Himself, Who through His Church sent Fr. Seth to us.  In turn, good fathers show forth Christ by seeing Christ in their children, and in everyone else around them.  A good father teaches us to do the same, to him and to everyone around us as well.

We are under no delusion that our new priest is perfect.  We have all been fortunate to serve under some extraordinary priests.  Stephanie and I have had the great fortune, most recently, of being shepherded by Fr. Paul, who is an outstanding priest.  For a brief time since, we have served under Fr. Gabe, and of course our first priest was Fr. Andrew, both of whom are outstanding priests.  We have had Fr. Tom serve as our spiritual father and confessor for the past several months, and Fr. Tom is another outstanding priest.  We know what it means to have great priests, and we know that the greatest of those priests is not infallible.  Priests are men.  Like biological or adoptive fathers, our spiritual fathers are sure to fail us at times.  When that inevitably happens, I must remember my own failings as a father, and forgive as I would hope my children forgive me.

We also know that Fr. Seth is aware that none of us is infallible.  We will mess up.  We will disappoint him, fail him, perhaps hurt him.  When we do, he will forgive us.  Not because he is legalistically bound to forgive.  Not even because he wants to forgive deep down in his heart (though he surely does).  He will forgive because that is what fathers do.  Not in a legalistic sense, but simply because we are his children.

Those bonds of love in the Church are not always easy, and they do not always result in warm and fuzzy feelings.  Sometimes loving and forgiving other people is hard and messy.  Sometimes it leaves us feeling hypocritical, or perhaps taken advantage of.  But through the Church, those bonds lead us to salvation.  And that begins with the Church giving us a father.  Thanks be to God!

Graceless People

It seems the more we move into the future, the more we, as a society, lack grace.  Our leaders are, for good or ill, a reflection of us.

The President of the United States, in the last few days, sent out what can only be described as an ugly screed against Rob Reiner, who along with his wife was murdered by their apparently mentally ill son.  I refuse to give that message more attention than it deserves, but the part I want to focus on is the apparent motivation for this terrible take on things:  President Trump's continued exercise of grievance politics.  He said:

Well, I wasn't a fan of his at all. He was a deranged person as far as Trump is concerned.

He became like a deranged person. Trump derangement syndrome. So, I was not a fan of Rob Reiner at all in any way, shape or form. I thought he was very bad for our country.

Well, first of all -- so what?  Are we really at a place in our country where if I just don't like someone, I can say anything, at any time, and have no remorse?  We used to be able to give people space to grieve and mourn.  Now, the President could not even bring himself to say one nice thing about a dead man, who was murdered viciously by his own child.  If such a judgment were warranted, it would be bad enough to say it right after the man was murdered, while his family is grieving.  The fact that Rob Reiner is not someone about whom nothing good could be said makes it worse.

Rob Reiner certainly was an activist, and he had a political worldview.  His first major role on "All in the Family" should put everyone on notice of that (though most actors are capable of separating politics from their art, the politics were part and parcel of the art on "All in the Family").  More to the point, that is his right.  Holding a differing viewpoint is a Constitutional right in America.  It is among our most cherished civil liberties.  We used to respect that, and respect those with whom we disagreed.  I'd like to think those days aren't over, if only by observing the number of Republican and right-leaning personalities who heavily criticized the President over his remarks.  

But Rob Reiner was also a beloved actor and director, and by all accounts a really good person.  He directed "Stand by Me," "When Harry Met Sally," "A Few Good Men," and "The Princess Bride."  He starred in the aforementioned "All in the Family," as well as having a notable (and brilliant) role in "Sleepless in Seattle." 

I haven't even mentioned the utter brilliance of "This is Spinal Tap."

He also advocated for early childhood education, and fought to ensure access to preschool for California children.  He was a father and a husband and a well respected member of his community who used his wealth and influence to try to do good.  And even if we might disagree in the particulars about which of his activist work was good and which was not, we used to be able to honor the intentions while disagreeing with the policy.

He wasn't perfect -- nobody is.  Mere disagreement, though, shouldn't lead us to pretend the man did no good.  That he was no good.  That he should be derided and mocked after his murder.  The ugly soul that desires to denigrate a man after he has suffered the most horrific tragedy, and put his family through the indignity of having to see it, is a soul in need of healing.

Especially in light of the fact that the President has done this before (when John McCain died), what are we to do with this?  The sad truth is, there isn't a lot we can do in the big scheme of things.  We can vote differently, but that usually takes the form of "vote for the other side," and the other side has its own lack of grace (for example, when Charlie Kirk was murdered recently).  Fortunately, I'm seeing a difference lately.  Many, many prominent politicians and figures on the left expressed horror at Kirk's murder and disappointment with those who praised it.  People lost their jobs for saying awful things about him, his wife, and his murder.  Likewise, there is pushback against the President now, from his own side. That is good.  We need more of it.

But in the long run, that does little good if it only exists moment to moment.  We as Christians have to raise children who recoil at such misbehavior.  We need to be people who speak out against it.  And we need to form communities where it is unheard of and deeply frowned upon.  We can't change the fact that the President won his election.  We can refuse to be a part of the uglier side of his politics.  We can choose to be better than that.  

As Christians, we are under a holy obligation to do so.  We are called to see Christ in our neighbor.  If we cannot do that, then Christ will not see us.  St. John Chrysostom said "If you do not find Christ in the beggar at the church door, neither will you find him in the chalice."  How much more is this true of anyone, in any setting?  If you can't find Christ in your political "enemies," how do you expect Him to find you?  

Father Thomas Hopko, in a quote prominently featured on our parish's website, said:

"Jesus didn't say, 'love the image of God in that person.' He didn't say 'love Me in that person.' He said: 'Love that person, and you will be loving Me. Because I have identified with every human being on the face of the earth.'"

"Love that person, and you will be loving Me.  Because I have identified with every human being on the face of the earth."  Even Charlie Kirk.  Even Rob Reiner.  Even those whom we choose to despise over stupid superficial disagreements on how we should govern ourselves.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but even Osama Bin Laden.

If Jesus loves that person, and I cannot, then I cannot and do not love Jesus.  That's a hard saying, but it really is that simple.  So as the deacon proclaims at the Divine Liturgy, "let us love one another, that with one mind we may confess:  Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the Trinity One in essence, and undivided."

The Trinity is the model for all of mankind.  One of the Trinity became man so He could be "of one essence" with us, and that we might be "undivided."  Jesus said so in His High Priestly Prayer: "That they may be one, even as You and I are One."

Let us love one another, and put aside this petty childishness.  We can do better.

The Mission of Transformation

Transformation is a central theme in the Christian faith.  God takes our feeble and broken souls, and mends us into something better than what we were.  We, in turn, begin to learn to turn away from sin and live for God. In this, we see a constant transformation from death to life, culminating hopefully in our own resurrection and eternal life.

There is also the concept of sacred space, which is to say, space set aside for the things of God.  And along with that there is the concept of beauty, which reflects the beauty of God.  We beautify sacred space because of Who meets us there.

So it is that our little mission acquired space recently, and in order to set it apart, began to beautify it.

One member referred to this space as a "cement hole" when we first arrived.  Which is pretty well on the nose when it comes to describing what it was.  What it is now, is ....... more than that.  It isn't what we would design if we had unlimited funds, permission, talent and time.  But it is what we have.  So we transformed it.

The lessons should be self-evident.  We are still transforming it, too.  Just as God isn't quite finished with any of us yet.

Ideology is Death (Thoughts and Prayers, Part II)

 

For the second time in two weeks, a tragic shooting has taken place.  I do want to talk about my prior post on "Thoughts and Prayers," but I also want to discuss the thing that really killed Charlie Kirk -- ideology.

I don't mean "ideology" in the sense that we have opinions and express them, or even worldviews, and live them.  I mean "ideology" really as a replacement for theology.  Politics in place of God.  On our Mission's website, there is a quote from Father Alexander Schmemann:

"It seems to me that any ideology is bad because it is inevitably reductive and identifies other ideologies as evil, and itself with truth, whereas both truth and goodness are always transcendent."

This seems to me to be pretty well on the nose.  Though perhaps this quote is even more so:

"Principles are what people have instead of God."

Now, obviously, people can hold all sorts of ideologies and still not be murderers.  And some ideologies are infinitely better than others.  No one, I would like to think, would compare American traditional liberal values (by this, I mean the values of our Founders) on par with Naziism or Communism or any of the other various totalitarian "isms" that exist.   And certainly, even those who find sympathy with extremist ideologies might otherwise be peacable people in a generic sense.  One can say and believe awful things without desiring to hurt people.

The problem enters when the ideology becomes what Fr. Alexander says in the first quote above -- reductive and oppositional to other ideologies, especially in an existential sense.  If I think those who are on the "other side" are my enemies, and that they will destroy my freedom and well being, it's much easier to justify harming them.  But even absent such justification, when a Christian is captured by ideology, that Christian has ceased to be of Christ, and has instead joined himself to the world.  In that sense, I suppose this is also Part II of a previous post, Outrage Pornography.  If, as Fr. Alexander says, truth and goodness are always transcendent (and I believe they are), that means truth and goodness are things of God, not things we can possess of ourselves.  And that, in turn, means that, even for non-Christians, but especially for Christians, any truth or goodness we find will be located in Christ.  The Parable of the Sheep and the Goats makes this clear.  The pagan who feeds his neighbor feeds Christ.  The Christian who wishes his neighbor dead murders Christ. We, as Christians, should always act accordingly.

And this brings me to the murder of Charlie Kirk.  I am not a particular fan of Charlie's work.  I am also not a particular detractor of his work.  I know of him mainly through online reels, some heavily edited and sometimes grossly out of context, others more long form and instructive of his beliefs.  So I am aware of him, and Turning Point, USA.  But I was not his target audience, and I never spent much time delving into his material.  But I do think there are a couple of defining things about him and his life's work that are interesting in light of his becoming a target of an assassin.  The first is he is a Christian, unapologetic and outspoken in his faith.  The second is he believed deeply in free speech.  He invited those who disagree to go to the front of the line.  He loved debate.  He believed that the way to confront bad ideas is not with violence, imprisonment, or public shaming, but with good ideas.  And even if you think his ideas were bad ideas, it would be nice if we could all follow his example and confront them with better ideas instead of a rifle.

Charlie Kirk was not a soldier.  He was not violent.  He literally talked for a living.  He talked to young people and he talked about issues he cared about.  He did not exclude others, and was complimentary of others when they made what he considered to be good points.  He found value in public discourse, in the public square, and the robust exchange of ideas, all things that when I went to college in the 1990s were hallmarks of education.  Sadly, this seems to be less the case now.  I hope his murder, if nothing else good comes of it, will strengthen our national resolve to return to the days when we could disagree without being enemies.  I question sometimes whether we can all inhabit the same country given the level of venom in our public discourse.  This is not a partisan issue.  We are the problem.  We are truly getting the government we deserve.

To be clear, we do not know why Charlie was targeted.  It is entirely possible it was just another deranged lunatic with no partisan or political purpose.  It is equally possible it was someone with an ideological proclivity towards or against his views.  We don't know, and until we do, I won't speculate.  What we can deduce, however, is that this person had an ideology.  It is unlikely that someone would target Charlie Kirk in particular for assassination, and go to the extraordinary trouble of scouting the site, smuggling a hunting rifle into the site, going to the top of the building, shooting him, and then making an escape, without being motivated by some ideology.  We will find out shortly what that was.  But I think it's fair to deduce that ideology of some sort was at the core of this act.

Obviously, we do not even know the identity of the murderer yet, so we don't know if this person was a Christian or something else.  That's not important, because I am speaking to fellow Christians here.  It is also important to note, we can succomb to ideology in different ways.  The temptation to find joy in Charlie Kirk's death isn't materially different to me from the temptation to find a few examples of monstrous people rejoicing in his death and using them to paint political opposition as thinking likewise.  Thankfully, most of what I have seen in the wake of his murder has been appropriate.  Certainly from my friends. I am grateful for that -- it shows I have good friends.  But the lunatics and the opportunists who use them to tar political opposition are out there.  This is no less an embrace of ideology than any other.  We should avoid it.

For some reason, we also haven't seen the snarky version of the "thoughts and prayers" objection I mentioned in my previous post.  I'm not sure why, but I'm grateful for that too.  Because Charlie Kirk, and his family and friends, need our prayers now.  And we ought to pray for each other, to be delivered from ideology and restored to our Creator.  It is the one good thing we can do in the wake of such an act.  God grant him rest where the just repose and make his memory eternal.