The Great American Divide
By Tom Gilbreath
After police arrested the man they believe assassinated Charlie Kirk, Utah Governor Spencer Cox said, “There is one person responsible for what happened here, and that person is now in custody and will be charged soon and will be held accountable.”
That’s a good thing to remember. In fact, I think about it every time a new shooting occurs. There are 340 million people in the United States. Should it surprise us that a few take advantage of our freedoms to do great evil? But the number of shooters, people willing to take the life of another or a group of others, keeps growing.
The shooting of Charlie Kirk was especially difficult because, while only one person pulled the trigger, millions rejoiced. That thought staggers the mind. Large numbers of Americans were positively overjoyed by the gruesome murder.
In Matthew 12:34, Jesus said, “Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.” If we go by the words we find on social media, we must conclude that hearts have grown dark and evil across the land. While leaders on the left rightly condemned the violence, the hidden and anonymous among us felt no such constraints. They could say what they felt — bare their dark hearts to the world.
Because it allows a high degree of anonymity, the internet has always been a place for people to vent ugly, uncaring, mean, and wicked feelings. When people hide behind usernames, they’re more willing to reveal their inner selves. And it’s not pretty.
I don’t mean to imply that every liberal was cruel and inappropriate. Certainly not. Many expressed condolences despite their political differences with Charlie Kirk. Me reading through various comments on Facebook and X hardly qualifies as a scientific study, but there seemed to be far more trolls than peacemakers — more vitriol than civility.
After the shooting, novelist Stephen King said that Charlie “advocated stoning gays to death.” That statement was absolutely false, even though it is widely believed among people who only consume left wing media. King later apologized, but it’s interesting that he believed it in the first place. It shows the power of misinformation when people only consume news from sources they know will agree with them.
I also read comments from people on the right who seemed to call for violent revenge. The assassination of Charlie Kirk has given us a stark picture of the depth and width of America’s political divide.
On June 16, 1858, Abraham Lincoln alluded to the words of Jesus with the famous statement, “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” That was a dire warning in the days shortly before the Civil War, and it has become a dire warning again today. The United States of America is a house divided. That means we are in trouble. It should comfort us that this kind of division was laid out in scripture as part of the scenario of events that will lead to the Second Coming of Christ. So, we can be full of hope even as we feel deep concern for a nation and a world turning hard from the knowledge of God.
In such times, we should be careful not to bury the light of the Gospel under a bushel of despair. Take a page from Charlie’s book. He became more overtly Christian and evangelical in the last couple of years. Every person we meet needs Jesus. Humans are sick, but God has given us the Cure. We can’t force the Cure on anyone, but we can tell them about Him.
