In the aftermath of Charlie Kirk’s assassination, the response from many corners of our culture has been chilling. Rather than mourning the loss of life, thousands have responded with mockery, vitriol, and even celebration. Many have gone so far as to call for further violence, revealing a level of moral decay that many of us struggle to comprehend. How are we supposed to live alongside people who would cheer our deaths and taunt our families?
In the face of such hatred, Erika Kirk offered a deeply Christian response: love. But how does a Christian love those who would gladly see them murdered? What does obedience to Christ look like in a world that hates what He commands?
Real love toward our enemies consists of three things: we must pray, we must speak, and we must act. These aren’t vague ideals or abstract virtues; there are specific, concrete ways we are called to pray, to speak, and to conduct ourselves in the face of evil that seeks our destruction.
How to Pray for Your Enemies
The first step in loving someone who has deeply wronged you is prayer. Christ commands this in Luke 6:27-36 and again in Matthew 5:44: “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you… But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and the evil. Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful.”
This is not easy. When the wrong is deep, we cannot love on our own strength; we must ask God to fill us with His love. Only His perfect love can move our hearts toward mercy. Part of this shift comes from remembering who the real enemy is. People may hate us, curse us, or harm us, but Scripture reminds us: “We do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against… the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 6:12). The person before us is not the ultimate enemy. They are a soul in need of God’s grace.
Saul is proof of this. Before becoming Paul, he violently opposed the Church. Yet he was not beyond God’s reach. Through God’s mercy, Saul the persecutor became Paul the apostle, one of the Church’s greatest champions.
C. S. Lewis captured why we must respond with compassion and prayer for those who oppose us: “To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you.” We may call them enemies, but in God’s eyes, they are people He longs to redeem. Our role is to pray, to forgive, and to love. We must trust God to transform hearts, even those that seem hardest.
How to Speak to the Culture
After submitting our hearts and hopes to God in prayer, we must then turn to our culture as ambassadors of the heart of God. We must address the evil that we see without falling into evil ourselves. To speak to the culture effectively, we must speak with three distinct traits: love, truth, and boldness. We must also address our message to two separate groups: those who agree with us and those who oppose.
Speaking in Love, Truth, and Boldness
Speaking in Love
As Christian communicators, our goal is not merely to win arguments or assert opinions; we aim to persuade the soul, to guide hearts and minds toward God’s truth. As Paul reminds us: “If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.” (1 Corinthians 13:1-2)
From a conservative Christian perspective, love is not being “nice” or avoiding confrontation. It is active, sacrificial, and rooted in moral concern for the soul of the other person. Thomas Aquinas defines love in a way that illuminates this: to love someone is to will the good of the other. We should desire and seek what is truly beneficial for the other person, especially their spiritual flourishing and ultimate relationship with God.
To love someone, then, is to care enough to call out sin, falsehood, or error, not for personal triumph, but for their ultimate good. This kind of love is hard; it may create discomfort or tension, but it is always oriented toward restoration and life, not condemnation.
Love also guards against the temptation to speak in a way that gratifies personal pride or political identity. It prevents us from reducing others to mere opponents in a debate or a culture war. Instead, love recognizes the inherent dignity of every person as made in God’s image, even when they embrace ideas or behaviors that contradict biblical truth. When grounded in this understanding, love becomes the lens through which truth is communicated and boldness is rightly exercised, ensuring that our words guide rather than alienate, persuade rather than merely argue.
Speaking in Truth
Truth is inseparable from love. It is not loving to offer empty platitudes or hollow affirmations that merely mimic the appearance of love. True love expresses substance, and that substance is truth. Truth establishes the foundation of all our speech: love is the how, truth is the what.
Truth forms the backbone of our communication. It defines the moral and spiritual reality we wish to convey. To speak without truth is to mislead, even unintentionally; to speak without love is to wound rather than guide. Truth illuminates the path of righteousness in a culture that increasingly seeks to blur right and wrong. It anchors our words in God’s unchanging Word, giving us the authority to call out error, advocate justice, and inspire genuine repentance and renewal.
Speaking in Boldness
Speaking truth in love demands boldness because love without courage is silent in the face of danger. A Christian who loves a friend or neighbor cannot remain quiet while they are running toward destruction. Similarly, when confronting the moral and spiritual errors of our culture, we must speak head-on, without compromise or timidity.
Boldness requires that we refuse to participate in the perversion of language or allow those who distort reality to define the conversation. Our words carry eternal weight; they shape hearts, consciences, and ultimately, the trajectory of souls. To temper our boldness is to deny the gravity of our calling. But when coupled with love and truth, boldness becomes a powerful tool to pierce darkness and illuminate God’s path for all who will listen.
Speaking to Those who Agree
When addressing those who already share our basic beliefs, the goal is to strengthen, unify, and mobilize rather than merely repeat what they already know. Our words should:
- Encourage Spiritual Integrity
- Remind believers that alignment with truth is not just intellectual assent, but a call to live out God’s Word in every area of life.
- Guard against complacency or moral compromise for the sake of comfort or cultural approval.
- Foster Unity and Community
- Promote humility, avoiding pride or judgment toward others who share our convictions.
- Emphasize that the mission is greater than individual agendas. Together, believers can effectively influence culture.
- Mobilize for Action
- Inspire practical engagement in society, including local ministry, education, advocacy, and politics, all grounded in Christlike principles.
- Encourage believers to lead by example, demonstrating love, truth, and boldness in their personal and public lives.
Those who already agree are the most ready to act and influence others. By strengthening their faith and resolve, we multiply our impact on culture while maintaining moral clarity and unity.
Speaking to Those who Oppose
Our message to those who oppose us must be one of loving correction and reconciliation. When addressing those who oppose or disagree with our beliefs, the aim is loving correction and reconciliation, not winning arguments or asserting dominance. Our approach should:
- Understand Before Engaging
- Listen attentively to identify misconceptions, fears, or underlying values.
- Show genuine concern, demonstrating that our goal is the other person’s flourishing, not mere ideological victory.
- Speak Truth in Love
- Communicate moral and spiritual truths clearly, but without hostility or ridicule.
- Avoid using cultural jargon or letting the language of opposition dictate our message.
- Model Christlike Boldness
- Courageously confront falsehood, injustice, or moral decay, knowing that silence is complicity.
- Stand firm in convictions while remaining compassionate, patient, and prayerful.
- Aim for Reconciliation
- Focus on restoration and relationship over immediate agreement.
- Pray for transformation, understanding that lasting change often begins with God’s work in the heart.
Cultural change requires engagement with those outside our immediate circle. By combining truth, love, and boldness, we can open hearts, reduce hostility, and plant seeds for genuine repentance and moral realignment.
How to Address our Fellow Americans
The Christian call is not passive; it is an active engagement with the world God has placed us in. We are not only called to endure the age we live in, but to be salt and light within it (Matthew 5:13-16). This requires more than slogans and sentiments; it demands faithful, steady work to both nurture what is good and uproot what is evil. Both must occur, for to cultivate good while ignoring evil is to invite weeds to choke out the harvest; and to uproot evil without planting good is to leave the field barren.
Nurture What is Good
Paul reminds us in Philippians 4:8 that, “Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things”. The Christian posture toward society must never be merely critical; it must also be constructive. We affirm the good wherever it can be found: in family life, in neighborly kindness, in honest work, in just governance, and in the preservation of liberty. To nurture good means to encourage it, strengthen it, and bear witness to it publicly, so that righteousness is not only believed in our churches but embodied in our communities.
Uproot What is Evil
Yet our task does not end with affirmation. We must also confront and resist evil. Love requires it. Scripture tells us, “Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them” (Ephesians 5:11, ESV). That means we must be willing to name sin for what it is and refuse to compromise truth for the sake of cultural approval.
But even here, our goal is not vengeance; it is justice and restoration. True justice is not merely punitive; it is corrective and healing. Justice, like love, is oriented toward the good of the other. When we call someone to account for wrongdoing, we do so not to humiliate or punish out of anger, but because justice benefits the soul of the wrongdoer, helping them turn from corruption and embrace what is right. As Plato observed in Gorgias, “He who is punished and suffers retribution at the hands of gods and men is benefited, for he is delivered from his iniquity; but he who escapes punishment grows worse in his wickedness” (477a-b). He also warned, “To do wrong is second worst of all things; but to do wrong and not be punished is the first and greatest of evils” (479d).
When evil is confronted in this way, the victim is defended, the wrongdoer is corrected, and the opportunity for repentance and renewal is opened. Justice is an act of love: it seeks the good of others, even when that path is uncomfortable or difficult.
Our Faithful Response to a Broken Culture
In a world that often celebrates hatred and mocks virtue, the Christian response is not silence, retreat, or retaliation. It is prayer, speech, and action rooted in love, guided by truth, and strengthened by boldness. We pray for those who oppose us, trusting God to soften hearts and transform souls. We speak with clarity and courage, calling out error while seeking the good of every person we address. And we act, nurturing what is good and confronting what is evil, always remembering that justice is not merely punishment, but a means of restoration that benefits both victim and perpetrator.
To follow Christ in such times is difficult. It will cost us comfort, provoke tension, and invite misunderstanding. Yet it is precisely in these moments that we embody the love of God, demonstrate the power of truth, and bear witness to a justice that heals rather than destroys. Our words and deeds can shape hearts, influence culture, and point all people, friend and foe alike, toward the good, the true, and the beautiful found in God.
Let us, then, commit ourselves to this path: to pray without ceasing, to speak with love and courage, and to act with wisdom and conviction. In doing so, we do not merely participate in culture; we become instruments of God’s mercy, truth, and righteousness, shining as salt and light in a world that desperately needs both.
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