September 16, 2025
“I didn’t want Charlie Kirk to die, I wanted him to be different,” my friend Jonathan wrote in a recent substack. Jonathan is a black man, the kind of person Kirk might have had in mind when he said “Happening all the time in urban America, prowling Blacks go around for fun to go target white people, that’s a fact. It’s happening more and more.” – The Charlie Kirk Show, 19 May 2023
And indeed, my friend targets white people with the gospel of Jesus, sharing honestly, boldly and vulnerably from his perspective as a black man in America what it looks like to follow Jesus and not simply be swayed by our culture. His poignant, thoughtful words about Kirk’s life and death struck me profoundly, and having read them there’s no need for me to rehash; I will simply refer you to two of his recent posts (which you can see in part on Instagram whether or not you subscribe to substack):
- I didn’t want Charlie Kirk to die, I wanted him to be different
- Charlie Kirk was a martyr; he died for white American folk religion.
I was also struck today by the declarations against violence and hate coming from our leaders, taking a very different tone: Vice President Vance on Kirk’s podcast yesterday: “Left-wing extremism” is “part of the reason” Kirk was killed; “We’re going to go after the NGO network that foments, facilitates and engages in violence.” President Trump: “the radical left causes tremendous violence, and they seem to do it in a bigger way. But the radical left really is — causes a lot of problems for this country. I really think they hate our country.”
I have many questions like, does fighting hate with hate ever work out well? Where were, and were, all these opponents to violence and hate in Charlottesville, at the Capital, when Kirk said hateful things about large percentages of our country?
(My fact-checking husband pointed me in the direction of research by the Cato Institute, no liberal leftist shill which I’ll post without comment.)
But as I said, Jonathan covers the subject better than I could. Instead of writing an essay on this, I found myself writing a poem, starting with the first question I found myself asking:
Where exactly is all this vitriolic radical leftist hate and why doesn’t it ever seem to reach me, a prime leftist target?
I hope it speaks to you, and helps you find another foothold in the long and arduous journey toward overcoming evil with good.
Where is this vitriolic radical leftist hate?
Not doing a very good job
Of whipping me and my ilk
into a frenzy, I don’t see it
on my feed, or hear it
in my headphones,
It must be quiet,
Subversive,
Hidden
Like a backmask.
All I hear
Are my secular leftist neighbors
Chiding the occasional expletive:
Let’s not go there.
Let’s rise above,
Like Michelle said,
Let’s go high.
Memes all over Instagram,
My radical leftist feed
Sounding like Jesus
And quoting Dr. King,
All ‘love your enemies’
And ‘resist evil with good.’
This algorithm,
not yet
fomented.
I don’t see much hate,
Except, sometimes,
Acknowledged with regret:
Here, still, within my heart
Lies the division I despise.
I, too, am guilty of what I want to fight.
If we’re keeping a record of sins,
It’s my understanding
We’d all be gone.
If we’re collecting data on hate
Growing into violence,
It’s my understanding
There are more fertile fields.
If we’re eradicating the blight,
Shall we scythe low-hanging fruit?
Follow a principle,
And not a party?
Oppose the deaths it causes–
And also the words it speaks while alive,
Another kind of murder.
If there’s hate out here,
Let’s root it out—
But when removing specks of hate,
Who can perform the surgery cleanly,
Who has first cleared their own eye?
If there’s hate out here,
By all means, let’s resist;
Who has the good we will resist it with?
If we’re purging murderous hate,
I’ll be first in line.
Let the hate lingering in my own heart die,
Let me not expect my enemies to become good
Before I can love them,
Let me not clamor for the other side
To be pure
Before I submit to the refining fire,
Let the part of me that still thinks ‘other side’
Wither to make space
To grow more goodly, godly fruit.
Let the part of me that wants to be cleansed
To savor the satisfaction
Of being righteous,
Better than,
Be blinded
Like a Damascus road traveler.
