by Fr. Peter Heers –
Charlie Kirk was speaking the days, the hours, the minutes leading up to his assassination, about the things that are blessed, things that are good in terms of the Gospel and Jesus Christ and moral life and all the rest.
I’m sure we’ve been watching the events after the assassination of Charlie Kirk. At least here in America, for those of us who are watching from America, it’s a major event. And ironically, as many have said, it seems to be and will be a turning point for the United States. It remains to be seen which way America will go—if it will go toward virtue or down and into the descent into more animalistic chaos, far from the virtues of the Gospel.
So today I made a decision to post something online which was kind of in honor or memory of Charlie Kirk. And there are a lot of people out there who, like him, appreciated his life and witness. And there are also people who did not like his politics or his thoughts or his comments, considered him to be a racist or—I don’t know what—fill in the blank.
But I wanted to say to those who are critical that it’s important for us as Orthodox Christians in a non-Orthodox, post-Christian West to encourage virtue everywhere we see it. Encourage people to come closer to the truth of the Gospel, of Christ Who is the same yesterday, today, and forever—the unchanging witness of the saints. In other words, the faithfulness to the Gospel as has been preserved in the Orthodox Church.
And so when we see those who are on that path—they’re making steps, they’re open, they’re open-minded, they’ve made important changes, they’re repenting, they’re giving a witness to the Gospel and to aspects of at least the Gospel in the midst of the culture in spite of persecution or hatred—these are all very good things that we should encourage as Orthodox Christians, as missionaries in this land in the West, far from Orthodox traditional Orthodox homes. And they’re working in different systems and countries and traditions where people understand immediately what the Church is.
So in Charlie Kirk, there’s a lot there to be observed—a lot of interesting and exciting things that were happening before his assassination, which, by the way, it’s all very terrible on one level, but very much in the providence of God. In other words, God allows these things—every decision, let’s say, on the part of God’s providence, Who allows when those who are born and those who die, right? There’s nothing outside. There’s no accidents in life. Everything’s in the providence of God.
And in many ways, he had a very good death. He was speaking the days, the hours, the minutes leading up to his assassination, about the things that are blessed, things that are good in terms of the Gospel and Jesus Christ and moral life and all the rest. He was witnessing in the midst of society and college campuses—in many ways things that the Orthodox Church should be doing.
In spite of his errors as an Evangelical Protestant from an Orthodox perspective, in spite of political blindness on certain issues—one of the things that people have been saying is that he was a Zionist and he was not looking out for the true understanding, true Christian witness with regard to the whole issues of the Middle East and Israel and all the rest. But a lot of people didn’t know that he had really changed his position in many ways in the last few months and was, as he said himself in one of the interviews he gave recently, being really softly persecuted for that. And he was questioning. He was questioning things and he was rethinking things and he was getting, I think, to a more balanced and a more Christian perspective on the whole topic.
He also had an Orthodox priest, Fr. John Strickland, on the show just a few weeks ago. And he was talking about the need for Protestants to venerate the Mother of God. There was a lot of things that were happening which were, I’m sure, making certain people and the demons very uncomfortable.
So what he said in the video that we posted, if you haven’t seen it on social media, is really quite remarkable for an Evangelical Protestant. He said people are looking to come back to church and especially to the traditional Christian expressions, especially, he said, among the most obvious was the Orthodox Church. He said they’re going there and not coming to the Evangelicals. He said people ask me why. And he said they want the ancient ways. They want the tried and true ways. They want the things that they don’t change. They want to go back to what is perennial and true.
And so that’s a tremendous witness to many people out there. There are millions of people who yet have yet to even really consider the Orthodox Church. And when somebody like Charlie Kirk, who’s respected by millions of Protestant Christians, says things like this, it’s very important for many people. It’s going to help them on the way. So that’s why we posted that.
Just in case you are wondering or curious, it’s an important balance to keep. People think mostly that we’re kind of hardliners here at Orthodox Ethos, that we’re constantly doubling down on the dogmatic truths and the boundaries and all that. And that’s true. We do really focus a lot of that because it’s so important to our salvation and to the integrity and witness of the Church.
But at the same time, being found in this modern apostate West, we have to encourage and inspire those beyond who do not know anything about Orthodoxy. And we have to take every opportunity as a good missionary would to recognize the true, the good, the beautiful and encourage people on the path toward the fullness.
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HT: Orthodox Ethos. (Bolding of key words and phrases, and some minor content organizational changes made by blog editors to improve readability.)
