Speech Class

Charlie Kirk, counselors, and critical thinking

The dappled sunshine blinks through the evergreens as I drive the highway home. My 13 year old is halfway reclined, her black canvas high tops up on the dash ticking to the songs of Forrest Frank. She ups the volume, and then the bass, and sings, waving her hands, her sunglasses reflecting the blue skies.

I think revival is 'bout to break through (mm-hm)
Jesus is working, just watch what He do
He's snatching chains, and He's taking the youth
I feel His presence right here in this room

He makes me lie down in green pastures
Even with all the disasters, mm-mm

—Sunshine by Forrest Frank

We’re returning from an NCFCA meeting, where students learn not only communication skills, but practice apologetics. As we’re driving, my mind is full of autumnal projects and plans (a kitchen remodel, a few wraps on the loom….). I’ve already revisited, reorganized, and prepared afresh for the kids’ homeschooling, and am thinking about what cooler weather clothing we might need.

I pull into the drive thru and order our celebratory “new school year” treats (decaf americano for me, strawberry smoothie with whip for her).

I had no idea what was coming.

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Six days later, I find out from the mechanic that Charlie Kirk had been murdered, after he soberly opened the conversation with, “How are ya doin’?”

“I’m good,” I cluelessly replied. “Thankful to be alive, the sun is shining…”

“Did you know Charlie Kirk was assassinated? He’s dead.”

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I grew up watching the news in the evening with my parents, usually the ABC network as I recall. I gave no time to newswatching once I left for university, and I thank God every day that as a Gen Xer, I didn’t have access to an addictive, manipulative, mind-altering smartphone then.

Still, when the first presidential election I could vote for arrived, I reached out to my dad. “Who do I vote for?” He told me, “Well, the Democrats are for the poor, and the Republicans are for the rich.”

Thus, another (blissfully?) unaware young adult entered into the political decision-making process. It never even crossed my mind that I could (or should) research, ask questions, ponder, and make up my own mind about how and what to think. And even if it did, I wouldn’t have thought my one wee opinion mattered enough, anyway.

---

Politics and the policies behind them didn’t really start poking at me until I was married, had a few small children, and helping my husband to run a small business. Suddenly, those decisions began to matter: regulations, taxes, food prices, mortgage rates, laws regarding education. I was 31 years old when 9/11 happened and continue to this day to straddle in my mind the before-and-after ramifications. And, for some reason, Obama’s presidency was, in my experience, the pivot on gender and race relations, though it’s hard to pin down exactly why. I still wasn’t exactly paying much attention.

Through all these events (and more), I did not become a regular consumer of The News. Some folks near and dear to my heart would try to shame me, “How else will you know what’s going on in the world?!”

“What control,” I would respond, “do I have with what’s going on in the world?”

In my 30’s and 40’s, I was just trying to keep a marriage alive, have and raise babies, homeschool, run a household, and move it all to different locations seemingly every other year.

Then, during the week of my 50th birthday, covid closed in on all of humanity.

I turned the news on.

---

I used to go out late nights
I bet they never knew
Hoping to get the same high
That could only come from you

—More Than A Feeling by Forrest Frank

I was involved in the school newspaper while in high school, and became its editor-in-chief. At the time, the only real machine I recall using was the typewriter and copier. All of our headlines and columns of print were literally taped down before sending it through the copy machines, and we teenagers learned to do that well.

But journalism was more than how the paper looked aesthetically. Our teacher taught us about asking questions and reporting facts, the 5 W’s and 1 H. When I got my class ring made, one side said, “Truth”, representing journalism. It was accurate in reflecting my earnest desire to know and understand what was real and true, and to write about it.

But a weird thing happened while walking to school one day, bumping the school news cycle of class elections and sports scores. I noticed the oddity of multiple pairs of F-111’s flying overhead. Sure, one set or two was fairly normal, but then came another…and another…

Rumors quickly filled the hallways: “We just bombed Libya”.

At that point, the world became confusing and unknowable. Who of us mortals could ever know what was true? How was I supposed to write about that?

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The problem (if it is a problem, which I doubt) of just dropping into the mainstream news cycle so suddenly in 2020 was that so much of it was glaringly primed to make me afraid rather than to simply educate me. I spent the first two “slow the spread” weeks hunkered down just like everyone else, but I remained naively optimistic that more would be reported about, say, how to boost our immune systems in the meantime. My optimism about the media slid into pseudo-despair however when I loudly lamented the lack of real questions, such as where was the immediate help from our own agencies? In addition to “just be patient and wait for this miraculous up-and-coming product”, why weren’t they pushing vitamin C? Or telling everyone to check their vitamin D levels? Or to, yes, go outside and get some good sunshine? Why were doctors who were sharing such things getting shut down? Why why why…. My Journalism instructor would have been proud of me.

At the time, I recalled that I, too, had experience with getting shut down for asking questions. In fact, I had already been fired. Twenty years earlier, our children’s pediatrician kicked us out of her practice while I was waiting for her to “get back to me” about the questions I had asked regarding the medical products she was pushing upon my infant. She confessed over the phone she didn’t want to take the time to find answers. After all, she said, she didn’t need us anymore to build her practice.

I see now how big the gift of her sneering dismissal really was, and how it spurned me to go beyond my raised eyebrow and to dig even further into those 5 W’s and 1H. I continued to learn that trying to think for myself was a good way to get insulted, mocked or cancelled, especially during covid. I was told, for example, that it was perfectly reasonable I should not be allowed to grocery shop if I didn’t roll up my sleeve for an experimental product, that I wasn’t loving my neighbor or obeying Romans 13. I wasn’t (and am not) opposed to whatever medication others want to take; I just wanted to Think For Myself, to take seriously the stewardship of this body I had been given.

Also in this time frame, I learned for the first time in my life that I was supposedly (and secretly?) racist because my olive skin wasn’t brown enough. I ended up revisiting the psychological terms and theories I had learned at university (part of my major was in psychology) and was stunned to see so much of it unfolding before my eyes, highlighted on The News of all places. In addition, I dug back into my kids’ Logical Fallacy book: ad hominem, red herring, hyperbole…all was on full display!

This can’t possibly be the world, I remember thinking.

---

I’ve never actually watched The Matrix, but I do remember reading Lord of the Flies. I know what the Bible says about the human condition and about demonic spiritual warfare. I suppose I naively expected to not experience much of it in this country, having grown up under the shadow of a strong and patriotic ethos. I never considered I would witness in my lifetime pervasive dehumanizing and killing people for either their inconvenient location or needs, or for believing or saying the wrong things. Somehow, the killing is justified for “the greater good”.

I just wonder: as defined by…who…?

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The only thing that seems real anymore are the people and trees I can reach out to physically touch. And my goats, yeah, they’re real. I can hear their bleating for grain treats a mile away.

But as I look around, our fingers seem far too addicted to swiping screens for dopamine hits, our ears too tickled for what we want to hear, our beliefs too fragile for challenge or debate, and our feelings too elevated on the altar of our own truth to allow any room for exposure and/or repentance.

On YouTube, I flick from channel to channel, from clip to clip.

Is this what insanity looks like?

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Someday's be the best (Someday's be the best, mmm)
Someday's be the worst (Someday's be the worst)
Someday's stay on rеplay (Top tier)
Other days they don't
Oh wеll (Oh well), okay (Okay)
Guess what? You woke up today (Today)
Put a big smile on your face (Your face)
'Cause one thing ain't never gonna change
God is good (God is good), all the time (All the time)

—God is Good by Forrest Frank

Much later than I should have, I seek both wellness medical care and Biblical counseling, because Where no counsel is, the people fall: but in the multitude of counsellors there is safety (Pro 11:14). I am spent with the madness around me, the sin within me, and the idols enslaving me. Plus, my own physical body had given up on yelling at me to stop, slow down, stress less, rest, and therefore simply decided to welcome mold toxicity and stop regulating my own cortisol levels.

The world, the flesh, and the devil. Argh.

I am very glad to be in the very good care of my family, my friends, my church, and my team of practitioners. For example, in all my efforts to be present with other people, and to please them in those efforts, I had neglected to face the reality that I couldn’t please everyone (even if I do watch the news), especially in the false transaction of, “I’ll be nice to you, and in exchange, you’ll be nice to me and of course like me” rather than, “I will honor you as an image bearer of God, and will show love to you even if you are my enemy, for the glory of God alone.”

I have had time, and still take time, to dig deep into my pride, bitterness, rage, and idolatry, and after every bit of soul surgery I am left a little more humble, a little more loving, a little more weak in my own strength, and a little less certain I could ever know all there is to know about anything at all, no matter how many news outlets I might watch. I have begun to taste anew how God delights to bear me up, to strengthen my weak hands, and to teach me to run without weariness. I have learned during these last five years to trust and worship Him more for the unlimited grace He has bestowed upon me.

And now, following Charlie’s murder, I am far less likely to seek approval or safety in exchange for my silence. The devil keeps no promises.

These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.

John 16:33

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I settle in to eavesdrop on the apologetics lesson, answering the question, “Is God eternal?” and end up challenged along with the students (who are a quarter of my age) with questions such as “Why can’t logic or truth exist in a world without the eternal, unchanging God?” There aren’t a thousand of my lifetimes that would be enough to squelch my curiosity about God.

I look about the room and consider my daughter’s peers. They are learning to ask questions, think critically, communicate effectively, and respond respectfully. Charlie Kirk’s assassination made me understand in a greater way how much more this world needs Jesus and the light He shines upon everything, and also just how dangerous Light is to the darkness. That kind of exposure either leads to greater humility or, alternatively, a greater and darker arrogance that excuses evil doing, thus spiraling into a demonic abyss that will further seek to rob, kill and destroy even more of anything and everything that is good, true, and beautiful.

I still do read or watch some news sources, perhaps an hour a day, but I hold all of that information loosely. Only God knows the whole truth, and He has it all in hand. It’s not so much “There is nothing new under the sun” (which it true), but “…I know that my redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth (Job 19:25, emphasis mine).

As I think about it (there goes that thinking-thing again), I actually DO know what is happening, AND what is coming. And that’s why I continue to train up my children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, and take them—perhaps more urgently now— to speech class.

Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid. John 14:27

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