To Not Speak

If we will not reject this (not just the realities of the events this week but the heart and sentiment of them), if we will not stand wholly opposed to man being murdered for his speech, I believe we will perish much worse than this.

Charlie Kirk’s murder is not indicative of where we are going as a nation, but rather, where we have been.

For all of human history the freedom of speech has been contested, and historically it has been done so with both bloodshed and violence.

But in no other time in our generation has this been so widely apparent. It is said, “from the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks”, and we have seen the dogma of some who have sought to control the speech of others, and therefore sought to control their hearts.

So I will not demand you speak. I will not force my freedom to be the cause in removal of your own. I will not seek to control your speech or your heart. They do not belong to me.

I will simply say for myself…

To not speak is to close up my heart; to not speak is to numb a pain not just my own; to not speak is to fear those who can destroy the body and to ignore Him who can destroy both body and soul.

I will not betray my heart. It is broken, and so is this little speech.

But here it is: If we will not change, this will not change.

If the tide will not shift at this, it is not long before we all will be dragged under its current. And if we are, perhaps it is because the water was too strong, or because we were too weak to swim against it.

But there is a man whose very speech the wind and waves obey. Whose message brought about his own death, but whose bloody death did not end in vain, but who rose again in glorious life… and to what end? But for the message of his gospel to go out to the ends of the earth.

And to whom else shall we go? He holds the words of eternal life…

“America, of course, like every other human thing, can in spiritual sense live or die as much as it chooses. But at the present moment the matter which America has very seriously to consider is not how near it is to its birth and beginning, but how near it may be to its end. It is only a verbal question whether the American civilization is young; it may become a very practical and urgent question whether it is dying.” -G.K. Chesterton