Living From Sunday 2 Sunday
Living From Sunday 2 Sunday
EP 183: Nah, This Ain't It! - A Charlie Kirk Retrospective
What happens when the faith we profess doesn't match the fruit we produce? The tragic assassination of Charlie Kirk has ignited a fierce debate among Christians about authenticity, integrity, and the true nature of discipleship.
As your host Pastor B reflects on this polarizing moment, we journey through scripture to rediscover what genuine Christianity looks like beyond Sunday rhetoric. Drawing from Galatians 5 and Jesus' encounter with the fruitless fig tree, we examine the disconnect between claiming Christ and embodying His character.
The fruit of the Spirit—love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control—isn't meant to be optional for believers. When we're truly filled with God's presence, these qualities overflow naturally as excess "nutrients" that nourish others. Yet what happens when public figures who claim Christianity simultaneously spread division, demeaning rhetoric, and racial prejudice?
This thoughtful exploration challenges us to look beyond political alliances and consider a crucial spiritual principle: "Vile words and good words shouldn't come from the same fountain." While we extend compassion and prayers to Kirk's grieving family, we must honestly assess what this moment reveals about the divided state of American Christianity.
Where do we go from here? Perhaps the answer lies in recommitting to integrity—ensuring our words edify rather than demean, unite rather than divide. As scripture warns, God "hates those who sow discord among the brethren." Let this sobering reminder inspire us to produce fruit worthy of our calling.
Join our growing community by subscribing, sharing, and hitting the notification bell so you never miss an episode. The conversation continues next week as we keep exploring what it means to truly live from Sunday to Sunday.
Welcome to the Living From Sunday to Sunday podcast with your host, pastor B. This podcast is designed to help you walk faithfully with God through the various trials and challenges this life presents. The truth of who we are is revealed in our lives in between Sundays. You will be inspired, challenged and equipped to live a victorious life that will bring glory to God himself. Come on, let's get started. Hello and welcome to another episode of the Living from Sunday to Sunday podcast. I am your host, pastor B. Thank you so much for tuning into today's episode. I believe that this is going to be the best 15, 20, 30 minutes of your day, so do me a favor please make sure that you like, share and subscribe. I want this podcast to go around the world, so share it. Like it. If you're watching on YouTube, make sure that you subscribe to my page and hit that notification bell so that you are notified the moment a new episode drops.
Speaker 1:After one of, I think, the most polarizing events in our country, as well as in the Christian space that we've had in a really, really long time of Charlie Kirk is one that it really is something where there's a segment of people who have no idea who Charlie Kirk is. There's also a group of people who are fully invested in Charlie Kirk and then there's people who are like in the middle, right, and I kind of found myself in the middle. And I kind of found myself in the middle His target audience, his demographic was, and his death, all right. So I want to first open um and say that no one has the right to die at the hands of an assassin's bullet, right, murder is not okay. It's like not okay at all. It doesn't matter who you are. And so empathy, prayers, support anytime that a family grieves of the loss of a father, when you're talking about a wife, when you're talking about kids right, you're talking about kids, right that grief process is something that lasts for the rest of their lives. So, certainly, praying for his wife and his young kids because life is going to be different right in the secrets of their home, whenever they're in their private spaces, that loss, that hurt is going to be deep and it's going to take a lifetime to kind of cope with that. So you never want to see that with someone who was as young as Charlie was, who's only 31, right. So that's really, really, really, really sad and really, really unfortunate.
Speaker 1:But what has come as a result of Charlie Kirk's passing is a discussion, a debate about what does Christianity represent and what does it really look like? What's the most important part of being a Christian? Is it solely the words that you speak? Right, because Charlie Kirk believed he had some Christian beliefs. He said some Christian things, and I'm being very particular with my words right now. There are videos of him proclaiming that Jesus is Lord. There are videos of him explaining the benefits of grace, right, and that Jesus opens up the opportunity for all of mankind to receive salvation. Right, it's not anything that you can earn. Right, it is by the grace of God that we are saved. That part is scripture. But out of the same vessel and out of the same mouth is a man who was very racist. He was very. He had very strong opinions about women in the workplace, black women specifically. He had such divisive words and such divisive rhetoric that when I learned of his passing and I learned of people on social media calling his death a death of martyrdom for Christianity, I was a little confused Because, again going back to the opening question, what does a Christian look like?
Speaker 1:Right, what matters more? Do your words have to align with your actions? Or is there a double standard? Is there a lane of hypocrisy that you can reside in and still hold true to the claims of being a disciplined follower of Christ? Because that really is what a Christian is. It's not really a label, it's not a bumper sticker, it's not a tag on a social media post, it's not a cross emoji. If you really say that you are a Christian, if you are a believer of God, then some of the right things, his life, for the vast majority of what you see, does not mirror that.
Speaker 1:Scripture tells us that vile words and good words shouldn't come out of the same fountain, right. Shouldn't come from the same place, right. If I am looking to you as a person who has spiritual insight, spiritual knowledge is someone that should be a model for righteousness, should be a model for righteousness. There should be more God-centered encouragement, love-based information that you speak about. That should be the prevalent bulk of your content or the prevalent nature of your life and your behavior. And the ratio, from what I can see and from what I can find, the ratio of positivity to hateful rhetoric. For Mr Kirk, there was more hateful rhetoric than there was edification and we don't know the one thing that I will always, always say, is that no one has a hell or a heaven to put anybody in, and it doesn't matter how much you agree with what people say, how much you despise what people say, the ultimate judge and the ultimate separator of the tares from the wheat, the sheep from the goat, it's God himself, right?
Speaker 1:However, scripture does give us a couple of indications as to what it looks like to have someone who is being led by the spirit of God, and those things are reflective in Galatians, chapter 5. 24, I believe, starts at 20, no, at 22, sorry starting in verse 22. And it's the fruit of the spirit, right? These are the characteristics of someone who has submitted their life to God, and all nine of these characteristics make up the fruit. And here's an interesting thing about fruit Fruit is an excess of nutrients, so the tree absorbs all of the nutrients that it needs to live and that it needs to survive, needs to live and that it needs to survive, and the excess of those nutrients is the fruit that other people can pick off and live off of right.
Speaker 1:And so if I am walking with God, if each and every day I am submitting my will to him. I am being filled with his love. I am submitting my will to him. I am being filled with his love, filled with his joy, his peace, his long suffering, his gentleness, his kindness, his meekness, his self-control Right, these are things that the spirit is filling me with personally for my own journey. And then what's extra, what's left over, allows me to be an effective witness for him, because I have all of this love to give. I have all of this joy to exude. Right, I have a mindset of peace that I'm sharing with others. I've learned how to be patient with others. I've learned how to walk through difficult trials of life and suffer, well, right, endure hardness. Right, my communication starts from a gentle place, right, right.
Speaker 1:And If those, if these godly characteristics are not seen in someone who professes to be a Christian, a believer in God, then the messaging is wrong. Right, it's similar to how the Jesus he cursed the fig tree because the fig tree had all of these leaves. Right, and if you have leaves as a fig tree, this means that you should have some fruit that someone can pick off of you and eat from. Jesus goes to this tree that has these huge leaves and there's no figs. Right, so the messaging is wrong. You're presenting yourself as someone who is your name. Let me put it that way your name says that I am a believer, I am a Christian. That is what my name says. However, when I taste your fruit, when I sample what you've offered to the world, it's riding to the core.
Speaker 1:And what's sad is that so many people's appetites have been so maligned by evil and maligned by delusion and confusion that we're taking poison and not realizing that we're killing ourselves. We're addicted to the poison, right? Because there are so many people that have aligned themselves with the belief that Charlie Kirk, that his death serves as a reminder that he was God's man, and I just don't see it. I just don't see it. And there are even people who are using this situation, and it's so evil and wrong to do this, but they're using this situation as similar to Stephen in the Bible. For those who may not know, stephen was a faithful deacon in the first church in Acts, and Stephen is preaching the gospel. He is preaching in front of an angry crowd and he is stoned in the middle of his preaching Right. And so the parallels are there, but it's such a stretch, right?
Speaker 1:Mr kirk unfortunately was killed while he was speaking, uh, to a group of college students in utah, right, and yeah, it's a stretch to say that he's ste. And you know, it's disheartening because I had to ask myself, man, like, are we serving the same God? Like, how can you? Are you ignoring all of the negativity, are you ignoring all of the pain that his words have caused? Or do you even acknowledge that those words were hurtful, that those words were demeaning, that those words really, really impacted families, like he was so outspoken during George Floyd when he, you know, was killed by that police officer. He was so outspoken and demeaned the character of George Floyd, right, just racist, right.
Speaker 1:And it's like, how do you reconcile those words, even if he said something that sounded good, how does the small amount of good outweigh all of the bad? And again, I'm not trying to put this man in hell or in heaven. What I'm saying is all I can look at is the fruit of his words, all I can look at objectively because, again, I'm in the middle, I'm not a fan of his, I'm not an enemy of his, I was just mildly familiar with him. And because this is such a polarizing subject, you know, I talked to my wife about it because I was confused man. I just I talked to my wife about it because I was confused man.
Speaker 1:I just it just didn't make any sense to me how we could be so misguided and how we can be so lost and so divided, to the point to where the Christian faith is split between honoring him as a righteous man of God and having compassion for his passing, but also holding him accountable for his hateful words. And I'm honestly on the side of compassion and prayer for his family. But he said what he said and he meant what he said, and his words hurt, his words demeaned people, and there's no way that you can convince me otherwise, right? So the question is where do we go from here, right? What lessons have we learned from what's happened to Mr Kirk and what is the status of the church right now? I don't have all of those answers, but what I do know, and what I've had to process and work through, is investigating and reaffirming what I believe.
Speaker 1:What type of person do I want to be? Do I want to be a person whose words edify, build and encourage, or do I want to be a person who demeans, is hateful and is divisive? Scripture tells us that God hates, he absolutely hates, people who sow discord among the brethren right. He specifically says the brethren, which is the brothers and sisters of the faith right, which is the brothers and sisters of the faith right. And unfortunately, the result of Mr Kirk's passing has revealed that his life and his words obviously sow discord in the Christian faith Right.
Speaker 1:And so if God sees someone who does that as an abomination, I won't dare glaze over the fact and make it to be something that it's not All right. It is what it is, and so I have to choose my words carefully. I have to ask God, lord, tell me what to say, tell me how to respond. Even if I'm supposed to to respond Because it's, it becomes more and more difficult sometimes, but not every situation demands an immediate response Like this is almost, nearly, almost nearly a week since it happened, and again I had conversations with my wife, kind of thought about it a long time and you know, I've just kind of resolved my fact, resolved myself to the fact that I just don't want to be a hateful person. My words matter, right. The fruit matters, right. I want to have some level of integrity that when people see me, when they hear my name, that there's more positive confirmations and affirmations, and that helped people more than harmed people. All right, all right, I think that's about enough.
Speaker 1:All right, thank you guys so much for joining me tonight. Thank you for subscribing to the podcast. Right, and if you haven't, this podcast is available everywhere where they may be found, right, good pods, apple podcast, spotify, like, share and subscribe. If you're watching via YouTube, subscribe to the show. Hit that notification bell so that you are notified the next time a new video drops. All right, until next time, y'all, I'll see y'all when I see you. Bye, don't forget to like, share and subscribe to our channel, as well as this podcast, everywhere where they can be found. Have a great one.
