If You Are Not Heartbroken Right Now – Shame

Thursday, September 25, 2025

I guess I am too optimistic.  I thought the Charlie Kirk assassination would represent some sort of nadir, but alas, yesterday’s ICE shooting proves me quite wrong.  Our politics are a symptom of our problems, but our problems are deep, deep in the soul of this nation.

The host says, “get to church.”  Can’t disagree with that.  He lays out part of the problem with a montage of commentators comparing ICE doing its job to gestapo raids, a contention now reinforced by law in California.  Our universities are beyond awful.  Social media is training AI in lunacy, thus advancing lunacy.  In that same “get to church” segment the host lists all the recent political violence we have witnessed.  A recent Quinnipiac poll:

In the wake of the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, 79 percent of voters say the United States is in a political crisis,

Yes, but when I stack up the news like that I cannot help but think that politics is the symptom, not the disease.

We want to look for the devil – Obama with his massive ego and dismissive nature, Biden with his ineptitude, Trump with his gruff directness.  Trump is trying to solve the problems, as the host opines he is an A->B guy.  But some problems can’t be solved in an A->B fashion.  Usually this is because the problem you are trying to solve isn’t really the problem, it’s just a specific expression of the problem.  Therefore, when you solve that expression, the problem just finds another way to express itself – often more odious than the expression you just ended.

Regular readers already know what I am going to say here – the problem is sin – the problem is our separation from God – the problem is the removal of religion from the public square.  I am far, far from the only one to make this observation and to say this.  But the church sits on its haunches when the time to act is so clearly at hand.  I dearly love the open proclamation of the gospel that was the Kirk memorial – but it also confused the issue.

The gospel is decidedly apolitical. Sure in this specific time, the gospel points us in one particular direction politically, but the gospel is not political.  The Gospel of Jesus Christ is not meant to produce a vote – it is meant to deal with the brokenness of the human heart.  It is meant to repair our souls.  Then we decide how to vote and how to act politically based on those repaired souls.  There is no A->B solution to our political problems, we must solve our soul problems – only then can we worry about our politics.

The host is right – get to church.  But we need to drag a whole lot of people with us. And we need to make sure our church is the kind of church that is going to heal their souls, not just encourage them back into social action.  Jesus did not say, “Go and vote Republican,” even if voting Republican is a good idea.  Jesus said, “Go and sin no more.”  That’s the business we need to be about.