Charlie Kirk's Murder Was a Glimpse of Satan

I fear for our society as much as I mourn his death

CHARLIE KIRK’S MURDER WAS A GLIMPSE OF SATAN

I fear for our society as much as I mourn his death

Ashley

I don’t know what to do. So I will write.

I remember the first time I encountered heavy evil in someone’s eyes and voice.

It was 2016, the night of The Election—you know, the one where normal people began to lose their minds. My small, young adult Bible study group was watching the results come in. Given their professed faith, you’d think that those disturbed by the unfolding events would be hopeful, leaning on their religion even in their uncertainty and anger. Sadly, the peace of Christ did not surpass all understanding that night. It wasn’t allowed to.

In the months leading up to the election, I had already been twice yelled at or filibustered by the group’s caricature of a “pastor” for my political ideas, so I thought I’d seen it all at that point. But I could not have even guessed the response of one fellow Christian, several years older than me, who looked me in the eyes and said, “I hope Donald Trump gets shot in the face. Literally.”

I stared, frozen. He didn’t flinch. He wasn’t joking. It took a moment for someone to halfheartedly suggest that he shouldn’t say that. And then he doubled down.

The experience shook me to my core. I never looked at him the same again. Whatever basic, unspoken trust I had that he was sane fled with the searing hatred in his voice and eyes. It was like an acrid stench that I had inhaled, that shoved its way into every nook and cranny of my being. I realized immediately that while he was talking specifically about Donald Trump, he was also unleashing his deep hatred on the next available thing: Me. Like a pressure cooker that needs to let off a little steam.

This week, the entire internet got a jarring flood of the same satanic bile.

We are increasingly surrounded by people who celebrate death. People who have become vessels for unspeakable cruelty. People who say your words are violence but their violence is speech. People who will probably never know what it means to utter words worth dying for, but who celebrate killing the few brave souls who do. People who hate those who truly live outside the box—because if your beliefs are represented in the preponderance of TV shows, movies, books, and newsrooms you are no longer an original.

You are a faded copy. And perhaps a monstrous bully to boot.

Evil never just takes a piece of you. It wants every bit of you. And it will lie in wait for all time, watching and waiting for you to surrender a piece here and there, until it takes so much of you that you are unrecognizable. Until, one day, you make a video of yourself cheering that a man was assassinated in cold blood in full view of the entire world, put popular music to your reaction, and with no sense of shame hit “publish.”

“If then the light in you is darkness, how great is that darkness!” —Matthew 6:23

You are descending into hell, hand over hand. Your spiritual cancer has metastasized.

And even then, after sacrificing your soul on the altar, you still don’t get to be the main villain. You’ll never call the shots. Only one creature gets that title and rules the temporary economy of darkness. Which makes you merely a decrepit, skinless ghoul groveling at the devil’s feet for rotten scraps in his losing war of attrition.

To those horrified and outraged at what they are seeing in their fellow Americans, I applaud you—the silent scream that goes off in your head when you encounter someone celebrating another’s death means your soul is blessedly still alive. Your intuition is telling you that such people are not safe, and indeed they are not. Their readiness to not only justify but celebrate the macabre, the morbid, the plainly evil makes them dangerous. That’s what I felt that night, almost ten years ago—the man in my Bible study wasn’t just talking about Donald Trump. In a way, he was talking about me, and not only me, but millions of my fellow Americans.

Because if someone can hope a political figure gets shot in the face and if someone can celebrate a political figure being assassinated, then they can justify the same end for anyone.

First it’s, “Donald Trump is a fascist.” Then it’s, “All fascists should die.” And today it’s, “Charlie Kirk is dead?! Thoughts and prayers to the bullet, lol.”

And tomorrow it could well be, “What was Ashley expecting?”

Maybe I have my priorities backwards, but I have wept more over the last 24 hours for the state of our society than I did for Charlie Kirk. He didn’t deserve to be assassinated and his precious family shouldn’t have to go on without him. But his suffering is over and he is standing in the presence of Jesus Christ, hearing the words that every Christian longs to hear. He did far more in 31 years than most of us will do in 90 and, in a world of virtual lives and online heroics, that’s fucking revolutionary.

I wish I could have met him. I look forward to the day that I do.

In the meantime, I am done being silent.

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Ashley was born and raised in Los Angeles, California. She is a woman of faith and is completing a political allegory in the horror-fantasy genre. She writes for Substack at anintrovertatlarge.com.