Charlie Kirk's Death: A Symbol of Modern Education

Earlier this week, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), released its latest report on America's education system, demonstrating the worst performance among 12^th graders since 2005 across all subjects. In fact, 12^th graders scored the worst in history in reading since the NAEP began. It wasn't surprising; it is well known that America's education system has been failing our students for decades. You can read about the details of the NAEP report, but it should be obvious to all that if our education system cannot even maintain the status quo, we certainly cannot remain a leading nation in tomorrow’s workforce. Nevertheless, far worse than the academic performance of today’s “Gen Z” is the rapid moral decline among today’s students.

Give me liberty, or?

When the Pilgrims arrived 405 years ago, they quickly established institutions of higher learning to preserve the truth and authority of God’s Word, but with the liberalization of those same institutions in the generations that followed, spiritual indifference and lethargy fell on the church, academia, and the public square. With the dissolution of a moral compass, the effect on society was that “every man did what was right in his own eyes” (cf. Jud 21:25). Even so, God’s grace was still working, and with the Great Awakening came a recovery of the preaching of the gospel, salvation, and renewed piety and vigor. This awakening immediately preceded the American Revolution, influencing America’s founders in the writing of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Without God, there is no liberty, since liberty itself is “endowed by [our] Creator.” Fast-forward a few generations, though, and bad preaching resulted in spiritual darkness once again falling across the land. In place of the truth came a new idea from a godless system propagated by an unserious scientist named Charles Darwin. As evolutionary theory took root and society bought the myth that men came from the ape rather than the image of God, the source of human value, dignity, worth, and liberty collapsed.

"You cannot have liberty if you do not have a Christian population." - Charlie Kirk

“Survival of the species” was the inevitable result.

Nothing occurs in a vacuum. Ideas have consequences, and in the Darwinian years immediately preceding the American Civil War, civil discourse rapidly broke down between the Republican and Democratic parties. It was a battle over worldview that affected everything from tariffs, election fraud, and economic policies to slavery. Protestors torched buildings, looted stores, and ransacked homes. Rhetoric boiled to a flashing point when Charles Sumner, a Republican senator from Massachusetts, was viciously beaten with a cane in the United States Senate Chamber by a pro-slavery democrat in 1856. It nearly killed him. The descriptions of the absolute, vitriolic hatred of the merciless attack are difficult to read even 169 years later. Perhaps worse, rather than condemning the act, Democrats endorsed it, sending the attacker a new cane with the inscription, “Hit him again.” They then wore necklaces made of broken pieces of the cane as an expression of solidarity.

For the next hundred years, the influence of Christianity ebbed and flowed until the arrival of the sexual revolution and postmodernism in the 1960s. The once standard and authoritative truth of God, which defines the nature of what is good, beautiful, and just, was replaced with the man-centered subjectivism of the ancient philosopher Protagoras:

“Man is the measure of all things.”

In 1963, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that there was no place for the Bible in public education. It was “unconstitutional,” but as the lone dissenting judge, Justice Potter Stewart said, “a refusal to permit religious exercises thus is seen, not as the realization of state neutrality, but rather as the establishment of a religion of secularism.” Our society has now inherited the fruit of that religion, and it is not peace.

Tuesday's premeditated assassination of Charlie Kirk shocked the nation with alarmingly similar violence and approval as the attack on Sumner in 1856. Charlie Kirk is a martyr in every sense of the word, yet MSNBC’s political analyst couldn’t conceal his animosity toward Kirk’s commitment to his faith that informed his conservative worldview:

“Hateful thoughts lead to hateful words, which then lead to hateful actions. You can’t stop with these sort of awful thoughts you have and then saying [sic] these awful words and then not expect awful actions to take place.”

Ultimately, Dowd was fired, and MSNBC issued an apology, but every astute historian, philosopher, or citizen realizes that there is an alarming trajectory in our society toward self-destructive hatred. A quick search on Bluesky uncovers the superficiality of the left’s alleged moral superiority. They’re not condemning violence. They’re glorifying it.

As lawmakers react, point blame, and excogitate rebuttal, the question immediately before us is one of causation. As Virgil said in 29 B.C., “Blessed is he who is able to know the causes of things.” Before we can offer a solution, we have to understand the heart of the problem. Ironically, it is this very problem Charles Kirk committed his life to address, and was ultimately killed for, since “men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil. For everyone who does evil hates the Light” (Jn 3:19-20). That is the first cause, the soul of the problem, and history bears witness that the further society drifts from the light of God’s truth, the more lawless and rebellious it becomes. It is why every generation must guard the treasure that has been entrusted to them (1 Tim 1:14). Otherwise, justice comes out perverted.

The State of the Union

Our country is now in a war for the truth, once again “testing whether that nation, or any nation, can long endure,” as President Lincoln said on November 19, 1863. Unlike the American Civil War, however, which required its battles to be fought by men, today’s conflict places our most innocent children at the center of the front line—in our schools. That many are simply ignoring the reality is unconscionable.

We have a fatal problem in our nation, and we cannot respond as the people did in the days of Jeremiah, who “healed the brokenness of My people superficially, saying ‘Peace, peace,’ but there is no peace” (Jer 6:14). No amount of legislation or calls to cool rhetoric will ultimately fix the problem. Paul said, “Their feet are swift to shed blood, destruction and misery are in their paths, and the path of peace they have not known” (Rom 3:15-16). The first cause, then, as Charlie Kirk would himself testify, is with man’s heart (Jer 17:9). Violence in our world is merely a symptom of godlessness, and it will proceed from bad to worse without the light of truth (Jn 1:9; 2 Tim 3:1). That is especially true in a society that has called “evil good and good evil” and systematically cast-off God (Isa 5:20; Ps 2:1-3). Before there can be peace among men, there must be peace between man and God (Eph 2:8-9). We must, therefore, base our institutions of learning systems, our worldviews, our laws, and our education on the objective truth of God’s Word. As the Apostle Paul said in Ephesians 6:12, “Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places.”

Without God, “man is the measure of all things.” We are now experiencing systemic violence after sixty years of a godless education system. Yes, America is falling behind in academia, and something needs to be done, but what good is academic excellence if we “bite and devour one another” (Gal 5:15)?

"If truth be not diffused, error will be." - Daniel Webster

Any meaningful educational reform must recover biblical instruction in the home, the church, and the classroom. It is the only path to peace.