Are We Just Going to Kill *Everyone* Who Disagrees?
The following excerpt is from the introduction to my upcoming book, Love Goes First. Although I wrote these words months ago, in light of Charlie Kirk’s assassination this week they seem particularly relevant.
“Whether you are a vegan or a West Texas wildcatter, whether you are a Hasidic Jew or a gun owner, whether you are an environmental activist or a religious conservative—and even if you are all of the above—there are millions of other people who want the exact opposite thing from what you want, and millions of people who are working to oppose what you want and implement its opposite. In the words of Mike Tyson, “Everyone has a plan till they get punched in the mouth.” What’s your plan to reach those people and win them over to your point of view?
Good intentions will not be enough. You can say you want world peace, but unless you have a plan to win over the people who want war, and unless you are willing to back that up with conviction and sacrificial action, your good intentions won’t amount to all that much.
Gaining political power and achieving electoral victories can seem like the answer, but political power is by its nature impermanent and incomplete. Even if your party wins at the ballot box, there will still be millions of people who voted against what you voted for, people who will then work hard to overturn whatever the last election made possible. Political victories are usually short-lived. There is always another election in the future, and political popularity tends to swing like a pendulum between opposing parties—who is up will then be down, and vice versa.
No, political power alone will not get us what we want. So how do we motivate deeper change than the changes wrought at the ballot box? How do we change the people on the other side?
Of course, there have always been people throughout history who decided that reaching their opponents was a fool’s errand and that violence was the best way to overcome division—just kill the people in the way. Violence is effective, but only in the short term. This is because controlling and coercing other people through violence will constantly require more and more violence just to maintain control, and soon the path of violence will become an all-encompassing end in itself—a police state requires a lot of policing. Are you going to kill everyone who stands in the way? And in the end, of course, we cannot actually side-step the moral question anyway: Each of us will have to stand before the Lord on judgment day, and may God have mercy on the ones who chose to live by the sword. Violence is not the answer.
Whoever we are, we must confront the stone-cold fact that in this country there are millions of people who do not like us or think like us or believe like us—people who want the exact opposite of what we want—and they aren’t going anywhere.
For Christians the question of how to reach those who hate us has a particular urgency because Jesus has told us that reaching every single people group on earth is the church’s divine purpose: “Go and make disciples of all nations” (Matt. 28:19). In the divided world in which we find ourselves, how are we going to reach the people who do not share our beliefs? What do we do now? Is there any way to break through and reach the people on the other side?
There is, and this book is about how to do it. I am tired of just talking about the problems that divide us, and so this is a book about how to go on offense. I’m writing as a pastor interested in equipping people to take action, to reach across division. This book is about how we, as American Christians, can reach the people who believe we are the problem, those who hate us and all we stand for. And though our situation might seem difficult, this book is not a complaint or an indulgent excuse, it is a way forward. Which is good, because with regard to its divine mission of reaching the world, the church is facing an unprecedented challenge….”
This book can’t get here soon enough—the release date is October 7. Please pre-order and help get the word out.
