From the desk of: Steve Elliott

I'm desperately sad.

It's easy to question if there is any hope for our nation, for our world.

The brutal murders of children at the Catholic school in Minnesota. Iryna Zarutska, the young woman massacred in cold blood on a metro in Charlotte. And now, Charlie Kirk.

I didn't know Charlie. What I know is that Charlie did what I couldn't do. And while I don't pretend to have any of the gifts or abilities of Charlie Kirk, perhaps Charlie did what I wouldn't do.

+ + A world without a spiritual, moral or physical compass...

I won't even pretend to understand what's happening, but here's what it seems...

Broadly speaking, the Political Left lacks a spiritual, moral or physical compass. I'm not turning Charlie's death political. I'm speaking what is reality in our world right now, so I'm going to speak to the elephant in the room....

The Right is overwhelmingly church-going with a basis in faith and family.

The Left is overwhelmingly NOT church-going and lacks a basis in faith and family.

I say physical compass because being anchored in your actual gender and in man-woman marriage and in raising children and in attending church physically ANCHORS the human soul in something beyond politics.

+ + When the world shifted...

Have you ever wondered why everything in our world feels out of control? It's because we've lost the two anchors of faith and family, and it's happened in a generation.

Since 1937, the Gallup organization has periodically conducted a study of church attendance in America. In 1937, 73% of Americans attended church/synagogue regularly. Dare to guess what that percentage was in 2000?

Would you be shocked to learn it was still 70% in 2000?

Over a span of more than six decades, about the same percentage of Americans regularly attended a house of worship.

Then, the world shifted.

In 2021, Gallup announced that, for the first time in American history, church membership had dropped below 50% (47%). At the same time, the destruction of marriage and family has meant that near majorities of children today are raised outside of a man-woman married household. In the black community, just one-third of kids are raised (anchored) in a mother-father home.

The physical compasses of faith and family are gone. And then politicians step in and uses this lack of spiritual and moral compass to leverage fear and foment hate and anger... and action... against political opponents. And without these real-life anchors in God's ordained reality, the result is kids at a Catholic school, and a young woman on a train, and Charlie Kirk, are dead.

+ + What happens when politics is your hope...

No matter how much I may disagree with or oppose any political leader or ideal, that political debate never touches my core spiritual and physical reality. I pray. I read God's Word. I hug my wife and kids. I go to church and hear the Good News again and again.

Simply put, we have a hope beyond politics, a hope many on the political Left lack.

I'm not saying that individual politicians or citizens on the Left lack spiritual hope. I'm saying any politics -- Left or Right -- void of the foundation of faith in God lacks hope beyond politics. So the rhetoric lacks hope beyond politics. So the gun is pointed at political opponents who must be taken out to advance their only hope... politics.

That's how an MSNBC talking head, shortly after news broke of the Kirk shooting, could say, "We don't know if this was a supporter shooting their gun off in celebration." And then there's Van Jones who, this week, accused Charlie of race mongering and said Charlie "should be ashamed of himself" (you can watch Charlie's rebuttal here). Now, Charlie is dead.

+ + Elon Musk just called for revival?!

About 12 hours prior to the assassination of Charlie Kirk, Elon Musk reposted a clip of a video in which Musk essentially made this same point of the need for the spiritual compass:

"The actions of the West are indistinguishable from suicide.... Unless people have a sense of optimism and purpose about the future, suicide might be just what happens. Having a child is a sense of optimism about the future. I think we need to give people a sense of optimism about the future….

"Nature abhors a vacuum. And if you take away religion, then I think you actually get something in its space which is actually worse than what was there before, like destructive.... you get the woke mind virus filling the hole that religion used to have.... taking the place of religion. You get these dystopian de-facto religions that are very self-destructive.

"So I think perhaps some sort of revival of religion or at least...what we need is some coherent philosophy that people can get excited about."

The timing of this can't be a coincidence.

Do we have the courage to pray that God will cause the reality of Elon's own words about revival posted just hours before Charlie's death to burn in his heart and soul? And let's believe for a great, Christ-centered move of His Spirit to sweep across our land, beginning with us, and our homes and families and churches and communities.

+ + Inflection point

In geometry, an inflection point is the point on the graph at which the curve changes from convex (pointing down) to concave (pointing up), or vice versa. It is that point at which the direction changes. The turning point.

This feels like an inflection point. If not for the nation, at least for me.

I've been sensing a shifting of the currents in my life. It has been unsettling. The future has felt less certain. The path forward less clear. Perhaps you have been feeling much the same.

Just recently, I was reminded that this whole drama (of our own lives) isn't really about us. It's about His-story in our lives. It's about the testimony of Jesus that God is unfolding through our days.

Deep down, I know I won't look back and think God let me down. The new challenge I've been sensing is to have the courage and the faith to look ahead with excitement about the testimony to God's faithfulness that the Lord will work out in my life in the days ahead.

This is how, even in the darkest times, followers of Jesus can have hope and even excitement rise again in our hearts for our lives, our families, our communities and even our nation. God is still on the throne and will be glorified.

There's that compass again. It's pointing north, giving us the orientation we need to move forward.

Let's press on with the courage and optimism and faith of Charlie Kirk.

Steve Elliott