“Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.”
—Matthew 10:34
It was Wednesday of this past week – Sept. 10, 2025 – and as usual, I was hosting my radio show out of Montgomery.
It had already been a fractious and bloody week in the news.
Somehow, I had escaped watching the murderous stabbing of Iryna Zarutska dominating the news cycle, but on Wednesday morning, I had unintentionally witnessed the unedited video of Iryna’s death while scrolling.
The senselessness of those few seconds, the shock and horror on Zarutska’s face in her final moments before slumping over and bleeding out, gripped me like a cold hand clasped around my heart. And as I continued consuming the political clash and clamor in reaction to her murder, it felt as though I was drinking poison and being primed to spit poison.
As much as I felt righteous indignation for Zarutska’s murder (and the impetus to correct the rotten policies that led to her untimely and undignified death), I could also feel my indignation hardening into something beyond a noble desire for justice – righteousness callused over with resentment for the inhuman spectacle modern media makes of our all-too-human tragedies.
As an attempt at remedy, I returned to a recurring personal theme of mine for my Wednesday radio show – the tyrant in you is the tyrant in me – quoting to my radio audience that classic line from Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in “The Gulag Archipelago”:
The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either -- but right through every human heart -- and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. And even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained.
Yet, not even Solzhenitsyn’s wisdom could have prepared me for what I witnessed going into the final hour of my show on that Wednesday.
Sitting in the radio studio alone during the top-of-the-hour commercial break, I found myself furiously scrolling through social media looking for more details on the breaking news – Charlie Kirk has been shot – and mere seconds before going back on air, I saw the close-up video of Kirk’s assassination.
As I turned on my microphone, I began pleading over and over again through tears for my audience to “pray for Charlie Kirk,” – and though I prayed it wasn’t true, I knew no one could have survived what I had witnessed in graphic detail – what millions of people worldwide would go on to witness in graphic detail.
Eventually, the authorities confirmed what I knew: Charlie Kirk is dead.
Unlike witnessing Zarutska’s death, I did not feel a cold hand clasping, but a fire piercing through my heart.
As I tried to go to bed that evening, I kept seeing that awful moment of Kirk’s death flash before my eyes until I finally succumbed to dreamless sleep.
As I awoke the next morning, I kept seeing Kirk’s death, so I shared this message online, knowing many others had seen the video:
“I am not okay. So I pray for peace.”
But I keep seeing it in my mind – that bullet ripping through his throat, this life ripped from him in an instant – and I feel a mix of sorrow and helplessness, fear and fury, as the fool’s hope I have for this world hangs by the thread of my hopes for grace in the undiscovered country after death.
But I keep seeing that moment play out in my mind.
When I catch old clips of him, I see it.
When I witness people pray for him, I see it.
When I watch people cheer his murder, I see it.
When I read the political posts for and from every which way, action and reaction in an endless spiral of noise, I see it.
So I pray for peace with hope that though I’m not OK today, I will be in time, that eventually my memory of his moment of death will subside, where memories of his living legacy will reside.
And I pray others will find peace in time enough before they give into resentment, despair, and destruction for destruction’s sake – that the hour is never too late for Him and His grace to reach those who have not already hardened their own hearts.
I confess: I pray for peace because I do not have peace.
Yet, a strange thing keeps happening every time I pray for peace.
I do not find peace but a sword aflame in my heart – as though the line separating good and evil has been sharpened and set ablaze to cut and burn away at the cowardice of conscience – beckoning me to take up my cross and follow Him.
I suspect I am not the only prodigal son who feels this way in the aftermath of Kirk’s death – and though I do not know what this will mean in practice for a poisoned wretch like me in the days, months and years ahead, I pray that more prodigal sons who are too much of this world will take a leap of faith and find peace, not in this world, but in the world to come.
Indeed, though I cannot prove it and do not claim to truly understand, the fire in my heart tells me Charlie Kirk was martyred for living out and courageously sharing his faith in the gospel of Jesus Christ.
He was put down because he was too good for this world. May we all strive to be so good that this world must put us down, too.
Joey Clark is a native Alabamian and is currently the host of the radio program News and Views on News Talk 93.1 FM WACV out of Montgomery, AL, M-F 12 p.m. - 3 p.m. His column appears every Tuesday in 1819 News. To contact Joey for media or speaking appearances, as well as any feedback, please email [email protected]. Follow him on X @TheJoeyClark or watch the radio show livestream.
The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the policy or position of 1819 News. To comment, please send an email with your name and contact information to [email protected].
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