I Don’t Fear Losing an Argument to the Christian Right
In light of some recent events and incendiary accusations about the violent schemes of the left in America, I wanted to set the record straight in the hope that there will be less finger pointing and more reflection.
That’s a high bar for our social media crazy world, but I’ve got to try…
In my Bible classes at an evangelical Christian university and an evangelical Christian seminary, I learned how to think critically about my ideas and then present them with evidence. There’s a simple format I learned to use when sharing my thoughts on how to interpret a biblical passage, and you’ll recognize it in many commentaries and sermons.
Start with the least likely explanation.
Present the more likely options in the middle.
End with the most likely option.
Throughout each step, I learned to present evidence for each idea, including support for my claims that a certain interpretation was the least likely and that another interpretation was the most likely. I learned similar skills in my literature classes at my undergrad. I was a double major, and both courses of study helped me to think critically as a Christian.
We sought to share our ideas with the care and attention to detail modeled by C.S. Lewis in his reasoning about the divinity of Jesus: Someone who made the kinds of claims that Jesus made was a liar, lunatic, or savior.
That was how I learned to think and present my ideas as a Christian college student, and it’s very similar to the lessons being taught at Christian and secular universities across the country. In fact, I’m married to a college professor and have many friends who are college professors, so I know this world quite well.
The perspective of these professors, some of whom are Christian and some of whom are not, is strikingly the same: students are free to present a point of view in an essay or presentation, provided they can back it up with some evidence. I have never heard of a professor who dismissed a student’s view out of hand because he/she personally disagreed. In fact, they welcome students who disagree with them and want to see students advance their own ideas and support them. (Like any profession, I’m sure someone can dig up an anecdote of a professor who falls short of this standard.)
These professors do not see their students as threats to their views or have designs on molding them according to a detailed agenda. The agenda is to think about things and then carefully present what you think with supporting evidence or details.
This is a far cry from what you’ll hear about professors and intellectuals from right wing influencers, who view professors as a threat.
When I saw that conservative influencer Charlie Kirk was tragically assassinated at an event, the horror of that heinous act was compounded by unsupported accusations that his killer was someone on the left. I could have told you right from the start that it was highly unlikely that a person on the left killed him. I grew up in the conservative Christian/conservative political world and now consider myself a progressive Christian who tends to vote for Democrats, and I can assure you that “killing” people you disagree with, even if they threaten your safety, is extremely far from the rank and file of people on the left.
Put simply, the vast majority of the people on the left had zero fear of Charlie Kirk as a threat to our beliefs or intellectual values. We saw his “prove me wrong” posturing as a front for fake intellectualism and a way to troll people on the left in order to generate viral video clips when an unprepared student wandered into his recorded trap. If I took Kirk’s approach to a paper on a biblical passage, let alone a sermon, I’d be laughed out of the room.
“The Sermon on the Mount is about real poverty being blessed, not just spiritual poverty. PROVE ME WRONG!”
That’s not what folks would call “winsome” Christian debate or critical thinking. C. S. Lewis may call that sort of reasoning, “damn nonesense.” It’s just posturing with a dose of provocation trying to get a rise out of someone so Kirk can record a reaction from the “unhinged left.” Almost no one on the left feared his arguments. Why would anyone want someone with such a poor style of argument dead?
I will tell you why I and many others did fear with someone like Kirk. He managed to drive a lot of wedges between people with his culture war rhetoric, his tendency to fabricate stories (such as public school teachers letting their kids identify themselves as a cat), and his use of stochastic terrorism.
Stochastic terrorism has been all over the place since Trump hit the political scene in 2015 or so. The basic premise is that a stochastic terrorist creates the environment for violence and even directs violence in certain directions, but they never directly participate or give precise directions on what to do.
Kirk utilized stochastic terrorism on a regular basis through his watch list of professors. While stoking fear and distrust of professors on his massive platform, Kirk then provided a list of the professors he deemed the most threatening.
Although he could claim ignorance of what happened next, the results were highly predictable, as his followers terrorized these professors with threats and harassment. Kirk could have called them off or told them to leave the professors alone. I don’t see any record of him doing so.
Even if people on the left “feared” Kirk’s stochastic terrorism tactics, no one wanted him dead. In fact, killing Kirk would only further enrage his followers toward the left and appear to prove him right about the threat from the left. Heck, the Democratic brand is that we’re too busy fighting each other to do much of anything else!
The overwhelming sentiment on the left is that no one wanted to see any harm come to Kirk. As a Christian, I would say that he was created in God’s image and was a husband, father, and son who should be alive today. I was horrified at his death. It’s the last thing I would have wanted for him, and his murder has only made all of us less safe.
I didn’t fear the arguments of right wing thinkers, especially religious posers like Kirk. I don’t know anyone who did. I’m sure some folks have gotten pissed off in the heat of a moment and said some things they later regretted, but the vast majority of folks on the left know that violence against people like Kirk is a waste of time and a dangerous escalation.
People who fear the arguments of others rely on violence and intimidation to silence their opponents. When I see the weak argument style of Kirk’s perspective and his stochastic terror tactics against university professors, it’s hard to miss what’s really going on here. I assure you, intellectuals on the left avoided Kirk because he was annoying, not because his arguments were rock solid. Besides, professors have too much grading to do.
Kirk and his brand of influencers desperately need to fabricate a violent, insecure leftist movement that wanted him dead. He used this fear of the left to drive wedges between groups and to project a sense of desperate urgency in a fight for America. The reality is that the left wanted to be left alone and to watch Kirk slowly fade into irrelevance as his followers figured out his game, exposed his nonesense, and challenged him and his fringe ideas.
To those who disagree with my analysis, I suppose I could have just said, Prove me wrong.
