Redeeming the vineyard (a parable of our times)

The murder of Charlie Kirk three days ago is an awful thing. Any murder is. But his feels most awful – everyone’s saying it (everyone who cares about this, which you would think everyone in their right mind would; a lot of people are not in their right minds, clearly). A lot of people are also giving their reasons why this is so. Here’s what I see:

1. He is/was such a good person. Many people counted him as a friend. He was cheerful, loving, gifted, thoughtful, intelligent and courageous. He’s a good man who did good things – more than most of us ever do. We mostly live for ourselves. Charlie lived to make good happen.
2. He was 31. He was promising, and people hoped he’d become a president or similar. They knew and felt confident he’d do more good in the world.
3. He was just speaking. These days, that’s tantamount to a crime, for those who want to force everyone else to ‘affirm’ them and their crazy ideas. Charlie said things that are true and sensible; things which used, until recently, to be accepted and understood generally in our societies. Things which the post-modern social-justice crowd have been tearing apart with crazed fervour and making verboten. In their place, they’ve substituted ugly, untrue things like transgenderism and original guilt for people of European ethnicity. Charlie spoke about the real things those ugly lies are replacing. He showed how illogical and untrue they are. He did it with clarity and kindness…. and someone shot him for it.
4. The USA is a Western country. It’s not Sudan or the Congo, or Eastern Europe (or any other place) under the communists. A man killed another man in front of thousands of people who’d come to see him, because he didn’t like his beliefs. A good man, beloved of many, who was just sitting there, speaking conversationally to the crowd. Shot through the neck and killed. It’s inconceivable.
5. We’ve been hearing, for years now, the insistent claim of the of the ‘woke’ left that everything that doesn’t ‘affirm’ their ridiculous, harmful ideas is ‘hate speech’; that ‘hate crimes’ from our part abound; that anyone who doesn’t support what they believe – things which are antithetical to our beliefs – i.e. anyone with conservative or just non-radical views – is a Nazi, fascist, racist, homophobe, transphobe, etc. But the ‘hate speech’ is all theirs; this speech. They call for people’s deaths – there were university students standing on a platform above the venue shouting, ‘Kill Charlie Kirk’. It’s awful to think about. But they do it all the time; they send horrible, abusive, threatening messages to people who dare to uphold truth and virtue. All for believing and saying that there are two sexes (‘genders’), or that marriage is between a man and a woman, or racism in Western countries is not as they say. And then a man does what he did to Charlie last week, and it shows the weakness in their arguments – in a way that didn’t, ever, need to be shown. We’ve been hearing this, and feeling bad about it, knowing it’s wrong and dangerous, and then this happened. The reality. Like we’ve all been too inactive to prevent it – like we knew; we saw the signs, and didn’t act seriously or fast enough. And a good man died. It’s been building and coming, and maybe we didn’t believe it, and now we feel sick and terrible.
6. It didn’t have to happen. The university should have provided more security, knowing all this, and knowing, further, that universities, specifically, have been the worst places for this hateful action, where visiting speakers get hounded from their speaking engagements if they have conservative views, or even any small thing that contradicts the students’ own radical ones. Apparently UVU is a hotbed for this attitude. The shooter should not have been able to get up to the rooftop of any building within range, let alone set up a gun there.

It feels like nothing will be the same now – it shouldn’t be. A lot of people have been galvanised into realising that just hoping the craziness will die away is pointless; that believing it’s other people’s problem is cowardly and untrue; that good must be done, visibly, constantly, everywhere. It feels like the rules of reality have changed – that they already changed, and no one told us, and Charlie’s death by assassination tore the curtain away.

It’s like Tigana, a story I read in high school by Guy Gavriel Kay. In this story, a country has their name stolen from them and their memories of their history erased by their conquerors. A small group of people work and fight to take it back, with only the ache where their country’s name and legacy used to be to guide them. It’s an immensely moving story, very tragic and bittersweet, which stays with you afterwards. This situation feels something like it: our civilisation has been/is being stolen from us – by enemies within, not conquerors from without – and those who’ve stolen it won’t even allow us to speak its name. They work to remove its memory everywhere – statues, history books and interpretations, schools, governments, marriage and birth… everything they can destroy that remains. Those who dare remember and speak its name, like Charlie, are threatened with death, torture, abuse, and social and financial ruin. Then, they are even killed, like he was. It’s terrible that he should have to die because of this, and it brings home to us that we’ve passed a line. We’ve moved from civil societies to divided societies of citizens and anarchists, and anarchy is nearer than we imagined. Terror and evil are truly, starkly, among us.

I’m glad that a lot of people are realising what they must; I’m desperately sad that a man like Charlie had to die for it. It’s too tragic.

Doctrine & Covenants Section 101 was the last section of our Sunday School readings last week. Partway through, the Lord reveals a parable of the redemption of Zion – at the time, concerning the Latter-day Saints who were enduring violent persecution in Missouri. Reading it felt to me like a parable for Western civilisation and our Western countries now.

The watchmen have been ignored, and the enemy has come – from within and without – and spoiled the vineyard that was so painstakingly built. The towers that should have been constructed have been left undone and those that existed have been left unattended and to ruin. Many in our culture have become ‘slothful’ about what it is we have, and have stopped listening to the advice and warnings of our forbears and the prophets who are among us today. The enemy has come and is destroying their works, and is breaking down the olive trees. Note what the lord of the vineyard says to his servants, whom he enjoined to build and protect it, when he comes:

Why! What is the cause of this great evil? Ought ye not to have done even as I commanded you, and – after ye had planted the vineyard, and built the hedge round about, and set watchmen upon the walls thereof – built the tower also, and set a watchman upon the tower, and watched for my vineyard, and not have fallen asleep, lest the enemy should come upon you?

And behold, the watchman upon the tower would have seen the enemy while he was yet afar off; and then ye could have made ready and kept the enemy from breaking down the hedge thereof, and saved my vineyard from the hands of the destroyer.

I feel like I’m living in a version of Tigana, like I’ve been part of letting the enemy in to destroy us, and all that remains is an ache and a sadness as it continues to disappear before my eyes. It sounds dramatic, but we’re living in a dramatic time. It really is the last days, and the kingdoms of the world will crumble to dust. The shining hope is that Zion will grow apace, while these kingdoms self-destruct. This, too, feels timely:

And it shall come to pass among the wicked, that every man that will not take his sword against his neighbour must needs flee unto Zion for safety.

And there shall be gathered unto it out of every nation under heaven; and it shall be the only people that shall not be at war one with another.

And it shall be said among the wicked: Let us not go up to battle against Zion, for the inhabitants of Zion are terrible; wherefore we cannot stand. (D&C 45:68-70)

There are those who want only to fight and tear at us and at what is good. Those who kill a man for a word and think everything is about their politics – while the rest of us want to live peacefully with each other and direct our lives for good. Already, that’s becoming mightily difficult. We must help build Zion, and make very sure that it’s the refuge it needs to be. There’s also hope in what the lord of the vineyard commands his servants to do at this point:

Go and gather the residue of my servants, and take all the strength of mine house, which are my warriors, my young men, and they that are of middle age also…. And go ye straightway unto the land of my vineyard, and redeem my vineyard, for it is mine; I have bought it with money.

Therefore, get ye straightway unto my land; break down the walls of mine enemies (which they’ve built around the vineyard they’ve taken as their own); throw down their tower, and scatter their watchmen.

And inasmuch as they gather against you, avenge me of mine enemies, that by and by I may come with the residue of mine house and possess the land.

And the servant said unto his lord: When shall these things be? And he said unto his servant: When I will’ go ye straightway, and do all things whatsoever I have commanded you (D&C 101: 60).

I’m not suggesting taking this literally (it’s a parable). I am definitely saying we’re required and needed to take the ‘fight’ to our enemies (stop them from squatting on the ‘ruins’ of our civilisation), to defend our lands from evil and incursion, and to redeem that which needs to be redeemed. Evil and wickedness abound, and we cannot let it win. Light – truth and beauty – is the antidote.