Abdication of the Will
“And above all do not be ashamed of yourself, for that is the cause of everything” (The Brothers Karamazov 43).
“Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love. In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him” (I Jn. 4:7-9).
[Note: If you haven’t read Dostoevsky’s Demons, and plan to, maybe skip this one.]
Let me get this straight: The same people who celebrated the assassination of Charlie Kirk are outraged at Jimmy Kimmel’s show being cancelled.
They supported Ukraine unquestioningly, yet looked the other way when a Ukrainian refugee, Iryna Zarutska, was racially targeted and murdered on a train.
They have been calling for violence against their political enemies for roughly ten years and the same people who stopped talking to friends and family based on who they voted for in the previous three presidential elections.
This is cult-like behavior.
Even suggest this concerns me, because a friend might read that and cut me off. My fear is that by mourning Charlie Kirk’s tragic loss could lead them to label me a fascist—or a fascist-sympathizer—dehumanizing me and excusing themselves from staying in relationship. This means that the indoctrination of the masses has been successful, that the spirit of division, the spirit of diabolus, has become the air we breathe. And it’s changing us.
When it’s problematic to mourn over particular individuals’ murders but acceptable to mourn over a late-night show’s cancellation, then we’ve not only lost the plot but we’re trying to do improv in the Twilight Zone.
Charlie Kirk wasn’t a fascist or a neo-fascist, nor was he a bigot, a misogynist, a racist, or a homophobe. Anyone who tells you otherwise is a liar or an ignorant believer of lies, too lazy to do their own research and make up their mind about things. This is the very basis of Charlie Kirk’s work: encouraging critical thinking and autonomous, rational thought.
The crowd cheered as someone murdered this man, who symbolized polite conversation, good faith debate, and dispelling groupthink, in front of his family and many traumatized people. The Orwellian system led to his assassination, and the crowd cheered.
While facetious, this event recalls Luke Wilson’s character in Idiocracy: he compelled the world to start irrigating their crops with water instead of Gatorade, and the crowd celebrated when they put him to death when immediate results did not follow.
This is happening to us right now, where our rhetoric is dehumanizing others to where their murders are a call for celebration rather than reflection. We’re losing our humanity and its broadcast through social media. The world is showing itself through a glass darkly, the unmaking of its own humanity. This unmaking of our humanity mirrors Dostoevsky’s depiction of idea-driven possession in Demons.
Written in the late 19th century, this novel presciently reveals the same spirit at work in our time. As Kirillov, the embodiment of nihilism, observes of the enigmatic Stavrogin, he’s been “eaten by an idea” (Demons 616). That same idea has consumed us, fostering violent tribalistic hatred and ideological capture that usurps God’s throne in our hearts.
We see this with the glorification of figures like Luigi and now the nigh-hallowed day of Charlie Kirk’s murder. In this dystopian nightmare, Jimmy Kimmel, not Charlie Kirk, is treated like a martyr martyr, while a family has had a husband and father stolen from them before their eyes.
Demons demonstrates the consequences of man’s attempt to become God, anticipating Ivan Fydorovich’s “The Grand Inquisitor” in The Brothers Karamazov. This novel traces the seeds of 19th century radical, atheistic socialism of Russia and its Westernizers, revealing how they destroy God, man, and nation.
Without God, the Nietzschean will to power steps in, disguised as radicalism propagating socialist reform through a conspiracy of silence, fear, and paranoia leading to the subservience—not to God—but to man and his idea.
[Spoilers ahead]
The whole town was under a subtle possession, distilled through the generations. Stepan Trofimovich, the father of Pyotr Stepanovich and spiritual father of Stavrogin, ends his life kneeling before Christ, in his right mind, reflecting the epigraph at the beginning of the novel:
“And there was one herd of many swine feeding on this mountain; and they besought him that he would suffer them to enter into them. And he suffered them.
“Then went the devils out of the man and entered into the swine; and the herd ran violently down a steep place into the lake and were choked.
“When they that fed them saw what was done, they fled, and went and told it in the city and in the country.
“Then they went out to see what was done; and came to Jesus and found the man, out of whom the devils were departed, sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind; and they were afraid” (Lk. 8:32-37).
Yet, up to this point Stepan Trofimovich, and by extension, the town embodied the message of the Angel of the Apocalypse,
“I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot; I would thou wert cold or hot.
‘So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth.
‘Because thou sayest, I am rich and increased with goods, and have need of nothing: and thou knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked” (Apocalypse 3:15-17).
Even the radical socialism that the younger generation carried forth was lukewarm, masking something darker. The community was well off and forgetful of God, paying Him mind in theory, but never in a real, grounded manner. The older generation of Stepan Trofimovich dismissed Jesus Christ for a more abstract God, turning away from the Orthodoxy of Russia toward the socialist ideals of Western Europe.
The socialist ideals held by the fivesome, led by Pyotr Stepanovich, mirrored this same lukewarm spirit in their convictions; their interest in socialism being shallow, as if it were a novelty. Even the killing of one of their own felt decisively superficial. They didn’t participate in Shatov’s murder out of principle, but because they had no ability to reason for themselves and, worse, allowed someone else to do their reasoning for them.
They allowed their fear to guide them into callous irrationality and self-preservation. They allowed their despotic leader to be their demigod, speaking as a messenger for their new god: the common cause.
Pyotr Stepanovich recapitulated radical reform and socialist ideals to further his own ends. And, oddly, this involved the quasi-worship of the possessed Stavrogin. Pyotr’s confession of faith in this new religion, the religion of the man-god, was the beginning of his unravelling. It was as if the idea that had consumed Stavrogin had eaten everyone around him, too.
The Soviet Union embodied such a religious orientation, killing God, they deified the State, and, without the Church and its saints, they glorified their own saints and martyrs who died clinging to the State.
The modern world reflects Dostoevsky’s spiritual insight: our political discourse, tribalism, and dehumanization of others are material signs of mass possession. We are consumed by an idea, the very idea that consumed Stavrogin and ruined almost everyone in the novel. The demonic idea entangles otherwise good people and drives them to despair and perdition.
Their lukewarmness opened them to the spirit of destruction. And without God all that was left was abject nihilism. Stavrogin wrestled with this chasm in his heart but was crushed by his shame. The shame that followed his every move even appears to him as an apparition of his baseless acts, committed because he was being eaten by the idea.
While secular thinkers may ascribe the fractured modern world to political philosophy or, rightly, digital capture, any diagnosis overlooks Dostoevsky’s perspective: the spiritual dimension, the ontological truth, that is missing from our worldly discourse.
According to Dostoevsky, faith in the immortality of the soul is life itself; “without this faith, ‘human existence is unnatural, unthinkable, and unbearable’” (Tolstaya, Kaleidoscope: F.M. Dostoevsky and Early Dialectical Theology 136). Put differently, without this faith, man is ‘wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked.’ For Dostoevsky, one downside of this lack of faith is indifference, embodied by Stavrogin who, having thrown himself into the abyss, in seeking a way out, could only spit on salvation and, even in repentance, he is ashamed.
He is ashamed of his deeds, yet he cannot extend a hand for others to forgive him. He is the abyss of apathy, having discarded the immortality of the soul, downstream from his usurping God’s throne, he is left with the logical conclusion, articulated by Kirillov, “I don’t understand how an atheist could know there is no God and not kill himself at once” (Demons 619). Thus, Stavrogin meets the same end as Kirillov, yet for different reasons: Kirillov to become God through his suicide, while Stavrogin is tragically marked by paradoxical doubt: “If Stavrogin believes, he does not believe that he believes. And if he does not believe, he does not believe that he does not believe” (Ibid. 616).
Thus, the celebration of Charlie Kirk’s assassination, the outrage over a television host losing his job, and the apathy toward Iryna Zarutska’s murder are emergent qualities in a society that has discarded the soul, dismissed God. It cannot believe that it doesn’t believe, nor can it not believe that it doesn’t believe. Yet, it makes up for such internal chaos by worshipping itself, not out of belief, but as a response to the emptiness of its heart. We are left, eaten by an idea, tossed from one novelty to another. We’re told how to feel, what to think and say—tyrannized by the crowd.
We’re living on the coast of the Gadarenes, blind to our own swinishness and lukewarm to our own shallow ideals, bereft of belief, full of self—incapable of seeing our trajectory careening toward the cliffs. The wake of these tragic events (excluding Jimmy Kimmel’s show being cancelled) will reveal where it is we’re going and how fast we’ll get there.
Reading the deathbed confession of Stepan Trofimovich I—like others—saw him as the real protagonist. His words, I believe, ought to resonate with us. Because it’s my observation that, because of the proliferation of lies, deception, half-truths, and emotional reasoning that lead our media and, thus, our minds today, it is crucial to cling to truth. Stepan Trofimovich confesses, “My friends, I’ve been lying all my life. Even when I was telling the truth. I never spoke for the truth, but only for myself, I knew that before, but only now do I see…” (Ibid. 652).
The elder Zosima echoes the confession in the advice given to the patriarchal Fyodor Pavlovich in The Brothers Karamazov:
“And above all, do not lie to yourself. A man who lies to himself and listens to his own lies comes to a point where he does not discern any truth either in himself or anywhere around him, and thus falls into disrespect towards himself and others. Not respecting anyone, he ceases to love, and having no love, he gives himself up to passions and coarse pleasure, in order to occupy and amuse himself, and in his vices reaches complete bestiality, and it all comes from lying continually to others and to himself. A man who lies to himself is often the first to take offense. It sometimes feels very good to take offense, doesn’t it? And surely he knows that no one has offended him, and that he himself has invented the offenses and told lies just for the beauty of it, that he has exaggerated for the sake of effect, that he has picked out a word and made a mountain out of a pea—he knows all of that, and still he is the first to take offense, he likes feeling offended, it gives him great pleasure, and thus he reaches the point of real hostility” (The Brothers Karamazov 44).
And so, disrobing of his lifetime of lies and speaking only for himself, the spiritual father walks into the Russian countryside to die among the peasants, the real Russian in real repentance. Abandoning his former lukewarmness for zeal he professes the antithesis to the possessed,
“My friends… God is necessary for me only because he is the one being who can be loved eternally… My immortality is necessary if only because God will not want to do an injustice and utterly extinguish the fire of love for him once kindled in my heart… If there is God, then I am immortal. Voilà ma profession de foi” (Demons 663).
Losing God in our culture has led to the disbelief in the immortality of the soul, giving rise to indifference, violent and dehumanizing rhetoric, and lies. Without God, we’re left to stir our own passions and scroll through a litany of hate-filled content and deception. In the process, we are robbed of our peace, love, and humanity—all for the fleeting pleasure of being offended. But at the root of this is the loss of faith in eternal things and immortality. This begins with believing lies, denying the truth, and being ashamed of ourselves.
The soul is immortal, made in the image of the Triune God; I have written nothing meant to offend. Charlie Kirk was a good man, articulate, intelligent, faithful, and a promoter of good faith dialogue and debate. Iryna Zarutska was a Ukrainian refugee who was targeted and murdered because she was in the wrong place at the wrong time, which should never be a reason for loss of life, anywhere.
There is no beauty in celebrating the former and being indifferent to the latter. There is no beauty in taking offense. There is no beauty in celebrating someone’s murder. God, “Who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth” (I Tim. 2:4), would not have us be possessed by the spirit of deceit and division, but would have us come to Him in repentance.
Beyond these truths lies the ultimate Truth, and Truth is a Person: Jesus Christ. Who became incarnate for us in the ultimate act of love was crucified to grant eternal life unto all. That we might become as gods through Him, so that man can love God eternally, for if there is God then we are immortal.
Finally, while I would like to end this with a clarion call to everyone to put down indifference, lukewarmness, and apathy I’ll conclude by my desire, inspiration, and motivation now to live zealously, not for myself, but for Christ; Who, being Truth, demands a response from us, do we live according to the reality of this Truth or do we live according to a half-truth expounded by network media and online, offended parties?
When we allow ourselves to be led by despotic purity tests, a fear of being outed as anything other than the in-group, or simply as people who feel sorrow over the loss of life, then we are not living in accordance with Truth.
We’re living for ourselves and that’s a dead end.
If there is God, then we are immortal. Voilà ma profession de foi.
Therefore, beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. In this the love of God was manifested toward us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him…
This is not the time to be silent alongside the crowd that cheers for death, but the time to be compassionate, forgiving, and unashamed of our faith.
Witness, NM 