Dana Perino’s plea, Charlie Kirk’s stand, and Christ’s victory

Moments after announcing Charlie Kirk’s death on Fox News’ “The Five,” Dana Perino, normally composed and unflappable, fought back tears. Her voice trembled as she pleaded for what she called a “circuit breaker,” something to break the rising current of fury now running through our culture.

Her words were not political. They were profoundly human. And they named what many feel: The world is burning too hot, and we are running out of ways to cool it down.

There is only One who has ever absorbed the full current of hatred and did not pass it on.

We’ve all sensed that current. It hums beneath politics, families, neighborhoods, even churches. Rage lurks like a storm, waiting for the next spark. Perino wasn’t just mourning a death. She was begging for relief from the relentless voltage of hate.

But no human circuit breaker exists. History proves it. Every attempt to interrupt the current — revolutions, reforms, resolutions — eventually fails. We reset the breaker, and the current surges again. Because the overload isn’t out there in the systems. It’s in here, in the human heart.

There is only One who has ever absorbed the full current of hatred and did not pass it on. Jesus Christ didn’t just defuse tension. He took the lightning bolt straight into Himself. The cross was the great interruption, where perfect love bore the full load of human rage and divine justice in one cataclysmic strike.

Stephen, the first Christian martyr, saw it. As he was about to be stoned, he gazed into heaven and declared he saw Jesus standing at the right hand of God. That proclamation didn’t calm his killers. It enraged them.

Truth always incites the fury of hell.

We don’t make Jesus “Lord of our life.” He already is Lord, whether we acknowledge Him or not. And Scripture says that one day, “every knee will bow … and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord” (Philippians 2:10-11). Some will bow in gratitude. Others will be brought to their knees by the rod of iron (Revelation 19:15). But all will bow.

Which means this: Hatred will not burn itself out. It will not abate. The closer Christ’s light comes, the more ferociously darkness will fight it.

King Théoden, in Peter Jackson’s “The Two Towers,” voiced the dread many feel: “What can men do against such reckless hate?”

Aragorn’s reply was simple and defiant: “Ride out and meet them.”

Charlie Kirk did just that. He rode out and met the storm head-on.

But greater still, Christ did that. He rode out from heaven into the teeth of our hatred and took the full charge of it upon Himself. The cross was not retreat. It was the countercharge that broke the power of darkness forever.

Centuries later, Martin Luther stood before the full weight of church and empire, knowing they could kill him for refusing to recant. He said simply: “Here I stand. I can do no other. God help me.”

He wasn’t fearless. He was anchored. And as the storm closed in around him, he gave the church its battle hymn:

The body they may kill;
God’s truth abideth still.

Luther never believed the hate would abate. He simply knew it could not win. And that is where we must stand as well.

We do not stand with bravado. We stand with scars. We stand, not by denying the darkness, but by fixing our eyes on the One who already absorbed its full blast and still stands.

He doesn’t only stop the current from destroying us. He rewires the entire system. What was corroded, He makes new. What was dead, He makes alive. He is not just the breaker. He is the pure current, the very life of God now flowing through those who belong to Him.

I have lived long enough to see what hate does when it is unleashed. It devours not just its targets but its hosts. It corrodes from within. And it will not stop on its own. Hate is never satisfied. It must be interrupted.

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Photo by Trent Nelson/The Salt Lake Tribune/Getty Images

That interruption has already come. The current has already been broken. And the one who bore it all now reigns, and one day, so will we.

We, like Aragorn of “The Lord of the Rings,” and like Charlie Kirk of Turning Point USA, are only shadows of that greater warrior, Christ, who rode out to meet the fury and shattered it at the cross.

And our response to Him is not with clenched fists, but with lifted eyes and steady voices:

Lead on, O King eternal,
We follow, not with fears;
For gladness breaks like morning
Where’er Thy face appears.
Thy cross is lifted o’er us;
We journey in its light;
The crown awaits the conquest;
Lead on, O God of might.

The hate will not abate. Charlie knew this.

But God’s truth abideth still.

And our King rides before us.