We can’t go on together
With suspicious minds (with suspicious minds)
And we can’t build our dreams
On suspicious minds
–“Suspicious Minds,” written and recorded by Mark James (made famous by Elvis Presley).
Following the death of Charlie Kirk, some of Kirk’s fans immediately began to “question the narrative.” Having watched the video, they insisted Kirk was shot not from the front but from the back, that there were multiple shooters, that the conspiracy had the backing of the French Foreign Legion (I am not making this up!) and a circus of other ideas. The so-called “internet sleuths” decided they knew more than the combined forces of the FBI. So they questioned everything, even going so far as to suggest Kirk’s wife was behind his murder.
When I saw a post about this yesterday, I clicked on the comments. I was shocked. It seemed as if everyone in the comments defended those asking “hard questions” and advancing ridiculous theories, such as the suggestion Kirk was shot from the back.
One said, “We are supposed to ask questions. That is what Charlie told us to do.” Another wrote, “Charlie said to question everything. Asking if his wife was behind his death is exactly what Charlie would want.”
I disagree.
There is a place for skepticism. Questions must be asked. Charlie was right to encourage people to think for themselves. But like the song says, We can’t go on together with suspicious minds. Suspicious minds are destructive. Suspicious minds poison relationships.
Skepticism has its place, but we must understand that thinking well involves more than just asking questions that upset people.
It requires the wisdom to listen to answers, the wisdom to recognize expertise—not to kowtow to it, necessarily—but to recognize the years of training and experience experts (such as FBI ballistics experts) bring to the subject at hand. Be an internet sleuth if you must. But recognize your weaknesses.
Have you toured the crime scene? Have you had the opportunity to review confidential files, to watch interviews with key witnesses, to review the evidence that is not being disclosed to the media? Do you have training? Do you have not just common sense, but actual experience? You will not be ready to discover anything until you know what you don’t know. Clear thinking (finding answers) involves more than I can address here, but I will put a quick summary in a footnote[1].
In my opinion, the notion that Erika Kirk was involved in her husband’s murder does not pass the smell test. I won’t be investigating the evidence—I can leave that to the FBI, and frankly, they will never make public enough evidence for me or any other internet sleuth to conduct a reliable investigation. More importantly, my role in a public event like this is to love people, to do what I can for the grieving—or to at least avoid making their suffering worse.
When internet sleuths with no real access to the evidence publicly accuse Erika Kirk of plotting her husband’s murder just to increase their “likes and follows,” it strikes me as not only offensive, but violently abusive. How can you treat a widow that way?
Consider 1 Corinthians 13:7. “Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”
Reflecting on this passage, John Piper writes “The very least that Paul means when he says ‘love believes all things’ and ‘hopes all things’ — the very least — that he means is that we should not be unduly suspicious about other people’s motives. Love hopes for the best from people, not the worst.”[2]
When the Ammonite king Nahash died, King David decided to honor his memory. Nahash had been kind to David, so David sent a delegation to pay respects to the son of Nahash, the new king Hanun. But Hanun’s counselors were men of suspicious minds. They told the grieving king that David’s men were only there to spy out the land so David could conquer them. In response, Hanun humiliated David’s messengers, shaved off their beards and “cut off their garments in the midst hard by their buttocks, and sent them away” 1 Chronicles 19:4.
When David heard how badly his men had been treated, he advised them to “tarry at Jericho until your beards are grown” 1 Chronicles 19:5 (isn’t it interesting how ashamed they were to be clean-shaven!).
Meanwhile, the Ammonites realized “they had made themselves odious to David” 1 Chronicles 19:6. Did they apologize, perhaps sending gifts and offering terms of peace? No. They remained suspicious of David–and continued to make decisions based on that error.
Considering David the villain, the Ammonites paid a thousand talents of silver to hire the Syrian army to help them battle Israel. How do you think that turned out? Not well.
Seeing their preparations, David went to war and defeated both armies. Suspicious King Hanun lost the war. David killed 47,000 Syrian soldiers and the rest of the Syrian army ended up in chains as Israel’s servants.
Suspicion is a poison. It leads to wars. It ruins relationships. It will rob you of your joy. It will leave you unable to appreciate the kindness of others.
Be skeptical if you must. But remember the lesson of Ecclesiastes: there is a time to be skeptical and there is a time to put your skepticism aside.
There is a time to search for alternative answers, and a time to stop searching.
“There is a time to search and a time to stop searching” Ecclesiastes 3:6.
Moreover, there is something evil about obsessive suspicion.
“An evil man is suspicious of everyone and tumbles into constant trouble” Proverbs 17:20 (TLB).
God, please deliver us from suspicious minds. Guide us in our search for truth. Show us whom we can trust. Give us wisdom. Show us answers in Your word. Deliver us from the bitterness of suspicion and fill us with Your hope and Your grace.
AΩ.
[1] If you wish to think clearly and track down and verify the truth, consider this inexhaustive list of strategies: You must (1) examine evidence (which means having meaningful access to all relevant evidence, not a few seconds of a single videotape) and you must spend significant time engaging in a thoughtful and systematic review of that evidence); (2) review the arguments and opinions from multiple sides (for example, you cannot fully comprehend news events if you only consume news from right-wing or left-wing sources, because BOTH sides omit things they do not want you to consider); (3) recognize experts and evaluate expert opinions from both sides—and recognize that there are often competing schools of thought, both of which can shed light on complex subjects; (4) know what you don’t know—and ask others to tell you what you don’t know, because without them, you will miss things (another reason you must consume news from the “other” side); (5) employ thinking tools such as Occam’s razor, a sort-of theorem that instructs us that “the most likely explanation is probably correct,” (there are dozens of these, you may wish to begin by mastering informal fallacies); (6) recognize that the survival of a conspiracy is inversely proportional to the number of conspirators—if your theory requires dozens or hundreds of people to have pulled it off, then your theory is probably wrong, because large groups of people cannot keep secrets (a related truth is that the life-span of any secret gets shorter as the number of people keeping the secret increases); (7) never lose your common sense, your intuition, your “gut,” but don’t mistake indigestion for cognitive dissonance, that is, sometimes you may need to ignore your gut.
[2] https://www.desiringgod.org/interviews/four-ways-to-kill-the-sin-of-habitual-suspicion
Household Words: 