He continued:
And all of us, even if you weren’t close to the situation, if you weren’t close to Charlie, you still feel like it’s just a crazy world. We just had the situation of what happened on the train in Charlotte. I mean, it’s really easy just to be afraid and just go, ‘I’m just not going to leave my house anymore.’ That’s what happened during COVID. That was kind of the whole thing. It’s just [to] isolate us, separate us, get us to stay quiet, get us to not deal with this.
To pastors, Miles encouraged, “Your job is to preach the full counsel of the Word of God, regardless of threat to life or personal peril. Your job is to stand up and lead the way to shepherd the people and show them this is how we do it despite any opposition that we’re facing.”
“Do it afraid, but get out of the winepress and get in the battle,” he added. “I think that’s the message on the other side of this.”
ChurchLeaders ask Miles to speak to Christians who witnessed Kirk’s shooting, who were either there or saw the graphic video of it.
“First off, you need to find a college student and hug them this week. I’ve said this before. I’ve written about this in the past. This generation, really younger Millennials and Gen Z, are facing just massive amounts of trauma,” Miles replied.
“Starting with things like Sept. 11 and various wars and conflicts that we’ve had, their whole life has been that way,” Miles continued. “This generation is dealing with identity issues, they’re dealing with conflict, they’re dealing with, you know, really, really strong political divide.”
“I think that we have to recognize that and I think that they require some extra love. They’re not weaker than we are. If anything, they’re a stronger generation because of what they’ve gone through, but it has left some scars,” said Miles. “And those scars in some individuals [produce] a lot of pain and hurt. And sometimes it causes hurt people to hurt people. And we have to deal with all of that.”
To all Christians, Miles said, “It’s time to really get serious about your faith.”
