In the wake of shocking acts of violence, the national response is as predictable as it is insufficient.
We look for policy fixes. We call for toned-down rhetoric. We debate harsher penalties, tighter security and stronger laws. And while those responses have value and shouldn’t be ignored, they all share a fatal flaw: they treat the symptoms, not the disease.
After yet another assassination attempt against President Donald Trump, following last year’s killing of Charlie Kirk, and amid a steady drumbeat of senseless, everyday violence across the country, Americans are once again asking the same question: How do we stop this?
The honest answer is one our culture resists: We cannot legislate away evil.
Scripture is unambiguous about the human condition. “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” (Jeremiah 17:9). That diagnosis doesn’t apply only to the fringe, the mental cases or the obviously deranged — it applies to all of us. The Apostle Paul makes this even clearer: “There is none righteous, no, not one” (Romans 3:10).
That reality is deeply uncomfortable in a culture that prefers to blame systems over sin, environment over personal responsibility and rhetoric over the human heart. But until we correctly diagnose the problem, we will never arrive at the right solution.
Political violence is not, at its core, a messaging problem. It is not primarily a failure of policy. It is not even fundamentally about ideology.
It is a manifestation of unrestrained evil in the human heart.
Yes, rhetoric matters. Yes, laws matter. Yes, consequences matter. Government has a God-ordained role in restraining evil (Romans 13). But restraint is not redemption. External controls cannot transform internal corruption.
We are trying to solve a spiritual problem with purely temporal tools.
The Bible goes further than simply diagnosing the problem — it also speaks to how God views it. Psalm 5:5 tells us plainly: “You hate all evildoers,” and this reality is further evidenced in Jesus’ words in the Olivet Discourse (Matthew 25) that evildoers are condemned to a final judgment (Revelation 20-21).
That is not a comfortable idea in modern Christianity, but it is a necessary and truthful one. God is not indifferent to evil. He is perfectly just, and His wrath is real.
Which raises an even more urgent question: If all of us are unrighteous, and God hates evil, what hope is there?
The answer is the Gospel — literally, the Good News. This is why it’s good news! We have hope because while this world is fallen and we are evil, Christ has provided redemption.
The only lasting solution to evil — whether expressed in political violence or in quieter, everyday sin — is not better behavior modification. It is a transformation. And that transformation comes only through the redemptive work of Jesus Christ.
“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come” (2 Corinthians 5:17).
That is the solution we rarely hear discussed in the aftermath of tragedy.
We will hold panels on extremism. We will convene commissions. We will propose legislation. But how often do we seriously consider that what our nation needs is not merely reform, but regeneration?
A changed heart produces changed actions. In a very real spiritual sense, once redeemed, God’s wrath is no longer on us, but we can now call Him Father.
A person who has been redeemed by Christ is not sinless, but they are no longer enslaved to sin. Their desires begin to align with what is good, true and just. The impulse toward hatred, violence and destruction is replaced by the fruits of the Spirit: love, peace, patience, self-control, righteousness, goodness.
No law can produce that.
No government program can manufacture it.
No rhetorical recalibration can substitute for it.
This does not mean we abandon policy discussions or ignore practical solutions needed for society. It means we put them in their proper place. They are secondary, not ultimate. Necessary, but insufficient.
In our current godless, secular, pluralistic society, we have largely abandoned God’s solution to the problem of evil and are intent on civil government addressing it. The government does not have the proper tools. Only the church does.
If we truly want to address the root cause of political violence, we must be willing to say what our culture increasingly refuses to acknowledge: the problem is sin, and the solution is a Savior and a regenerated life.
Until we are willing to confront that truth, we will continue to cycle through the same debates after every tragedy — proposing solutions that may manage behavior for a time but can never transform the heart.
And without transformed hearts and minds, the violence will continue.
Because the real battle is not merely political.
It is spiritual.
Jenna Ellis is a senior policy advisor with AFA Action, national radio host of “Jenna Ellis in the Morning,” and a Florida resident. She previously served as a senior legal adviser to former President Trump.
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