Sen. Marco Rubio and Mike Pompeo tell Liberty students that faith in Christ must shape every area of their lives

Last week’s convocation at Liberty University featured two high-profile speakers, with former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and current Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., talking to students about the reality of objective truth, evil, and the need for faith to shape their lives — in and out of politics.

Pompeo, who is currently a Distinguished Chair in the Helms School of Government, spoke first. He began his speech by saying that it was “humbling” and “exciting” to be at Liberty, a university he characterized as “unique” and “special.”

“Why is this place so special?” Pompeo asked. “You all are committed, and the leadership of this institution is committed to excellence. In the year you’ll be told to work hard, and to love the Lord. And it won’t matter where you came from. It won’t matter who your parents are, or anything else. What will matter is your willingness to work and to pursue the Lord and to proclaim Jesus as your Savior and to learn and to be good stewards of all that the Lord has given us,” he explained.

That differentiates Liberty from many other academic institutions, Pompeo claimed. He said that the attitude at many universities is one “where freedom of religion is now considered to be freedom from religion and imposed upon them by governments.”

At Liberty, Pompeo stated, “we recognize that far from being a hindrance, the Almighty is the only thing that can deliver good outcomes for people all across the world. I’m counting on you. I am honored to be amongst you. America needs each of you to be Christian leaders in the years ahead, and I am confident that this place will prepare you for that.”

Rubio also spoke about the push to teach relativism and secularism at America’s colleges and universities, explaining, “I think the biggest problem we have in academia today is that it is no longer a place where we teach truth. Knowledge and truth are not always the same thing. And it strikes me that we are today as a society, by every measure, that your generation, by every measure, is the most educated generation of people in the history of the world. And yet that education and truth have been divorced.”

Rubio argued, “There are fundamental truths upon which our lives if they are to be productive, and our nations and our societies if they are to be strong, have to be built.”

Speaking on the violence by Hamas against Israel, Rubio said,

“There are still truths in the world and sometimes they are uncomfortable. As hard as it is for some to accept, there is such a thing as evil and evil that springs from hate. The first crime committed as recorded in the Bible was out of hatred and envy. One brother murdered the other. Evil is real and it exists. That is a truth. It is not relative. When you break into a small village and you rape teenage girls and you slaughter and decapitate babies and you take as hostages and prisoners the elderly, that is evil. There is no justification for it. There is no explanation for it. There is no other side to it. It is pure, unadulterated evil. And anyone who refuses to condemn it doesn’t know truth.”

Rubio said that this evil must be confronted and the perpetrators of these heinous acts must be dealt with militarily but that our faith should inform how we confront evil. He stated that while our human nature wants to respond to hate with more hate, our response to evil should be from our love for others.

“These groups have to be defeated, not because we hate them, but because we love those who they seek to harm. Not because we want revenge, but because human life is worthy of protection and they are a threat to the dignity of human life.”

The Florida senator noted that we must always remember that “Christianity is not a political movement” or a political party. It must, however, participate in our political life “to protect our freedoms to worship, to stand for truth, the truth that an unborn human being is a human being. The truth, that every single human being that has ever been born in the history of the world was the product of a biological male and a biological female. That’s the truth. The truth that the family is the most important institution in society, and no matter how big your economy, or how strong your military, or how great your republic might be, no nation, no society can flourish without strong families, building strong communities. These are all fundamental truths.”

Ready to dive deeper into the intersection of faith and politics? Head over to our Theology of Politics series page, where we’ve published several long-form pieces to help Christians navigate where their faith should direct them on political issues.