Grieving Charlie Kirk: Why His Death Feels So Personal for Me and So Many Others

(Photo: Gage Skidmore/Wikimedia CC-BY 4.0)

I have been stunned at how personal Charlie Kirk’s death feels for me.

Literally, I have been legit grieving. I cried off and on for a week. I fell into a funk I couldn’t describe. Many of my friends experienced the same.

All for a man we had never met, and who most of us had very little awareness of until now.

Why would the death of a stranger hit us so hard?

I think there are several reasons. First of all, as one of my friends pointed out, this was the highest-profile political assassination in the US since Bobby Kennedy.

Now I know how my parents must’ve felt back in ’68 when MLK and RFK died. The world just feels a little less safe.

Second, I began to learn more about who Charlie Kirk really was. Up until September 10, I had very little awareness of him. I just assumed he was one of the brash “new guys” emerging on the right.

In some ways, he was. But as his videos are flooding my Facebook feed, I am learning so much more.

I had no idea how much time he spent on college campuses, cheerfully debating all comers on the most difficult issues of the day. And I do mean cheerfully. I saw one where a young girl grabbed his cap and walked away. He smiled and called out, “Can’t we have a discussion?”

He wasn’t just a political figure. He was an evangelist. He spoke about how Christ changed his life and encouraged everyone he encountered to seek him as well. He was defending the Christian view of life, of gender and of marriage.

He also clearly saw Christ in the students who stood before him. He was patient and charitable, regardless of how aggressively they came at him. Trust me, that is not as easy as it may look. It takes a lot of grace.

I know his detractors have cherry-picked a few clips where he sounds less than charitable. He wasn’t perfect. He was a young man with a lot of fire and a lot of testosterone, with cameras trained on him constantly. He was brash and assertive at times. But those videos are a tiny, tiny fraction of the total. I think age and the increasing action of the Holy Spirit transformed him considerably in his “later” years.

He also, in his efforts to encourage debate, often threw out inflammatory statements. Because nuance doesn’t attract radical college students. Some of those statements have been used, out of context, to paint him as a racist. If you have bought into that narrative, I would encourage you to watch his entire videos on race and DEI, as well as the scores and scores of online testimonies from people of color

— friend and stranger alike — extolling him and his impact on their lives. You may not wind up agreeing with him. But you will have a much more complete picture of his views on race.

I was particularly struck by a video of him in a dialogue with a panel of OnlyFans models — women who appear in pornography. Here were these women who were accustomed to being used by men, who didn’t understand their own dignity as beloved daughters of the Father. And Charlie was there extending true Christlike love to them, reminding them that they are worth so much more, encouraging them to find the joy that he has found in marriage and parenthood. At the end, one commented that he was the only man they had encountered who had shown them true respect.

In seeing all of this, I began to grieve this man I had never known and whose work I had never appreciated.

It became clear to me that everything he did was based on his faith in Christ. He had found the “pearl of great price” and he was willing to risk everything — even his life — to share it. He knew the danger. He saw the threats. He had to travel with his own security detail.

And yet he didn’t quit. When asked how he wanted to be remembered, he said, “For courage in my faith.”

In the end, it cost him his life. To me, that is the definition of a martyr.

This is the Christian proposition — that this life is only the first act, a prelude of the eternal life that is to come. And that “greater love has no man than to lay his life down for his friends.”

We have always known that in theory. But until now, it was easy to think of it as something that only happened in faraway places and times. Now we see a man shot through the neck, right here in the good old US of A, and the threat hits a lot closer to home.

That seems personal.

The hashtag #IamCharlieKirk is trending on social media. I think part of my sadness is in realizing that I am Charlie Kirk. The people who hate him hate me. I have a platform — much smaller, but a platform still. Am I risking my life?

This is the question so many of us are asking. Would I really be willing to give up my life if the tradeoff were that others obtained everlasting life and eternal happiness in Heaven?

It seems that Charlie Kirk considered that proposition and decided it in the affirmative. And we are seeing the fruits now. His message is spreading further than ever. His Instagram followers increased tenfold and are still growing. Reports are everywhere of young people returning to church, with the hashtag #charliesentme. Untold thousands more are speaking up.

His death ignited a movement.

This isn’t just because Charlie’s own words impacted them. Of course, that is part of it. But there is grace at work here. “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church.” Just as Christ’s death won the grace that reunites us to the Father, so every martyrdom, big or small, releases the Holy Spirit and changes hearts.

Most of us probably aren’t being asked to give up our lives. But what are we being asked to give up? What would speaking up cost us? Facebook followers?

Friends? Peace and quiet?

All of those little martyrdoms bring grace as well.

I know Charlie was a controversial figure. Maybe you don’t agree that he died a martyr. Maybe he didn’t. That is up to God. My point here is not primarily about him. It is about us. It is about the evil that would cut down any man for speaking his opinion, and the questions we face in our response to that evil. Are we willing to be silenced? What are we willing to “count as loss” for the sake of our faith?

I asked my pastor how we are to respond to this tragedy, and all of the others in a week of unspeakable tragedy. His response was simple:

“Be holy.”

I think Charlie would agree.