This is thorough and long, so get comfortable:

INTRODUCTION

Ten days ago I was holding my precious son, Levi, who had been born three hours earlier. I glanced at my phone and saw the headline that Charlie Kirk had been shot. Five seconds into the video, I knew he had not survived the hit. Then something hit me—a wave of surprising grief. My son had just entered the world, and Charlie had just left it. Because I believe life is sacred, its origin begins with God and its exit ends with God. All will stand before the judgment seat of God. Every knee will bow before God’s Son—the King of kings. That’s what Scripture assures us. In a world filled with uncertainty and doubt, that is one assurance you can bet your life on. So choose your soul allegiance wisely. To be clear, Charlie Kirk wasn’t perfect, and I will offer some criticism at the end of this post. He’s with the Lord now, and I think he would want me to.

PERSONAL OBSERVATIONS

Despite his shortcomings, there is no doubt Charlie lived in the light of eternity. He was also provocative at times, but so were John the Baptist and Jesus (“brood of vipers,” “blind fools,” “den of robbers,” etc). Try to show up at a university with just a white table and a microphone without being provocative or controversial and you might draw a dozen people. Charlie would attract crowds of thousands—many of them protesting his presence. He welcomed the protests and tried his best to invite some of the protesters to dialogue with him. Sometimes I would listen to Charlie’s back-and-forth conversations with university students while I was driving or washing dishes. At times, his on-the-spot answers to hard questions were less than ideal, and I would think, “Oh, Charlie—you could have answered that question better.” Other times, I was astounded, humbled, and taught by his insight, wisdom, patience and grace with students who were filled with dripping vitriol for him. Sometimes they would walk away changed, realizing the man they had encountered was not the fascist, racist, bigoted man their TikTok videos or professors told them to despise.

NUANCE & ADMIRATION

One doesn’t need to agree with Charlie on every point to admire him on other points, just as one doesn’t need to embrace all of former President Obama’s policies to appreciate virtues in his personality. That all-or-nothing mindset is one reason the United States is so polarized. The right-wing has contributed to that as equally as the left.

CALL TO CHRISTIANS

And now we get to the heart of my post—especially if you call yourself a Christian. A follower of Jesus doesn’t need to love Trump to appreciate Charlie as a Christian evangelist who faithfully bore witness to the life, death, and resurrection of our Savior. In his thirty-one years of life, Charlie’s light shone brighter and further than some of his Christian detractors on the progressive left want to acknowledge. Jesus said, “Blessed are you when men slander you and say all manner of evil against you because of Me.” In that sense, Charlie is blessed. But that doesn’t mean I have to watch passively from the sidelines and let slander happen to Charlie without giving him his due defense.

RESEARCH & SLANDER

As painful as it was, I searched out the posts, the reposts, the articles, the tweets, and the statements of Christians I knew to be on the left side of the political aisle—just to see how bad the slander was. And it was bad. Far worse than I thought. “Bearing false witness” was just the tip of the iceberg. A lot of it was due to neglect, ignorance, and basic laziness. That’s another critical point I want to make—because it can (and often does) happen on the right just as easily as the left.

TRIBAL SOURCES

Too often people run to their safe “sources,” their “spokespeople,” or their tribal Facebook group to ask: “Am I allowed to like this person—grieve this person?” “What’s the bullet-point summary I’m supposed to have for this?” “Is this person affiliated with anyone we’re not supposed to like?” “What are the talking points I need to sound informed when I’m really not?”

OUT-OF-CONTEXT CLIPS

In regard to Kirk’s assassination, I was saddened and shocked at the skewed, out-of-context sound bites that Christians on the left had peppered into post after post about their fellow brother in Christ on the right. It was easy to tell who had invested the time to listen at length to Kirk’s contextual analysis of controversial issues, and who sprinted off to their nearest online echo chamber to find the cliff-notes version from their rank-and-file mouthpieces.

CORRECTIVE REPOSTS

Thankfully thousands—literally thousands—are reposting Charlie in his own words, giving people the full context on some of his most controversial statements that have been cut, chopped, and selectively edited to slide into a verbal ammo belt and be discharged from a safe distance. They are discovering Charlie Kirk in a more charitable light and realizing that even though he wasn’t the second coming of Jesus, neither was he a white supremacist, a racist, a bigot, a sexist, or a fascist.

BIPARTISAN WARNING

Both the left and right must stop being duped by mealy-mouthed pundits who act as gatekeepers of their information. It goes without saying that the worst offender on the right is obviously Trump. Though I am grateful for many of his initiatives that have made common sense common again, truth-telling is not one of his virtues. Christians on the right must stop letting him set the bar. But what about truth-telling on the Christian left regarding Charlie Kirk? It’s been awful in some sectors, and that’s next.

PAVLOVITZ CRITIQUE

I think the worst offender on the Christian left has been the liberal author and pastor John Pavlovitz. What are some examples? Pavlovitz called Kirk hateful and a racist. But what Pavlovitz didn’t tell you is that Kirk’s favorite author and intellectual was the Black professor and sociologist, Thomas Sowell, who grew up in Harlem and who Kirk cites time and again to back up his statistics. Kirk considered Sowell his intellectual mentor and one of the smartest people of our age. He advocated that everyone read Sowell, the towering Black intellect. So racist, right? But there’s much more. What Pavlovitz didn’t tell you is that Kirk personally organized some of the largest conferences for young Black leaders called Young Black Leadership Summits. What Pavlovitz didn’t tell you is that Kirk built on the success, feedback, and enthusiasm of those summits by organizing Young Hispanic Leadership Summits. Why? Because he wanted all Americans, regardless of race or color, to excel.

KIRK—THE JEW-LOVING ANTISEMITE?

Pavlovitz called Kirk an antisemite. But what Pavlovitz didn’t tell you is that Kirk was a tireless defender of Israel’s right to exist and one of the most articulate defenders of Jews living in Israel. What Pavlovitz didn’t tell you is that Israel’s government called him one of their most lion-hearted friends. What Pavlovitz didn’t tell you is that Kirk went to Oxford and weathered attack after attack for arguing that, under the surface, the slogan “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” means Palestine will be free when it is free of Jews. What Pavlovitz didn’t tell you is that the context of Kirk’s alleged “antisemitism” was his criticism that some of the biggest financiers of Marxist institutions and radical ideologies come from liberal Jewish donors (think George Soros). To call that antisemitism is like saying if you criticize Bill Gates you must hate computer programmers.

DISHONEST EMPATHY QUOTE

Pavlovitz repeatedly paraded out this dishonestly edited quote of Kirk: “I can’t stand the word empathy, actually. I think empathy is a made-up, new age term that — it does a lot of damage.” Pavlovitz said this was an example that Kirk (and conservatives) don’t believe in compassion. What Pavlovitz selectively edited out was Kirk’s follow-up sentence where he extolled the idea of sympathy over empathy because no one can truly feel what another person feels. The second line was: “But it is very effective when it comes to politics. Sympathy, I prefer more than empathy.” Kirk was making the point that “empathy” is often used in political culture to ingratiate oneself to a community for votes (i.e., “I feel your pain”). As a result, it pushes people toward making decisions based on emotional identification rather than principles or facts. He wasn’t talking about the passing of one’s beloved grandma; he was talking about political narratives and how sympathy is better. Pavlovitz had borne false witness.

DISHONEST HOMOPHOBIA CHARGE

Pavlovitz said Kirk was hateful and homophobic, but he ignored Kirk’s homosexual friends and colleagues who came forward to say Kirk was always gracious and respectful despite his scripture-based disagreement with their sexual partnerships. Pavlovitz (who is a revisionist that ignores the biblical witness on sexual immorality) has fallen into the trap of thinking tolerance must equal agreement rather than its historical definition, which implies civil disagreement.

DISHONEST MISOGYNY CLAIM

Pavlovitz calls Kirk a misogynist and, along with other commentators, wants you to think that Kirk’s views on the sexes and marriage can be reduced to “women getting back in the kitchen.” In reality, Kirk promoted women throughout his organization, but he also believed motherhood was sacred and ought to be promoted as a genuine career path for women. He lamented that secular society and feminism have diminished motherhood as second rate. Reducing such beliefs to misogyny is just more slander.

DEI & BLACK PROFESSIONALS

I have seen other Christian commentators on the left pull out a host of Kirk’s comments and nibble them down to the most offensive size possible before rolling them out for public consumption. The biggest example circulating is a selectively edited video where Kirk says he would be concerned to fly on a plane with a Black pilot. Sounds bad on the face of it. However, the full clip and context involved a back-and-forth discussion about how Black professionals could become potentially undermined by DEI initiatives that place race above merit. He saw DEI as a roadblock for true Black advancement because it would create a cloud of suspicion over Black professionals who did earn their jobs by merit alone. He saw DEI as doing long-term damage regardless of short-term gain because in some professions, we want to know the most qualified got the job, not the most marginalized. He also anchored his view in the stated dream of MLK that the day would come when a Black man in America would be judged by the content of his character and not the color of his skin. He saw DEI as a total betrayal of MLK’s dream and ultimately unhelpful for Black professionals.

BLACK & HISPANIC OUTREACH

If you ever listened to Charlie Kirk at length, you would hear his heartbeat time and again for more Black Americans to see America as a land of opportunity more than a land of oppression holding them back. He genuinely wanted to see more Black Americans thrive and rightly identified why fatherly absence, unhealthy cultural norms, and victimization were holding Black Americans back from potential gains. He had a huge following of Black conservatives who agreed with him, and it was growing bigger by the month! The fact is that Charlie Kirk probably changed, motivated, and inspired more young Black and Hispanic Americans than many of the entrenched, insipid leftist professors who have criticized him. Far too often people reach for the low-hanging fruit of racism and bigotry to insulate themselves from taking a hard look at viewpoints that challenge their own.

RIGHT & LEFT FAILINGS

I am convinced that many leftist professors and elites would rather see Black Americans remain poor but remain liberal than wealthy and become conservative. But I also am convinced some on the right would rather see long-staying, hard-working illegal immigrant families torn apart and tossed back across the border than provide them a pathway toward citizenship and risk being categorized as pro-amnesty. The kingdom of God must transcend these divisions and seek the good, true and right wherever it is. There is an ever-present danger that politics and culture bear on the one who wants to follow Jesus without question. This is true for those on the right and the left.

PROGRESSIVE COMPROMISE

For example, progressive Christians have tossed aside clear biblical teaching on sexuality to avoid being labeled phobic or bigoted. It’s not just the Old Testament they are tossing out—it’s the teachings of Jesus. On the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus speaks about sexual immorality in strongly condemning terms. The key word he used for sexual immorality was “porneia.” That was a category reference that every 1st century Jew knew to be a reference to the four sexual prohibitions in the Levitical code: adultery, homosexuality (literally “a man lying with a male as with a woman”), incest, and bestiality. We don’t need to wonder what Jesus had in mind. He was intentionally using terminology that was common-place language for the Leviticus 18 sexual code—and everyone in his day knew it. No one had to question what he meant as revisionists try to do today. In Revelation 2:20, Jesus’s words are even stronger, condemning those who lead or enable others into sexual immorality (porneia).

LOYALTY & LEARNING

Only Jesus deserves our unquestioned loyalty and allegiance. I think Kirk exemplified that loyalty time and again under immense pressure. But he made some missteps, and we can learn from his shortcomings and faults. At times, Kirk let his emotions get the better of him and he lacked prudence and tact (as do I). Other times, I think he allowed political platforms on the right to be his compass on complex issues more than the teachings of Jesus. His positions may have been consistent with the Republican Party, but that is not necessarily the call of God on our lives. I think he missed the mark on what do with illegal immigrants who have been rooted and working in the US for years. Below I will share some remarks on illegal immigration and America’s gun ownership/culture.

IMMIGRATION ANALOGY

To begin, I’m not so naive as to think Democrats were motivated by love and compassion in making the borders easily passable for illegal immigrants to claim asylum. Nonetheless, they are here, and many have been here for years. You can’t capture millions of them and toss them across the border to solve the problem of a porous border any more than you can confiscate millions of guns from millions of legal citizens to solve school shootings. It’s just not going to happen. Millions of illegal immigrant families as well as millions of legal guns are in the US, and they are there to stay. They are part of the landscape of America, like it or not. Moving forward on these issues is going to require reasonable compromise from both sides.

TRUMP & COMPROMISE

Trump’s rhetoric is often unhelpful, un-Christlike, and beneath the witness of the Kingdom of God. Therefore, we can’t adopt it as our own. Yet he has valid points too. The criminal element is real. Very bad actors are taking advantage of our hospitality, getting arrested for serious crimes and being released without bail to prey on others all over again. The compromise? End sanctuary cities, enable ICE to identify and capture the worst criminal elements who have crossed the border, provide a pathway for quick citizenship to millions of immigrants who have proven themselves, and then secure the border and keep it secure or the next wave of migrants will keep the wages of America’s newest citizens low by willing to work for less. There is a reason why Trump won the Hispanic vote in Texas and swept many border counties from Texas to California.

SCHOOL SHOOTINGS

Erasing the Second Amendment is a non-starter. Start with closing the online loophole. It doesn’t make sense that buying from a licensed dealer requires a background check but buying from a stranger online might not. It’s silly and stupid, and conservatives must assuage their fears about a national registry / future confiscation and be willing to compromise on this point. Next—schools have to stop being soft targets. Shooters look for vulnerable places. Stadiums, music concerts, casinos, courthouses, jewelry stores, banks, and airports all have layered levels of security that our schools lack. An armed guard is not enough. Schools shouldn’t be softer targets than the places where we keep our money, board our planes, or watch people throw a ball.

TRUMP’S MISSED OPPORTUNITY

Lastly, it was wrong that Trump did not ask for flags to be flown at half-mast at the horrific slaying of a state Democrat, Melissa Hortman, and her husband. He did publicly comment on it and denounce it, but he could have done more. It was a missed opportunity. Trump misses many. Even now, Trump’s rhetoric is unhelpful in the wake of Kirk’s death. It’s unfortunate that he arrives on many scenes acting more like a woodsman cutting lumber for a raging fire than a fireman arriving with water. Followers of Christ are called to be peacemakers, and we have to arrive on scene as “firemen.”

GROUP IDENTITY

When emotions become the currency for cultural and political conversations, we become bankrupt as a society. It all stems from group identity politics. People are so afraid today to be seen as betrayers of their group identity that discussion becomes dangerous, debate becomes deplorable, and tolerance is seen as treason.

CHARLIE KIRK’S LEGACY

I believe the legacy of Charlie Kirk will be that he modeled genuine engagement with his detractors and critics. Many on the left said he was a fascist. Unsurprisingly, their liberal school history classes failed them. Fascists don’t GIVE the microphone to the other side; they TAKE it away. Week after week, year after year, Charlie Kirk put himself in the lion’s den of criticism, debate, and discussion, and he generously gave the other side the microphone to yell at him, curse at him, argue with him, and at times have a civil discussion with him. It was marvelous to see. I’ve never seen anything like it. When asked why he did it, he said that when people stop talking, they start shooting.

TESTIMONIES

Charlie Kirk, despite his faults, was a genuine follower of Christ and a very articulate defender of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. I went to his YouTube page the day after he died. There were thousands of people saying things like, “I was an atheist and Charlie changed my mind, and now I’ve been going to church for three years.” “I was on the road to becoming transgender and Charlie saved my mind with hard truths.” “I hated Charlie with all my guts, but as I listened to him, the Holy Spirit got a hold of me and I’m now a follower of Jesus.”

CONCLUSION

Charlie Kirk is with his Lord and Savior, not because he was a Republican but because Jesus was Lord of his life. Is Jesus yours?