The late Charlie Kirk rose to prominence in conservative politics, but history should remember him first as a Christian martyr.
Indeed, since Kirk’s assassination in Utah one week ago, those who knew him best have described him as a man whose every word and deed flowed from his Christian faith.
For instance, in a video posted Tuesday to YouTube, Dr. Frank Turek — a prominent Christian apologist, author, and radio host — shared Kirk’s bold reply when pressed by donors to abandon his Christian message.
“Donors would come up to him and say, ‘Hey, Charlie, we love all this conservative stuff. But keep the Jesus stuff out of it,” Turek recalled.
“You know what Charlie told them?” he continued. “‘Give your money to somebody else, because without Jesus, we’re nothing,” Kirk told them. “This is all about Jesus.”
Turek noted that Turning Point USA, the nonprofit founded by Kirk, took in more than $100 million in annual donations.
In other words, Kirk would not deny Jesus to keep his mammoth organization funded.
“So everyone who acknowledges me before men, I also will acknowledge before my Father who is in heaven, but whoever denies me before men, I also will deny before my Father who is in heaven,” Jesus said, according to Matthew 10:32-33.
Has the death of Charlie Kirk had an impact on your faith?
Moreover, Kirk considered politics merely tangential to his mission.
“He said recently, ‘Politics is peanuts compared to Jesus,’” Turek recalled. “It’s important, but it’s peanuts compared to Jesus.”
Readers may view Turek’s comments in the YouTube video below. The relevant segment began around the 9:20 mark.
In short, Kirk put Jesus above all else. For that reason, an evildoer killed him, while many other evildoers celebrated.
As Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton reportedly said following the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln in April 1865, “Now he belongs to the ages.”
But Kirk’s story — even his earthly story — does not end there.
In “Mere Christianity,” legendary Christian author C.S. Lewis explained how Christians can do the most good in a fallen world.
“If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were just those who thought most of the next,” Lewis wrote. “The Apostles themselves, who set on foot the conversion of the Roman Empire, the great men who built up the Middle Ages, the English Evangelicals who abolished the Slave Trade, all left their mark on Earth, precisely because their minds were occupied with Heaven.
“It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this,” he continued. “Aim at Heaven and you will get earth ‘thrown in’: aim at earth and you will get neither.”
Kirk showed us how to aim at heaven and change the world in the process.
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