My Friend Charlie.

Where do we start?

Before I get serious, as I must, I should start with the inescapable humor and joking that were at the heart of my friendship with Charlie. We could never stop sarcastically teasing each other, privately and publicly. It really became difficult sometimes to force ourselves to get serious when we were together. Could the ultra-liberal Larry David — with whom I was once friends — imagine that Charlie and I were constantly trading Seinfeld quotes, and that Charlie knew the show even better than I did? But of course Charlie was a savant, as we all knew.

Today is 9-11 and just as we will all remember where we were when that tragedy struck over two decades ago, I know I will never forget where I was yesterday. I was sitting on a weight bench in the gym. I read a text from a mutual friend confirming what I couldn’t dare to imagine. It hit me hard. And I took my head in my hands and wept. The cliche is true: No words can suffice. Ever. And soon thereafter I realized that my friend Charlie is a martyr. Nothing less. He was murdered for his faith in Jesus. By forces that hates truth and hate love and hate God — and anyone who represents God.

I remember the first time I met Charlie. He was 24. His fiancee at the time, Erika — who is now his widow and the mother of his two children — was with us. We got together over burgers here in Manhattan; and this exquisitely talented and already outrageously accomplished young man embarrassed me by telling me that I was his hero and that my books had meant the world to him. I laughed inwardly, because I knew that whatever very small things I had had the privilege of contributing to his journey were a drop in the bucket — were as NOTHING — compared to who he was. Even then I was in awe of the staggering talent and gifts that God had given him, and felt tremendously honored that he would be so gracious to me. But he was that gracious and that humble. He was the real deal. A gift from God to this world.

Ever since meeting him I never had the slightest doubt that Charlie would be the president of the United States. Had he lived. And a truly GREAT president of the United States. He was simply one of the most naturally gifted human beings we have ever had. His level of talent — and what he did with that talent in such a short time — was truly awe inspiring and almost shocking. But it’s vitally important to say that at the center of his truly astonishing gifting was his deep faith in Jesus. He wasn’t “sort of” Christian. He was outspokenly and boldly Christian. That was at the heart of everything he said and did — at the heart of his patriotism and conservatism. Jesus was at the heart of it all. Which is the one reason I don’t need to mourn his death as the world mourns. No. Charlie is with Jesus. That is inescapably glorious, however much we will miss him, and of course we will miss him A LOT. But we can rejoice that according to God’s plans — which are not our own — Charlie fulfilled his assignment. And therefore Jesus says to him what we should all earnestly desire to hear more than anything in the world: “Well done, good and faithful servant.” We should all live to hear those words from the Author of our lives. From the Author of goodness and truth and peace and love and joy and hope. There is nothing more wonderful. Nothing. I can rejoice today because I know that Charlie understood that and lived for that.

Jesus lived to be 33 and Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Martin Luther King Jr. lived to be 39. We know that God is sovereign. Just as He miraculously saved President Trump’s life a year ago, he could have prevented the deaths of Bonhoeffer or MLK Jr. — or of my friend Charlie. But He did not. God often allows evil to happen. But we need to know — and God desperately wants us to know — that we can trust Him and love Him in ALL circumstances. Even the most horrific of them all, such as what happened yesterday. We praise God in ALL circumstances, knowing Who He is and that we can trust Him, despite our natural pain and horror at the evil we sometimes see. Yes, there is real evil in the world. But God is good.

I think Charlie’s murder yesterday was like the murders of JFK and MLK Jr. and RFK. The inspiring leader of a great movement — to whom millions looked for leadership, and who gave those millions hope — was killed in cold blood. Everything in us recoils in horror at the very idea of it. It is inconceivable.

To that point, it has been a truly hideous and shocking thing to witness the degradation of the left in this country, to see what they have become since the Sixties. It seems that over the decades they have gone downhill and downhill and downhill. Today they seem to stand for nothing other than power and pleasure. It is truly horrifying to think of it. When RFK was murdered in 1968 he represented a party that had noble aspirations. Caring for the poor. Ending the Vietnam War. Standing up for the little guy. What are their fundamentals now? They have stumbled downward to become the party of nothing much more than “I want total freedom to have sex for my own pleasure and gratification whenever I want WITHOUT CONSEQUENCES. And if there are consequences I want the right to legally murder those consequences.” How horrifying. But isn’t that about it at this point? Is it any more complicated than that? So it follows that if anything gets in their way, whether it’s an innocent baby in the womb or a brilliant young man who with his words makes me see the horrific emptiness of my positions — I will stoop to murder. I’m sorry to say that the left has become something seriously disturbing and ugly, has become the party of self-gratification and murder. But perhaps the murder of my friend Charlie will help some of them to see what they have become — and to ask God to lead them out of the abyss in which they now reside. May his tragic death wake some people up. May his murder lead some on the left to honest introspection about what they really believe and stand for. There is a way out of that abyss.

For the last several years I’ve said over and over that we are in a spiritual war. Those on the left don’t understand the idea of a SPIRITUAL war — and in their desire to demonize their opponents they pretend that that means we conservatives and Christians want to do what THEY do, which is resort to violence. That is a lie. We must reject it with everything in us. The secular left believe this world is all there is, so they must do whatever they can to win. But we know there is another world that is more important than this world. So our chief weapons are prayer — and truth — and LOVE. It would do the deepest disservice to Charlie and all he lived for — and now died for — if anyone would be stupid enough not to know that. The most radical thing anyone can do to counter the evil on the left is to pray. Pray for our enemies. Tell people about Jesus. If Charlie’s death can motivate us to do that more boldly than ever, God’s purposes will be served. We need to be warriors for truth and love, and we need to let Charlie’s death move us to be much bolder than we have been.

I’ve also often said that God is with us in this war, and that it is His will that we win. And I believe we will win. But in a war there are casualties. And Charlie is one of those casualties. But may his death remind us of why we are in this war. We are in this war to spread the love and the truth of God, and to show those who hate us that we will not stoop to what they will stoop to. We would rather die. And if we must die, we WILL die, knowing that when we die, we do NOT die, but step into the presence of the One Who is Truth and Love. That’s not just a nice idea. It’s the most important thing in the universe.

To counter the evil that is all around us, then, resolve today to give yourself WHOLLY to Jesus and to His purposes. That’s what Charlie did. And that’s what Charlie would want you to do. Now go and do it. It’s why you were born and it is the purpose of your life. Don’t miss it.