The Truth About Charlie

“The truth isn’t always popular, but it’s always worth it.” – Charlie Kirk

An inconvenient reality has settled in over the last 24 hours. Freedom has a price. Particularly in Charlie Kirk’s experience, free speech has a price.

In a culture that safely lobs verbal grenades from behind internet personas with phony online bravado, there is a disconnect when values come with an ultimate price. Past generations are keenly aware of the horror of what an army of live combatants can do. Some of the under-50 set have experience with this, but men who shared foxholes, ran out of trenches, or experienced guerrilla warfare have a different understanding of the cost of freedom.

The truth of freedom has not changed: the price is high and the cost can be ultimate. In the 21st century, the cost sometimes comes at the expense of a job, a relationship, an opportunity, a political association, or public cancellation. September 10th, 2025, showed newer generations that the cost can be someone’s life.

If the 21st century could be marked by anything, it is marked by ideology and illusion. While modernity was a battle for our lives, and postmodernism was a battle for our minds, the metamodern world of today is a battle for the soul. The self-centric reality that punctuates every aspect of culture has redefined purpose and value from a society, to a tribal group, and ultimately to the individual. This is the brave new world: disconnected from authority, reliant on subjective reality constructs, and living out of a set of values that elevate the self to the pinnacle of importance. Dietrich Bonhoeffer talked about the force of evil to “turn us in on ourselves until we become a destructive force in community.” His prediction is our reality.

That reality is what we saw this week: people living out of their personal truth at the cost of the community. We saw a series of social media posts taking haughty victory laps because someone paid the ultimate price for speaking out for the truth. It’s a sickening reality when tribal values usurp human dignity, but this is the path of people who declare themselves their own authority.

Charlie knew that the truth he spoke for wasn’t popular, but it was worth it. He was a man who promoted the freedom to engage with ideas in public, openly and without prejudice, only to become a martyr at the hands of personal relativism and partisan hatred. Well, not only. He gave a voice to a significant number of fellow countrymen and women who felt silenced by a tribal movement that has overtaken education, academia, the media, the political arena, and the celebrity-obsessed consumer culture. He inspired others to speak. He engaged in respectful discussions with those who disagreed with him. His gifts for clarity were recognized on both sides of the aisle; he excelled at articulating the heart of the matter, whether people liked it or not.

The bottom line is that the human community has been exchanging ideas for millennia. At different times and in a variety of cultures, there has been great peril that came with doing so. Socrates, Joan of Arc, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Martin Luther King Jr., and even Jesus of Nazareth paid the ultimate price for what they contributed to the public square. The ability to speak with freedom from persecution has become the national monument of the American experience over the last 250 years. And while that might be lost on the current generation (due to the billions of internet comments without consequences), the facts of those freedoms are that they came with a price.

The last fifty years have seen a reinvention of what is good, what is true, and what is beautiful. The archetypes of the Western Christian Paideia have been relabeled as the passé constructs of the patriarchy. The postmodern battle for the mind manipulated freedom to develop an ideology of self, which promoted a tribal engagement with the truth. As a result, we reinvented ourselves as the masters of our fate and the architects of our own personal purpose. We honed critical perspectives that the tribe enforced. We eroded community by declaring others on the right or wrong side of our ideology, supplanting objective reality with ethnocentric prerogative. Then we reinterpreted the world around us to fit the narrative that we created. Illusion became reality, and perspective became king.

During these latter days, battles of nuance, feelings, and emotions have become paramount. The metamodern ethic has empowered individuals to live out of the idea that their subjective reality usurps the world around them. It is an age where curated opinions and bespoke ideologies have replaced truth, and an illusion persists that can justify any action. It is an oscillation between opposing ideas and a synchronicity of nuanced intuitions. What happens to the person who stands in this public square and states that there is an objective truth that has authority over someone’s subjective reality? They become a danger escalated to an existential threat, the personification of Hitler, or vilified to embody the very source of evil in the world. They become the cognitive dissonance that must be destroyed at all costs. 

This week, as we commemorate the 24th anniversary of 9/11, is a poignant time for Americans to confront the harsh reality of the overarching truth in our world. An encapsulation of the reality of our age is that there were close to 3000 people killed on that fateful day in New York City, and the country stood united as one amidst the tragedy of lost life. Today, 3000 babies are aborted every day, and a significant number of our citizens see that as an entitlement of their personal will. We are well-versed in data points and per capita justifications of injustice, social deviance, and outright evil, as we try to make sense of things that will never make sense. In truth, the details of the week are overwhelming, deafening, and sobering. From a public knifing, where people walk away unaffected and unwilling to help, to US legislators being reluctant to take a moment of silence for Charlie Kirk, the compass of morality in the US seems to be at a breaking point.

So, what are we to do in the face of the loss of our public moorings? The conflict that arises from the dominance of an ideological pursuit of illusion is redrawing the lines of right and wrong, reinterpreting good and evil, and turning us inward to our own destruction. It is calling for the oscillation of nuance that metamodernism offers. Yet, it is in this space that we must validate the truth about Charlie and the actual reality that exists in the Western world. Beyond the elevation of free speech, freedom to meet and discuss ideas, and the privilege of debating others without fear of danger, there is a higher authority of truth that we must answer to, regardless of sociological constructs or cultural impetus.

Charlie was not a perfect man, but he was a good man. His opposition in the public square often demonized him for bringing his understanding of truth into a place that didn’t want to hear it. That didn’t change his character, and, in truth, his core values were what drove him to continue speaking truth rather than stay silent. While many of the issues Charlie engaged with were political, his mission was to impact individuals with life-changing realities that would transform them into something they could not be on their own, and to understand a world that was bigger than the indoctrinating voices dominating it. Chief among these transformative truths is the personal experience of Jesus Christ. He put forward that the central hope of our world is not in a political ideology or a cultural revolution; it is in a person and a relationship with that person that can transform us into someone we could not be in our own power. Charlie was living proof of this.

The reality of what God can do to impact a culture through one person is transformative when they choose to relinquish themselves for the sake of what the Almighty can do. The reality in this is that Jesus Himself told His followers that they would be hated for His sake. In John 15, He tells them that if they were of the world, the world would love them. But because of Him, they will be given up to torture, imprisonment, and death for His sake. Charlie lived out of that truth. He was hated by the world, but loved by his Savior.

Earlier in the week, Konstantin Kisin put forth the idea that “some sort of invisible line has been crossed that we didn’t even know was there.” And yet, from the perspective of a Biblical worldview, we know that the invisible line is real and has been there for a long time. We understand that the nearer we get to the end of all things, the line will be crossed, celebrated, redrawn, and crossed again. Ultimately, the Bible speaks of two witnesses who will be killed in the streets, and the world will rejoice, give gifts in honor of their death, and celebrate as if it were a holiday (see Revelation 11). Those online celebrating the assassination of Charlie Kirk are an introduction to this reality that will come.

A world that calls evil good and good evil is priming itself for the end. We can see the culture reflecting the new frontier. Unapologetically, this new world order will silence the truth at any cost. Rather than come face-to-face with reality, they will cancel, malign, berate, and disdain any person who puts the truth forward and tells them that they are subject to it, whether they believe in it or not. The love of people is growing cold, and the hard-heartedness of our culture is becoming more evident.

As much as we wrestle with the injustices and evils that exist in our world, we need to remember that a time is coming when we will have to choose what is worth fighting for in our lives. Will we act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God, or will we be the masters of our fate? We will have to trade self-centric efforts to save ourselves, perspectives to heal the world, and personal truths that transform us for the reality that exists, regardless of what we think. We must break out of the illusion and find the truth that only exists in the Almighty God. Jesus Christ is the only hope that the world has, and those who cannot embrace that reality are headed for a real existential threat. One that lasts for all eternity.

As we wade through a week of difficulty and remember Charlie’s impact on the world, there is a place to recognize that he had the truth that can set us free. As Charlie put on display, the truth that supersedes all others isn’t popular, but it is worth it. In a world lost in the ideological illusion of self-centric living, it can be hard to see hope or bring clarity in a time of senseless actions. Real transformation requires real truth. The price might be high, but it will be worth it. Click here if you want to find out more.

Also, if you are feeling overwhelmed by the details of the week, remember that you are not alone. In Christ, we have the power to experience true freedom. The price was high, but He paid it for us. He told those suffering from the burdens of this world to come to Him, and He would give them rest. So rest in the truth and be set free. And, if the legacy of Charlie’s death comes with an awakening of many to the real truth, the impact of his life will be that much sweeter.

Peace be with you as you seek the truth.