Red Rose Lane

Friends, please pray for the entire Kirk family, who learned they'll wait until at least June 2028 for justice, news likely made doubly painful by remarks about Charlie this week that are beneath contempt. On the “I’ve Had It” podcast, so-called culture commentators Jennifer Welch and Angie Sullivan laughed at the idea of digging up Charlie’s body and “doing it again.” Then Dave Chappelle told a sold-out Madison Square Garden that “life got better” after Charlie was murdered, and that Charlie is now “looking up, laughing so hard he can’t breathe.” I have often defended comedians, and I understand that pushing the boundaries of what's acceptable is part of the gig. But this is different. This is laughing at the murder of a young husband and father of two small children, who was killed with a microphone in his hand, inviting those who disagreed with him into honest, respectful dialogue. Shame on you. There have always been people in the fever swamps who cheer when someone dies. What is new is that it now comes from the main stage and is met with applause. How did we get here? This is what a culture looks like when it drifts away from God. Remove God, and with him any sense of the transcendent and the sacred, our objective sense of what is true and good is left in ruins. What remains is relativism, “my truth” and “your truth,” and finally a game of power: my team against yours. In a world like that, a man's death can become a punchline. Charlie understood this cultural disease and spent much of his life trying to heal it. It's why he went onto hostile campuses to sit with young people, many of them unmoored and unaffiliated, and make the case for God, for truth, and for a moral order beyond themselves. He listened patiently, argued charitably, and spoke openly about Jesus Christ. It is my hope, then, that many more will take up this vital part of Charlie's work.