In 1949, Arthur Miller published Death of a Salesman, the tragic story of Willy Loman, an aging traveling salesman whose hollow pursuit of the American Dream ends in despair and suicide.
For decades, Miller’s play has served as a symbol of material emptiness, generational conflict, and the human longing for meaning.
Earlier this week, we witnessed not the death of a salesman but the death of an evangelist—Charlie Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA, assassinated at 31.
The contrasts could not be starker. Willy Loman was aging; Charlie Kirk was in the prime of his youth; Loman learned the emptiness of the American dream, while Kirk embraced it wholeheartedly; Loman’s story is one of generational conflict, while Kirk’s is one of generational mobilization; Loman’s life was empty, while Kirk’s was gloriously full of purpose, family, and courageous faith. Loman took his own life, while Charlie Kirk was politically assassinated.
The political nature of this assassination is incontrovertible, despite attempts from legacy media to “both-sides” the event in their narrative. But its spiritual nature also must not be ignored.
Charlie Kirk, Evangelist
Yes, Kirk was a political organizer, and an astonishingly gifted one. Dropping out of college at 18, he built what became an $80 million operation with undeniable sway in presidential elections. But his vision went beyond politics. He believed, rightly, that politics flow from culture, and culture from cultus—what a people worship. And Kirk worshiped Christ.
His tools were political and his mind philosophical. But his heart beat with zeal for the gospel of Jesus Christ. Those close to him testify that his faith wasn’t a public posture; it marked his private life unassailably.
Which raises the question: did his public boldness for Christ make him more of a target? I believe it did. Roundly condemned by leftists as insufficiently winsome, Kirk proved Spurgeon right: “Bold-hearted men are always called mean-spirited by cowards who shrink from disagreeable truths that save souls.”
Kirk’s murder is not just another downward step in what little is left, if anything, of American civic discourse; it is spiritual warfare gone kinetic. We are witnessing the outward, physical manifestation of an unseen spiritual and ideological war that has already been raging hotly beneath the societal surface.
The Call We Cannot Evade
Christians are called to live quiet, faithful lives—loving neighbors, forgiving enemies, proclaiming the gospel, and awaiting our blessed hope. But “quiet” never meant indifferent. Too many of us have confused ordinary faithfulness with placid indifference, caring about the nations abroad while neglecting our own.
Too many of us have confused ordinary faithfulness with placid indifference, caring about the nations abroad while neglecting our own.
The Great Commission doesn’t stop at “make disciples” but commands us to teach the nations to obey all that Christ commanded (Matthew 28:19–20). That means public morality matters. Civic righteousness matters. And as Aragorn warned King Théoden, open war is upon us whether we seek it or not. We may not be interested in the culture war, but the culture war is very interested in us.
Kirk understood this. His political passion had little to do with debating marginal tax rates or other pedantic matters. He cared about cultural questions because he knew every one of them was ultimately moral, and every moral question rests on a spiritual claim.
A Different Kind of Martyrdom
As someone who works with missionaries in my full-time role, I might have said earlier this week that Kirk lived a safer life than missionaries in Yemen or China. Now I’m not so sure. Anyone who publicly proclaims Christ, whether in a bazaar in the Middle East or on a campus in Utah, will find himself opposed—not only by political forces but dark spiritual forces as well.
Paul warned us: “All who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted” (2 Timothy 3:12). There is no escape route by nuance, tone, or winsomeness. The gospel offends, and its implications for public life offend even more.
We cannot shrink back from “disagreeable truths that save souls.” That includes not just salvation but the moral law that reveals our need for salvation. A retreat to third-way rhetoric cannot save us.
We need missionaries in the West with the boldness of activists, and activists with the fire of missionaries who know Christ is Lord over every sphere of life. As William Carey both preached Christ and advocated reform in India, so we must preach Christ and contend for righteousness here.
We need missionaries in the West with the boldness of activists, and activists with the fire of missionaries who know Christ is Lord over every sphere of life.
As my friend Josh Daws recently said, maybe it’s time to stop treating the culture war as a distraction from the gospel—and start seeing it as a platform for the gospel.
So, well done, Charlie. Enter into the joy of your Lord. As for us—in the words of Andy Dufresne in The Shawshank Redemption, it’s time to get busy living or get busy dying.
