“I have always — at least, ever since I can remember — had a kind of longing for death….The sweetest thing in all my life has been [that] longing to reach the Mountain, to find the place where all the beauty came from.” From the myth of Psyche as retold by C.S. Lewis in one of his greatest works: Till We Have Faces.

Death even conceptually is emphatically eschewed by the great majority of us. Accordingly, it was first dark and strange and then oddly bright and beautiful when I came across this quote this week on my way to Charlie Kirk’s Medal of Freedom Service in the White House.

Lewis’s phrase with its dark focus on death stood out because, well, my friend was murdered in front of the nation, in perhaps the most immediately and widely seen public slayings in history. I was in Italy for my 20th year wedding anniversary when the text came in from our TPUSA COO that read: EMERGENCY. It was around 10pm in Rome, and it was dark, and the streets were dark, and I felt the darkness in my guts. But in the coming days, something profound happened: churches began filling, Bibles were selling out, and a thousand streams of testimonies turned into a river of hearts returning to Christ. The sun began to rise higher in this dawning of the Golden Age.

Back in the US. Monday, October 13th, DC was dark and wet, a wash of urban gloom canopied by steel heavens. Tuesday, Charlie’s birthday. The weather was slated for the same. On my way out of the hotel room to the White House, I thought, should I bring sunglasses? In the last moment, I swiped them off the dresser. I didn’t know if I’d need them, but incredibly, as my wife and I were escorted into the newly paved Rose Garden, there was a break in the clouds. Rivulettes of blue sky began to form; rods and shafts of light pushed through the gloom and heaven sparkled. An oddly silly playlist was being played in the backround, Dancing Queen, among others–we later heard that it was the leader of the free world DJing from the West Wing. Soft laughter could be heard at moments tickling the air. There was warm conversation with Tucker Carlson. The comically Elvisian sideburns of President Javier Milei. God was smiling and Charlie was smiling. There were, of course, tears shared between ourselves and Mrs. Kirk, but underneath something was happening: a deep sense of hope, a deep recognition of the bond forged through the faithful fight. Walking back, DC felt lighter, the sun was setting, but the day was ending with a new hope: paradox.

The primary atheistic gotcha has always been to point at pain and suffering and heartache, and say ‘How dare you declare the existence of a good God when evil is so blatantly naked and abundant?’ We Christians fire our greatest cannons of locutory defense for God in the face of the painful query, but the cannonballs are never heavy enough, because pain, in the moment, is so overwhelming. But in time, death can be a victory, and the greatest victory when seen in the Christian paradigm.

Death here is a victory in two senses, first and most obviously, it is a victory seen in the incredible and momentous wave of people toward faith in Jesus Christ, it means that Charlie meant something profound, and that something could only be realized by his loss, for men seek heroes, but rarely do they find them among the living–we have too much pride for that. The momentum is not simply a faith momentum, it is a meaning, purpose, hope momentum. Not merely the abstraction of God, but its substance faith with works.

In the second sense, the grand victory is for Charlie. He was one of the most inquisitive minds I have ever known. His depth of knowledge was for most, astounding. He loved deep conversations on truth, beauty, and virtue. Now Charlie can see the place where all the beauty came from, and more than the place, the person. As recited in the third chapter and sixteenth verse of John, “[f]or God so loved the world that he sent his only begotten son that whosoever would believe in him shall not perish but have everlasting life.” Yes, Heaven is real. The thousands of near-death experiences and centuries of testimony recognize it. The scriptures declare it. The contrary is true as well. Hell is real, and so to its eternal darkness. But most men do not want to reckon with death, because they deeply fear reckoning with God. But as we learn in C.S. Lewis’s retelling of the Greek story, there is a profound and masterful plan by the gods that we are each called to actively participate in. At times it seems paradoxical, but the sun can break through the greyest heavens, sometimes to the backing track of Dancing Queen.

Written by David Engelhardt
Opinion piece in the Washington Times

Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore