Live Free

What do we do when we lose great men?

The flags stayed at half mast for awhile in my town in honor of Charlie Kirk. I was sad to see them go to full staff again. The flags could go back to normal, but our country won’t. We won’t. Everything changed in that moment when Charlie was shot. The country I thought and hoped we were ceased to exist, even in my mind.

2025 was a heavy year. We lost great men of faith and courage: John MacArther, James Dobson, Charlie Kirk, and Voddie Baucham. It feels like we lost these men when we needed them most. They were uncompromising and fearless. They spoke and stood for truth, regardless of how unpopular it was to the world or church. They didn’t sit by and watch the culture spin lies, they tried to fight them and reshape it with truth. They didn’t hide in safety. They worked in their sphere to make the world a place of truth and righteousness. They lived lives of courage free from the fear of man and free to the fear of God.

Who will fill the void these men left?

Perhaps the most human quality of all is that we all want a hero. I didn’t realize how much I thought “the country will be okay because we have Charlie Kirk.”

But one of the things that makes a man like Charlie Kirk great is that he cannot be replaced. Great men die, their legacy lives on but the void left by their absence never leaves. `

A few months ago, I watched the ceremony where Erika Kirk received the Presidential Medal of Freedom posthumously for her husband Charlie Kirk. She spoke of freedom and there is one line from her speech that I cannot forget, “to live free is the greatest gift, but to die free is the greatest victory.”

Time and history will tell what his impact will be. Decades from now we may look back and see that God used Charlie Kirk to save a generation and ultimately, our nation. Jack Posobic said “when America needed a hero, God gave us Charlie Kirk.” If you were involved in right wing politics at all, or even just followed it, you feel the void left by his death. We lost a great man. And instead of just mourning the loss we should thank God such a man ever lived. He was the hero we needed.

I live differently because of Charlie Kirk’s death. It is the national event that has changed me more than anything.

From our human perspective, it feels wrong that a man like Charlie Kirk doesn’t get to live and enjoy the nation he preserved. But such is the case for many great men. They fight for freedom and die on the battlefield and their children and the children of other men enjoy the freedom they lived and died for.

In the closing lines of the Lord of the Rings, the hero Frodo, after saving his homeland from evil, cannot stay to enjoy the shire. He says “I tried to save the Shire, and it has been saved, but not for me. It must often be so, Sam, when things are in danger: some one has to give them up, lose them, so that others may keep them.”

“Where are you going, Master?’ cried Sam, though at last he understood what was happening. To the Havens, Sam,’ said Frodo.

‘And I can’t come.’

No, Sam. Not yet anyway, not further than the Havens. Though you too were a Ring-bearer, if only for a little while. Your time may come. Do not be too sad, Sam. You cannot be always torn in two. You will have to be one and whole, for many years. You have so much to enjoy and to be, and to do.’

‘But,’ said Sam, and tears started in his eyes, ‘I thought you were going to enjoy the Shire, too, for years and years, after all you have done.’

‘So I thought too, once. But I have been too deeply hurt, Sam. I tried to save the Shire, and it has been saved, but not for me. It must often be so, Sam, when things are in danger: some one has to give them up, lose them, so that others may keep them. But you are my heir: all that I had and might have had I leave to you … and keep alive the memory of the age that is gone, so that people will remember the Great Danger and so love their beloved land all the more…”

I don’t know where we’re at in the war for America’s future. In some ways it feels like we’re winning, in other ways it feels like everything is crumbling. We “have much to enjoy and to be and to do.” We win not just by winning elections or court cases. We win by living free. Free from lies, deception, evil, cowardice- free to courage, truth, and righteousness.

Instead of looking for someone to save our country, we should look at ourselves and ask what am I doing to preserve freedom?

There isn’t another Charlie Kirk coming to save America. There is only you and I choosing to live free. That is what will save our nation.