Had he his hurts before?

If you’re still numb or shocked by the horrific, broad daylight assassination of thirty-one-year-old, conservative-Christian activist Charlie Kirk, then you’re certainly not alone.

And if you can, bear with me—I’m bringing up Shakespeare, but not to be pedantic.

Between the clear, growing dread of left-wing political violence and potential backlash across the country, and the outpouring of prayer and grief for Charlie’s two young children and wife of four years, Erika, I’m not trying to make light of anything. Unlike the assassination attempts at our president a year ago (someone taking shots at a politician is sadly, nothing new), we’re in darker waters now, and I’m praying for my country as much as I can.

Nonetheless, Shakespeare.

When we have a whole universe dammed up inside but only a few clumsy words to express it, the Bard—a dazzling complement to the truth and comfort of God’s word itself1 though of course no substitute—is there for us. The words and poetry he grounded in frail, action-taking characters who might as well be flesh and blood are, as always, insightful, and evergreen.

With that, and with account after first-hand account rushing to describe Charlie’s skill, tenacity, moral clarity, humility, and genuine desire to build bridges with people while launching a movement that would play no small role in the national culture and the re-election of Donald Trump, I’ll pivot to Shakespeare’s take on honor. Or rather, and as things went yesterday and twenty-four years ago on September 11th in New York City, honor in death.

In what might be considered a throwaway moment in one of Shakespeare’s most surprisingly insightful tragedies, we get a great example of fighting and dying honorably. This moment bubbles up near the end of Macbeth—the ultimate tale of unscrupulous ambition, backroom scheming, and betrayal—and for a minute, a work so haunted that theater folk like myself eschew the title on stage and call it the ‘Scottish play’ seems to double back on itself.

This shot of heroism appears late in Act Five, when the tragedy is nearly over. If you’re gunning for home or watching a heavily visual, edited adaption like Justin Kurzel’s, you’re likely to miss it. When the joint forces of Macbeth’s rival Macduff and the exiled heir to the throne Malcolm close in on the tyrant’s castle, the fight turns into a room-to-room melee.

Thanks to another round of timely prediction from the three witches he infamously meets in Act One, Macbeth thinks he’s invincible. Emboldened, not by something worth fighting for but by the ‘charmed life’ that gives him good odds, he’d rather cling to the blood-smeared crown he took by assassinating King Duncan than surrender or commit suicide prior to capture.

MACBETH
Why should I play the Roman fool and die
On mine own sword? Whiles I see lives, the gashes
Do better upon them.2

To be fair, there’s a kind of brute ballsiness in going down swinging. But given the rap sheet of selfish, evil things Macbeth did after giving them serious thought, it’s only a tarnished glimmer—an echo, if that, of the bravery Macbeth showed on the battlefield much earlier as one of King Duncan’s loyal generals.

More deeply, and placing Macbeth in Shakespeare’s hierarchical, moral-Christian universe, one where usurping murderers like him (Macbeth himself is no dummy; he knows it) head only to damnation, the real motive to keep fighting can be called cowardice.

Honor—the real thing—shows itself when an opposing soldier named Young Siward fights Macbeth… and loses. As Macbeth flees to another part of the castle, Malcolm’s forces come upon the scene, and Young Siward’s father gets the heartbreaking news.

ROSS
Your son, my lord, has paid a soldier’s debt.
He only lived but till he was a man,
The which no sooner had his prowess confirmed
In the unshrinking station where he fought,
But like a man he died.

SIWARD
Then he is dead?

ROSS
Ay, and brought off the field. Your cause of sorrow
Must not be measured by his worth, for then
It hath no end.

Ross’s words are not trite; he speaks for anyone who grieved the loss of someone kind, generous, and honorable. By all accounts, and even from those who disagreed on everything but sat down to engage with him, Charlie Kirk was such a person.

When Siward asks for proof of his son’s bravery, the heart lurches.

SIWARD
Had he his hurts before?

ROSS
Ay, on the front.

SIWARD
Why then, God’s soldier be he!
Had I as many sons as I have hairs,
I would not wish them to a fairer death;
And so his knell is knolled.3

The wounds ‘on front,’ of course, say it all, and comfort a stricken father.

Had the outmatched Young Siward retreated from the fight, he’d have his wounds on the back. The fact that he died at the hands of the soulless, relentlessly scheming tyrant who plunged Scotland into chaos for personal gain adds moral purpose to his death, magnifying the bravery of the wounds ‘out front’ even more.

Where the cause is good and righteous, as it is with Israel disarming Hamas, with a popular activist braving death threats to take ideas that aren’t allowed on college campuses out into the open, with those standing up for God, family, their country, and the unborn—and especially with the fireman, policeman, and port authority officers who rushed into a flaming skyscraper to help people get out, the forward posture speaks for itself.

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Life is precious, and the stones to walk into physical danger, or sit and debate frothing-at-the-mouth opponents out in the open is preciously rare. Very few of us go out with our wounds on front. The least we can do is support, honor, and hold up as the exception those who do the fighting for us.

Rest in Heaven, Charlie—and may the heroes of New York and United Flight 93 rest in the highest honor beside the nearly three thousand who died twenty-four years ago.

Such plain, forthright heroism is for all time.