If Charlie Kirk Goes to Heaven

By: Quardricos B. Driskell, Columnist

“When I get to heaven,” John Prine famously wrote and sang, “I’m gonna shake God’s hand. Thank him for more blessings than one man can stand.”

Maybe that’s where conversations begin in eternity—with gratitude, curiosity, and the desire to know Jesus more deeply. In another of his songs, Prine imagines bumping into the Savior who “needed somebody to talk to.” Imagine that—Jesus needing conversation, someone who would listen.

Now imagine this: Charlie Kirk sitting down with Jesus … and listening.

Charlie Kirk was a conservative activist and commentator best known as the founder of Turning Point USA, an organization focused on mobilizing young people around limited government and free-market ideals. He was also a prominent media figure, serving as an influential voice in  conservative politics and within Christian Nationalist circles.

But Charlie Kirk listening would be a radical departure from the way Kirk has handled his public life. I didn’t know Charlie Kirk. We met and sat on a panel together. But he was known for his “prove me wrong” debates, he has built a career not on conversation, but on confrontation. His reputation rests less on the exchange of ideas and more on winning the argument with clever quips and rehearsed one-liners. But heaven has a way of disarming us. The one-upmanship fades. The rehearsed lines don’t matter anymore. In heaven, we don’t arrive with all the answers—we arrive with questions.

Picture Charlie sitting beside a Black man who never made it into flight school—not for lack of talent or skill, but because racism barred the door. Kirk, who once questioned whether Black pilots were “qualified” or simply “DEI hires,” would be surrounded by hundreds of men whose dreams were deferred because of prejudice, yet whose dignity and calling were undeniable. Their presence would force a different kind of reckoning—a holy education on justice, worth, and truth.

Or picture him speaking with a transgender girl. Not as an object of ridicule. Not as a headline for a culture war. But as a child of God telling her story in her own words: When did you first feel different? Who first listened to you? What gave you hope? What caused you pain? Questions that in this life he rarely thought to ask—but in heaven he will have no choice but to hear.

And then there are the children of Sandy Hook. In heaven they still gather for lessons, the ones interrupted by bullets on that December day in 2012. When Charlie meets them, they will testify—not about politics, but about the sanctity of life itself. Surrounded by these children, he will begin to understand what he never paused to consider: that the right to carry a gun will never outweigh a child’s right to live. In their presence, clever soundbites will crumble. Their witness will silence the quick-tongued debater, and for once, he will listen.

But maybe the harder truth is this: Charlie Kirk didn’t have to wait until heaven to start listening. Neither do we. The poor, the marginalized, the grieving, and the silenced are already speaking here and now. The question is whether Charlie—or any of us—have the courage to hear them before the trumpet sounds. Because if heaven teaches us anything, it is this: the people we are most afraid of, the people we most dismiss, the people we most despise—they may be the very ones God appoints to teach us what salvation really means.

And perhaps the most unsettling thought is this: if Charlie Kirk is in heaven, then some of us may need to ask whether we are prepared to sit beside him, listen to him learn, and watch God’s mercy do what ours never could.

And if that offends us—that heaven is a place of Black pilots, transgender children, and the slain of children of Sandy Hook— and yes, maybe even Charlie Kirk  then maybe we don’t really want heaven at all.

Quardricos Bernard Driskell is a federal health care lobbyist and an adjunct professor of legislative politics, where he teaches race, religion, and politics at George Washington University Graduate School of Political Management. He also serves as senior pastor of the historic Beulah Baptist Church in Alexandria, Va., and is a member of Faith in Public Life’s national coalition. Follow him on Twitter @q_driskell4.