I am a Jew, and I try to be an observant one; I have only a basic familiarity with Christian precepts.
Yet I find it impossible to think about what happened to Charlie on September 10th without noting parallels with the New Testament gospels, and another man who gave his life doing exactly what he was meant to do.
I am not saying that Charlie was some kind of Biblical figure; the deification of political leaders is distasteful. During President Barack Obama’s first term, when some of my misguided liberal Jewish brethren cast him in a godly role at the Passover seder, I found the liturgical agitprop that followed both offensive and mockable.
I knew Charlie since he was a teenager; I don’t think he would have wanted to be seen as the Second Coming.
But we know — because he told us at every opportunity — that he saw it as the mission of every Christian to emulate Christ, to live as He would have lived and choose as He would have chosen.
And in taking the risks he took, heading to college campuses to share his views, not knowing if he would face cheers from would-be disciples, or the jeers of a mob, Charlie lived out Christ’s example and shared the Gospels as he knew them.
Every nation, and every religion, has its martyrs — those who give their lives for the cause, and who, in so doing, earn a special place in faith and in collective memory.
There are different kinds of martyrdom. In the Judeo-Christian tradition, a martyr is someone who dies while refusing to abandon their beliefs. In Islam (and this is the essence of the problem), a martyr is someone who dies while imposing his beliefs on others.
Charlie’s martyrdom was of the first kind, though it also had a unique quality. He died while inviting others to share their beliefs.
As he always did in his campus visits, he invited those who disagreed with him to come to the front of the line, and to “prove me wrong.”
He was not murdered because of what he was preaching. He was murdered because when he gave his opponents an opportunity to preach, he exposed their emptiness.
That recalls another Biblical figure — Elijah, the prophet of the doomed northern kingdom of Israel, who humiliated the false prophets of Baal by showing that none of their bizarre rituals and self-flagellations could produce a drop of rain.
When he triumphed, however, Elijah tried to withdraw from society. He escaped to the desert: it was better to leave this earthly life than have to deal with humanity as it was, he thought.
Charlie was the opposite. He returned, again and again, to the arena. If encountering daily hatred took a toll — and it must have — he did not show it.
What we did see on September 10 — to our horror — were his mortal wounds. Again, the Biblical parallels suggest themselves.
In that moment of wounding, Charlie achieved a kind of transcendence. He was killed while debating.
He died as he lived: a lover of freedom, and a follower of his Lord.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of The Zionist Conspiracy Wants You, now available on Amazon. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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