11/09/2025
Where do we start?
Before I get serious, as I must, I should start with the inescapable humor and joking that were at the heart of my friendship with Charlie. We could never stop sarcastically teasing each other, privately and publicly. It really became difficult sometimes to force ourselves to get serious when we were together. Could the ultra-liberal Larry David — with whom I was once friends — imagine that Charlie and I were constantly trading Seinfeld quotes, and that Charlie knew the show even better than I did? But of course Charlie was a savant, as we all knew.
Today is 9-11 and just as we will all remember where we were when that tragedy struck over two decades ago, I know I will never forget where I was yesterday. I was sitting on a weight bench in the gym. I read a text from a mutual friend confirming what I couldn’t dare to imagine. It hit me hard. And I took my head in my hands and wept. The cliche is true: No words can suffice. Ever. And soon thereafter I realized that my friend Charlie is a martyr. Nothing less. He was murdered for his faith in Jesus. By forces that hates truth and hate love and hate God — and anyone who represents God.
I remember the first time I met Charlie. He was 24. His fiancee at the time, Erika — who is now his widow and the mother of his two children — was with us. We got together over burgers here in Manhattan; and this exquisitely talented and already outrageously accomplished young man embarrassed me by telling me that I was his hero and that my books had meant the world to him. I laughed inwardly, because I knew that whatever very small things I had had the privilege of contributing to his journey were a drop in the bucket — were as NOTHING — compared to who he was. Even then I was in awe of the staggering talent and gifts that God had given him, and felt tremendously honored that he would be so gracious to me. But he was that gracious and that humble. He was the real deal. A gift from God to this world.
More at the link in bio.
