Two weeks ago, clearing off my home-office desk, I found a scribble I had written years earlier on a small notepad:
"The root word of DISCUSS is not CUSS," and "There's no CUSS in DISCUSS."
I smiled. That'll preach, I thought. Then last week happened, and those words took on terrible urgency.
On September 10, 2025, Charlie Kirk was shot in the neck while speaking to a crowd at Utah Valley University. The footage raced across the internet in minutes, a brutal reminder that when a culture abandons discussion and descends into denunciation, the next stop is often destruction.
The Pattern Is Ancient
This reaction isn't new. It's humanity-old.
We have always punished unwelcome truths. In Athens, Socrates was forced to drink hemlock for asking too many clarifying questions, the kind that exposed sloppy thinking and moral cowardice. In Jerusalem, Stephen's words "cut to the heart," and the crowd answered not with debate, but with stones (Acts 7: 54–60).
In the Reformation era, Martin Luther was branded a heretic, excommunicated, and declared an outlaw for his hammer blows of truth — hunted and reviled, though providentially spared from martyrdom. William Tyndale, however, was strangled and burned at the stake for daring to put Scripture into the hands of common people. His final cry was, "Lord, open the King of England's eyes."
The blood of these truth-bearers fills the pages of Foxe's Book of Martyrs — a work that records in searing detail the countless men and women across centuries who paid for their faith with their lives.
And the pattern continued: Dietrich Bonhoeffer hanged for refusing to bend to Nazi lies; Abraham Lincoln shot for seeking to heal a fractured nation; Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. assassinated for demanding justice and equality; and now, in our own time, Charlie Kirk silenced mid-sentence because his words cut too deep.
The names change, but the pattern remains the same.
The Slope We Always Slide
We were taught as children: "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me." Yet the rage that words awaken is precisely what makes them dangerous to the darkness. Words reveal. Words sift. Words illuminate.
And when light exposes deeds we prefer to keep hidden, the flesh does what it's always done: it moves from cuss (contempt) → curse (dehumanization) → kill (elimination).
We sometimes forget the obvious:
- Anger is one letter from Danger.
- Guns don't kill people. Enraged people kill people.
- Cuss → Curse → Kill.
Weapons are instruments; hatred is the hand that wields them. And when hatred takes root, the slope is always the same: from cuss, to curse, to kill.
Too Toxic for Public Debate?
Today, we are told that certain topics are "too toxic for public debate." But when the truth itself becomes off-limits — when it's silenced because it "unleashes hate" — we are no longer protecting peace, we are revealing the condition of the human heart.
To blame Charlie Kirk's words for his murder is as twisted as blaming a firefighter for the burns he suffered while dragging someone out of a burning house, as if his courage caused the flames. Or blaming a doctor for catching a disease while treating a patient, as if healing were the problem.
Scripture presents a similar picture: blaming Jeremiah for being thrown into the cistern because he prophesied the truth, as if the pit were his fault. Or blaming Paul for being stoned in Lystra, as if his preaching caused the rocks.
The guilt lies not with the one who speaks truth, but with the one whose hatred cannot bear to hear it.
What We Must Do
So what do we do — those of us called to lead, to speak, to shepherd, to follow Christ in public?
- Reclaim "Discuss" as a holy discipline. "Discuss" does not mean "agree." It means engage. Respect demands dialogue without contempt.
- Refuse the slide from contempt to dehumanization. Dehumanizing speech prepares the conscience for violence. Leaders must call it out in their own tribe first.
- Expect the cost — and count it anyway. Stephen knew. The prophets knew. Jesus knew. Truth-telling has a price tag. Courage means obedience in the presence of risk.
- Anchor your voice in Scripture, not the algorithm. The algorithm rewards outrage. The Spirit rewards faithfulness. Let the Word, not the timeline, set your tone.
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Fight hatred with clarity and compassion. Jesus came full of grace and truth. One without the other becomes a weapon or a surrender. Both together become light.
The Final Word
Some will say the answer to violent words is to use fewer words. But silence is not safety. Silence is abdication. The antidote to hateful speech is not speechlessness; it is holy speech — words saturated with Scripture, tethered to reality, and delivered with courage.
So here is our Tremendous Leadership charge, in the name of the One who is the Truth:
- Discuss, don't cuss.
- Dignify, don't dehumanize.
- Debate ideas, don't destroy image-bearers.
- Carry the cross, don't cave to the crowd.
And when hatred hurls its stones or aims its scope, remember: light is not fragile. Murder silences a mouth; it cannot bury a message. The blood of martyrs has always watered the seed of movements. The darkness may despise the dawn, but it cannot halt it.
Charlie's death is not an argument to retreat; it is a summons to holy resolve to speak, to stand, to suffer if we must until the day when the Word Himself silences every curse, wipes every tear, and judges every lie.
Because the root of "discuss" is not "cuss."
The root of truth is not hate.
And the root of courage is not fear.
Lord, make us faithful.
