A blog about free speech is a difficult thing to write at the moment – coming in as it does so soon after the awful murder of Charlie Kirk, the American influencer. It is written in reaction to that tragedy but most of all it is written as a response to the partisan, cruel and unfounded things that have been said in the media and on social media (mostly the latter) about his murder and with a growing sense that our use of and appeal to free speech has become weaponised. Disagree with me and you’re a ‘fascist’ or a ‘Marxist’! Agree with me and you support freedom of speech; oppose me and clearly you don’t. It’s all nonsense of course and free speech is too precious a thing for it to be so caricatured.

I’ve always doubted the platitude that the best things in life are free – it slips far too easily off the tongue for my liking. And the evidence doesn’t stack up either. Healthcare is still free, true, unless you can afford to choose to pay and go private. But it’s far easier to stay healthy if you can access good food and fresh air, more holidays and less stress. Shelter is only free if it’s under a bridge or in a shop doorway, and even dodgy rented accommodation costs far too much for many of us. Happy and loving families are a great blessing but they are more likely to be happy I suspect if paying the bills and working excessively long hours to be able to do so doesn’t bring an abundance of worry and tension.

But better to be happy than rich, eh? Of course. And what’s with this politics of envy? I prefer to call it the politics of justice and of decency. It’s true, sadness and loss can afflict any of us regardless of our personal resources – the king in his castle or the poor man at his gate. Either can have their heart broken or lose their sense of purpose. But at least the king or queen in their castle can be miserable on a full belly. Sorry, but the best things in life really do cost.

And this is what we are learning about ‘free’ speech – that it costs. I am not saying it is less important, absolute or indeed not to be treasured because it costs. Quite the opposite – we need to guard it better and more wisely that we do at the moment. I am saying that it is time to recognise it does cost and to respect it accordingly because the price is so often borne by others – whether it’s an immigrant family scared to death they will burned in their beds because of a tweet, or whether it’s children not getting their immunisations because we cast doubt on the value and safety of jabs. We need to use the currency of free speech more responsibly for the sake of others as well as for our own sake.

This argument for the primacy of free speech in a true democracy has come up recently in relation to this year’s party political conferences. I’ve listened to people who have invited guests on stage to argue, for example, that the cancers suffered by members of the royal family might have been caused by the covid jab. And when that position is challenged they’ve argued ‘well, I don’t know whether it’s true or not, but it’s free speech’. More and more we no longer exercise free speech, we hide behind it or use it as a weapon to silence others who might reasonably challenge us.

Free speech is a treasure, but we will lose it in the mayhem of moral ambiguity if we don’t spend it wisely and for the good of all. And free speech always costs – it cost a generation of people in the second world war for a start.

The Bible has an unsurprising and reassuring amount to say about on the topic. In essence and across the two Testaments it reminds us that words can be a blessing or a weapon, that they reveal the best or the worst of us, and that ultimately we are accountable for what we say. They matter.

I think primarily of Jesus with his disciples, sitting down to eat without going through the purification process of hand-washing first. The pharisees (religious leaders) are outraged. But he comes back at their criticism with an answer few if any of us could challenge, even today. He says bluntly enough that it’s not dirty hands or even what goes in your mouth at all that can make a person dirty (the presumption being that without ritual cleansing, the disciples were unclean) – only what comes out of your mouth. Jesus reminds us all, if we need reminding, and these days we do, that what we say and how we say it reveals the deepest truth of who we are, because words come from the heart. By them we are known. Really known.

In the Gospel of Luke it goes this way: “A good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart, and an evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart. For the mouth speaks what the heart is full of.” I repeat, the mouth speaks what the heart is full of. Jesus too spoke freely – no one could ever accuse him of not believing in free speech. But he exercised it to a purpose and the purpose was of God.

Jesus was speaking in a way that is utterly consistent with all that went before in the Old Testament. For example, in Proverbs we hear that ‘the tongue has the power of life and death, and those who love it will eat its fruit.”  And yet we bandy words around so freely. In Ephesians Paul reminds us to use our words to build up others, not to pull them down. He says “do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen.” 

The death of Charlie Kirk and what has been said since moved me to reflect on the topic of free speech but I have not wanted to go near what is still a very raw and deeply felt personal tragedy for those who loved him. It is a difficult one to discuss also because I do believe in free speech, but I also think it needs to be exercised with tremendous humility and care for what others hear and the impact it might have on their lives! The vulnerable and the voiceless too often pay the price for our ‘free’ words. We’re part of a story, a story that only God knows in its entirely and only God knows how it will work itself through – but we each of us play our part still so let our words, all of them, be uttered with grace, with truth, and with a reminder of what they tell the world about each and every one of us.