Faith and Optimism: The End of the Caustic Environment
I’ve been searching for a word that captures the feel of our society. The one that won’t let go is caustic—scathing, bitter, corrosive. And corrosive things don’t just sting; they destroy.
This week, that reality wasn’t theoretical. Charlie Kirk was shot and killed during a campus event at Utah Valley University on September 10, 2025. Authorities soon identified and arrested a 22-year-old suspect. Facts will keep developing, but one truth is already clear: the human cost is unbearable. A family is grieving. A community is shaken. A nation is arguing about why. AP News+2ABC News+2
I didn’t know Charlie. I do know this: when a man is killed, the first instinct should not be to label the victim, weaponize the moment, or score points. That reflex is part of the corrosion I’m writing about. It’s a symptom of a culture where sarcasm is the soundtrack and contempt is the beat.
Words matter. That childhood rhyme about sticks and stones was never true. Words shape motives, escalate emotions, and sometimes set actions in motion—actions we would never want on our conscience. In the hours after the shooting, waves of hot takes and misinformation rushed online. That flood is its own form of violence. AP News+1
What Caustic Culture Costs Us
Truth: heat drowns out light; facts get buried under speed.
Trust: people brace for impact instead of opening up.
Courage: decent voices go quiet because only the loud seem to win.
Community: we reduce human beings to teams and labels.
I’m not above this. I’ve let my emotions run my tongue more times than I want to admit. But grief has a way of clearing the fog. We can’t fix everything, but we can choose what comes out of our mouths and keyboards.
On July 20, 2024 I wrote an article about this exact subject titled “No Respect or Civility: How did we get here?” Click here to read more…
Here is a quote from that article,
“In today's world, the approach to disagreement often involves crushing those who hold opposing views. There's a stark lack of civility, love, listening, empathy, and respect. It seems there is little motivation to respect those with differing opinions. The rhetoric used in disagreements has become harsh and unforgiving, aiming to vilify, defame, and disparage those who disagree.”
The Antidote to Caustic Culture
We have to defeat this caustic environment. And we defeat it with optimism.
Optimism comes from confidence in the hope we have for good. That confidence in hope? That's what we call faith.
The way we combat the caustic environment is by allowing God to be the only influence on our environment—to influence and inspire our behavior and our interactions. This doesn't mean we won't have disagreements. Disagreement isn't the problem.
But when God influences our communication, something fundamental changes. Our communication flows from love, not hatred. Our words lead to healing, not death.
Moving Forward
In a world that seems increasingly caustic, we each have a choice. We can contribute to the destruction, or we can be agents of healing. We can speak from a place of faith and hope, or we can add to the bitterness.
The choice is ours, and the stakes couldn't be higher. People are listening, watching, and responding to what we say and how we say it. Let's make sure our words build up rather than tear down, heal rather than harm, and point toward hope rather than despair.
Because in the end, the environment we create with our words is the environment we all have to live in.
