When it comes to truth, context is king. Take any statement, any truth claim, and rip it out of the context from which it was originally stated, and the product will be ultimately false even though it appears true on the surface. Two days ago, on September 10, 2025, the United States was rocked. Charlie Kirk, a popular conservative debater, was murdered in cold blood from roughly 200 yards away. The murder itself is tragic, especially in the light of what was left behind. Kirk left behind a wife and two young children. There are no other words for this except that it was pure evil. Yet, it has also exposed some very key problems in our world right now. I realize writing about larger issues so soon may risk sounding exploitative, but that is not my heart. My intent is to confront a deeper problem in a way I believe Kirk himself would have respected. This post argues that decontextualized quotes about empathy and gun policy have been weaponized and that truth requires context.
I know many people are speaking into the debate on guns and what should or should not be done about them. Many will speak about the evident mental health problems in our country or the spiritual battle that rages. These and other discussions are all conversations that need to be had. However, I want to address something that I have been seeing that also happens to align with my most recent book.
In the wake of Kirk’s death, two quotes have been pulled from what he said that are being used to justify the view that Kirk was a monster who deserved what he got. On one hand, this blog functions as a defense of Kirk and what he stood for. I did not think he was flawless, nor did I end up watching much of his videos despite holding similar views. That said, what is being said about him, using words he did actually say (just ripped out of context), is problematic and needs to be dealt with. On the other hand, however, my goal with this blog is more focused on a call to truth. Specifically, truth requires that we maintain proper context. Without context, truth statements can actually cease to mean what they are meant to mean.
Take even the most basic truth statement: “2 + 2 = 4.” It’s universally true, but it only means something if you know what “2,” “+,” “=,” and “4” stand for. Without that context, it’s just a string of marks. Context doesn’t make the math true—the math was always true—but context makes the truth understandable.
What Is Contextual Absolutism?
Before engaging with the two quotes mentioned above, I need to briefly lay out contextual absolutism. Contextual absolutism is the truth model that argues that, for every meaningful question or topic, there exists one and only one truth statement that corresponds to reality. However, that truth statement must be understood in its context. This model works in all areas of life, including science, theology, and philosophy. If you are interested in learning more about the model specifically, you can read a free version of the “formal” argument here. If you want to read the full book (which includes less formal language), it can be purchased at your favorite retailer here. The rest of this post applies the model to the two Kirk quotes that are circulating out of context.
Empathy
The first quote that is being taken out of context is this:
“I can’t stand the word empathy, actually. I think empathy is a made-up, new age term that—it does a lot of damage.” (“The Charlie Kirk Show” on Oct. 12, 2022)
This is quite alarming, is it not? Kirk appears to directly be against empathy of any kind. Well, as you may have guessed, this is not the whole story. Kirk made this statement:
“So the new communications strategy for Democrats, now that their polling advantage is collapsing in every single state… collapsing in Ohio. It’s collapsing even in Arizona. It is now a race where Blake Masters is in striking distance. Kari Lake is doing very, very well. The new communications strategy is not to do what Bill Clinton used to do, where he would say, “I feel your pain.” Instead, it is to say, “You’re actually not in pain.” So let’s just, little, very short clip. Bill Clinton in the 1990s. It was all about empathy and sympathy. I can’t stand the word empathy, actually. I think empathy is a made-up, new age term that—it does a lot of damage. But, it is very effective when it comes to politics. Sympathy, I prefer more than empathy. That’s a separate topic for a different time.” (“The Charlie Kirk Show” on Oct. 12, 2022, original quote unbolded for emphasis)
And on the same day, in a tweet, he wrote:
“The same people who lecture you about ’empathy’ have none for the soldiers discharged for the jab, the children mutilated by Big Medicine, or the lives devastated by fentanyl pouring over the border. Spare me your fake outrage, your fake science, and your fake moral superiority.”
The first thing to note is that this was politically charged, but it also clearly isn’t what the one-sentence quote seemed to be saying. On its own, that quote was completely anti-caring. In context, though, it takes on much more nuance. Kirk is not saying that he does not care for other people. He is simply saying that empathy has become a loaded term, and he doesn’t like it. He prefers sympathy.
Traditionally, empathy and sympathy are defined similarly, but with nuance. Empathy is something along the lines of “the ability to understand the feelings of another,” while sympathy is something like “the feeling of sorrow for another”. That said, Kirk goes further. He connects empathy with the “new age”. This is most likely a reference to those who call themselves “empaths,” which is a recent term and is new age (the term was popularized by Dr. Judith Orloff).
To be completely honest, I believe that Kirk made a mistake here. It seems as though he connected “empath” with “empathy,” though I could be wrong. Imagining yourself in someone else’s shoes is fundamentally what empathy is, and it isn’t directly connected with the new age. I imagined myself in his kids’ shoes after he was shot. To grow up without a dad, knowing he was murdered for speaking about what he believed, is going to be incredibly difficult for them. That is empathy at its base. Nevertheless, he isn’t wrong that empathy is often weaponized. His tweet showed what he meant by that, and I think we are seeing it in how many people are responding to his death.
Overall, the quote that has been circulating is pulled completely out of its context and thus creates the impression that Kirk was uncaring. That is simply not what he was saying. But the only way to know that is to go and seek the context.
A Useful Clarification for Readers
It helps to define terms. In common usage, empathy means the capacity to enter imaginatively into another’s feelings. Sympathy means feeling sorrow or concern for another’s suffering. You can dispute Kirk’s lexical preference, but the honest thing is to represent his actual claim: he was not saying “do not care”. He was saying, “Do not let a politicized use of the term empathy short‑circuit clear thinking.”
Gun Deaths
The second quote is the following:
“I think it’s worth it. I think it’s worth to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights.”
Again, this seems callous and uncaring. What about the children who are killed in schools? Do you really care about guns more than our children? After briefly talking about how the Second Amendment is actually focused on providing the citizens of the United States a means to fight against a tyrannical government, Kirk continues by saying:
“Now, we must also be real. We must be honest with the population. Having an armed citizenry comes with a price, and that is part of liberty. Driving comes with a price. 50,000, 50,000, 50,000 people die on the road every year. That’s a price. You get rid of driving, you’d have 50,000 less auto fatalities. But we have decided that the benefit of driving—speed, accessibility, mobility, having products, services—is worth the cost of 50,000 people dying on the road. So we need to be very clear that you’re not going to get gun deaths to zero. It will not happen. You could significantly reduce them through having more fathers in the home, by having more armed guards in front of schools. We should have a honest and clear reductionist view of gun violence, but we should not have a utopian one.
You will never live in a society when you have an armed citizenry and you won’t have a single gun death. That is nonsense. It’s drivel. But I am, I, I — I think it’s worth it. I think it’s worth to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights. That is a prudent deal. It is rational. Nobody talks like this. They live in a complete alternate universe.
So then, how do you reduce? Very simple. People say, oh, Charlie, how do you stop school shootings? I don’t know. How did we stop shootings at baseball games? Because we have armed guards outside of baseball games. That’s why. How did we stop all the shootings at airports? We have armed guards outside of airports. How do we stop all the shootings at banks? We have armed guards outside of banks. How did we stop all the shootings at gun shows? Notice there’s not a lot of mass shootings at gun shows, there’s all these guns. Because everyone’s armed. If our money and our sporting events and our airplanes have armed guards, why don’t our children?” (https://awakenaudio.podbean.com/e/charlie-kirk-live-in-slc/ ~39:00 – 42:36, original quote unbolded for emphasis).
This is simply not as callous as the short quote makes it out to be. He clearly wants to stop school shootings. His point is actually that school shootings happen because of the lack of guns at school (in the form of armed security) and the lack of fathers in the home. Whether he is correct or not is something one can debate. However, to just brush him off as a callous lover of guns is overly reductionistic. It isn’t accurate to what he was saying. He was arguing that zero risk is impossible in a free society, that every freedom involves tradeoffs, and that the right question is how to reduce gun deaths without destroying the Second Amendment. Additionally, he spent his life trying to reach the very youth and adults that many are claiming he doesn’t care about (between the two quotes). Out-of-context quotes do not tell the whole story. That’s what makes them out of context. Even if the statement is completely accurate as is, there is still relevant context to consider.
The Larger Problem
Picking and choosing which quotes to pull from a source is called “cherry-picking”. This is a logical fallacy that, unfortunately, has become all too commonplace. The very concept of social media is small sound bites. It is difficult to include context in posts and comments. It has consistently been shown that an image with a basic quote will make a social media post perform better than one without an image. Video formats are getting shorter and shorter. It is harder than ever to keep people’s attention, and memes are often the go-to response. This is a prime breeding ground for what is happening in the wake of Kirk’s death.
It is also a form of straw-manning. Setting up a “straw man” is when someone makes an argument against a position that is intentionally or unintentionally weaker than the actual position and then destroys that straw man and getting a “win”. Kirk is not uncaring, nor does he simply love guns more than children or people in general. Pulling these quotes outside of the relevant context sets up an easy target. It looks like Kirk is uncaring. But it’s not true! It is a weakened form of what Kirk was saying.
For Christians
While all of the above applies to Christians, I want to double down here. If you claim the title of Christian, you are called to be better. I am called to be better. If the world insists on attacking a caricature, we must not. We are commanded to “judge with right judgment” (John 7:24). We are expected to seek the truth, not to judge hastily. When someone posts a quote from anyone without context, we must not take it as gospel. We need to do our research. Did they actually say that? If yes, did they mean what is being implied in the out-of-context quote? Always seek to understand what someone is saying in context. This applies to quotes on social media, but also to conversations in normal life.
Don’t just jump to condemnation.
Ask questions.
Seek (actively pursue) the truth.
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L. J. Anderson - Author and Blogger 