Fear is Cheap. Choose Faith, Like Charlie.

Dear friends,

Fear isn’t just an emotion anymore. It’s a business model. And because fear spreads faster than calm, the systems we live in reward fear.

And in the past few weeks, fear and violence hasn’t just been suggested to us, it’s been shoved in our faces.

• Millions of people saw Ukrainian refugee, Iryna Zarutska, stabbed in a train car, without any warning, after which the killer proudly announced what he did to the other train passengers.

• We read of 8-year old children shot at prayer on their first week back at school by a shooter who wanted infamy.

• We read how a chatbot persuaded a young boy to end his life so that he would be “seen”, despite the boy wanting his plans to be foiled so that he could live.

• And then, the world watched live on stage, as Charlie Kirk—a young American commentator and activist, known for traveling campus to campus to debate tough issues—was murdered yesterday.

These weren’t just tragedies. They were tragedies performed. Killers announcing their acts. Algorithms whispering promises of visibility in death. Public assassinations chosen for their broadcast value. Fear was the product. And rage the result.

I read comments today from grown men saying they woke through the night, seeing the shot again and its the impact on Charlie’s body. That’s the danger of this moment. Violence doesn’t just end lives anymore. Within the digital body that thrives on attention, violence lodges itself into our collective memory like a nightmare on repeat.

And if we’re not careful, fear becomes the script and shapes our choices.

But performance isn’t always destructive. And Charlie Kirk leaves us the legacy of the perhaps the best in the art of live debate performance in modern history.

Charlie could have built his influence from behind a screen, trading clips and soundbites. But he chose the harder stage: traveling, standing in front of crowds who often disagreed with him, taking unscripted questions, listening, and answering face-to-face.

That wasn’t without cost.

Charlie received constant insults, endless criticism, and even death threats. He knew the risks, and he still turned up every time. That takes faith. Not just faith in a Creator, but faith in people. Faith that conversation, even when heated, is better than silence. Faith that showing up in person is worth more than hiding behind a feed.

Whether you agreed with Charlie’s politics or not doesn’t matter here. What matters is the model he gave us. He chose presence over spectacle. He chose to keep turning up, even when the easy choice would have been to stay home. He chose faith over fear.

So what do we do in this turning point?

We care for one another.

We resist becoming spectators to fear.

And we learn from Charlie’s example.

Here are three ways you can practice it this week:

1. Limit the replay. When you see violence packaged for spectacle, eg. a clip replayed a thousand times, a shouting match, an AI-generated controversy, don’t amplify it. Ask yourself: Does sharing this make me stronger, or just more anxious?

2. Seek real presence. Fear thrives in isolation. Trade some scrolling time for an actual conversation. Even ten minutes with a friend face-to-face can reset the nervous system in ways no feed ever can.

3. Strengthen your stage. Decide in advance what values you want to perform when pressure comes. Will you respond with anger, or with calm? With despair, or with courage? That choice is your true stagecraft.

It takes a lot to wake up Conservative America and this may have done it. But fear should never be answered with hatred. Hatred only feeds the spectacle and strengthens the systems of control.

This is the time to answer fear with faith. To be the person who steadies others. To strengthen your family, your friends, and your community.

Fear is cheap. Fear is everywhere. But fear only works if we agree to be the audience.

Let’s choose the harder stage. Faith Not Fear.

~ Kay