Do Pitched Battles Loom?
“They’ll eat their words!”
The barbaric imagery graphically depicts the humiliation felt by a speaker of some language — parrots excluded — when forced publicly to recant their words on some matter they defended forcefully that has been exposed to be undeniably wrong, perhaps even stupid. Similar expressions include “eating humble pie,” “eating crow,” and “eating one’s hat.” Each expression clearly reflects the discomfiture of being proven wrong. Having to admit one’s blatant error to those to whom they avowed the opposite not so long ago is particularly galling, potentially exposing one to ridicule. Hence “eat crow.”
The origin of “eating one’s words” has a lofty source: John Calvin.1 In 1571, the French theologian wrote a tract on Psalm 62 of the book Psalms in the Old Testament of the Christian Bible in which he remarks: “God eateth not his words when he hath once spoken.” The image may strike many as a bizarre association to make for God or any divine act God may perform. The last two lines of the psalm seem to have inspired Calvin’s remark:2
62:11 God hath spoken once; twice have I heard this;
that power belongeth unto God.
62:12 Also unto thee, O Lord, belongeth mercy: for thou
renderest to every man according to his work.
The means and timing of the conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s premature death are circumstances that chasten and chill us all. No one would be so saucy as to remark that he is beyond eating crow, his hat, or humble pie now. Certain it is that he is beyond recantation and humiliation. Notwithstanding, will the words he so recently spoke surely haunt his family:
“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 dribble. But 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.”3
Apparently, Charlie Kirk’s death at 31 was one of those inevitable gun deaths offered up in order to seal America’s prudent deal for our right to carry arms. Or was it?
The questions that ring loud around us, which must remain unanswered due to Kirk’s curtailed life and debates, are these: Do we require an armed citizenry? To what purpose our state, our society, our rule of law, our culture, our respect of others, our very intelligence, yes, even our religions, if each of us requires arms to defend our other God-given rights? And if arms be required, then we are indeed doomed. For the inevitable paranoia into which that mind-set traps us triggers a frenzied race to possess the most powerful arms to ensure defeat of those wielding lesser arms.
Charlie Kirk, you are beyond answering now. And while we wish you peace in death, we cannot but rue the pitched battle you bequeathed to those who heed your precepts. Let us in greater wisdom, in respect and regret of your death, reject that call.
- John Calvin (July 10, 1509 – May 27, 1564), was a French theologian, pastor, and reformer in Geneva during the Protestant Reformation. ↩︎
- King James Bible, Psalms, Psalm 61 verses 11-12. ↩︎
- https://youtu.be/rMzr5cDKza0?si=H0i2tMtJAJu8beUS ↩︎