What Will You Do with Your 243?
At first glance, that number probably doesn’t mean much to you. But think about this: the average Twitter post is around 33 words, and a Facebook update is about 40 to 50. Let’s call it 40 words. With the average English word running about five letters plus a space, you’re tapping roughly 240 times to create a social media post. Add three more taps — one to open the app, one to start the post, and one to hit publish — and you land at 243.
That’s 243 taps of your thumbs to broadcast your thoughts to the world. Everything from what you had for breakfast, to your opinion on politics, to a full-blown Karen moment about the neighbor’s holiday decorations. The ease with which we speak our minds belies the cost of the freedom we now enjoy.
Words are casual now. And the irony is that we are publishing our thoughts more than ever—yet rarely pausing to weigh the value of the message we so freely express.
Thomas More’s Silent Shout
Perhaps you have heard the name Thomas More. For him, words were anything but casual. More was a brilliant lawyer, a devout Catholic, and eventually the Lord Chancellor of England — second only to King Henry VIII himself. But his story took a fateful turn when the king set his sights on another woman who was not his wife.
Henry was married to Catherine of Aragon but had become obsessed with a young woman named Anne Boleyn. He wanted to divorce Catherine and marry Anne, officially for the purpose of securing a son to inherit his throne. Henry petitioned the Pope for an annulment. Rome refused. So Henry decided he would no longer recognize the authority of the Pope and instead declared himself the supreme head of the Church of England.
Thomas More disagreed with Henry’s decision. But he found himself caught in the middle. His conscience demanded two things of him: loyalty to God and loyalty to the king. In an attempt to navigate the tension, he did not launch fiery speeches against the king, nor did he write pamphlets denouncing Henry’s actions. Instead, he stayed quiet.
I don’t mean that he did not stand up for what he believed was right. I mean, he refused to endorse Henry as the chief authority over England’s religion. Silence was More’s shield — a way of neither provoking the king’s wrath outright nor betraying his own convictions. For a time, it worked. But not for long.
Henry was not content with silence. In 1534, Parliament passed the Act of Supremacy, requiring an oath that declared the king to be the supreme head of the Church of England. Now, for More to remain silent was enough to brand him a traitor.
But still he kept silent. He would not take the oath. For that refusal, he was imprisoned in the Tower of London and executed on July 6, 1535.
At the scaffold, he spoke words that still echo across the centuries: “I die the King’s good servant, but God’s first.”
Why You Have Your 243
Thomas More’s death was one chapter in a long, bloody pattern. For generations to come, the religious preference of the king or queen resulted in each monarch demanding allegiance in matters of faith. Catholic rulers persecuted Protestants, and Protestant rulers persecuted Catholics. The result was division, fear, and silenced voices.
So it is no accident that when the American founders came together two centuries later, they had no interest in repeating England’s mistakes. They built a twofold safeguard into the Constitution: freedom of religion and freedom of speech. The government cannot dictate what a person must believe, and the government cannot silence what a person may say.
Your 243 taps exist because words were costly before they were casual. That freedom is a gift, but it also carries responsibility. We are called to examine our conscience, to test our convictions against the truth of Scripture, and to decide whether what we are about to say is truly worth saying.
Too often, we spend our words on trivial matters and keep our silence on eternal ones. Thomas More was silent because of conviction, not out of convenience or fear. And when he did speak, he weighed his words before they were released. That is why “I die the King’s good servant, but God’s first” still echoes across the centuries.
When was the last time your post rang with that kind of clarity? In a culture overflowing with opinions, the voices that matter most are those shaped by faith, grounded in truth, and spoken with courage. You have the privilege to speak. Use it - dare I say - More wisely and with conviction.
