The silence of the lambs – stop being silent!

Mar 16, 2018 by

By Bill Muehlenberg, CultureWatch.

As we are reminded in Ecclesiastes 3:7, there is “a time to be silent, and a time to speak”. Silence can be golden at times, and often we need to learn when to zip the lip. But of course at other times it is utterly imperative that we speak up and speak out.

Here I want to discuss the importance of refusing to stay silent when our voices need to be heard. And let me do it by beginning with a little quiz. What would you think about the people in the following scenarios? Just what would you say to them?

-A doctor does some tests on a patient and discovers that he has a life-threatening illness that requires instant medical treatment, but he refuses to tell the patient this.

-A worker at an emergency dispatch centre gets a call from someone claiming that a powerful bomb has been planted at a busy shopping mall, and it is due to go off within a few hours. However the person receiving the call refuses to pass the message on to the relevant authorities.

-A worker at a day care centre is told that the snacks recently brought in for the kiddies have been contaminated and will be lethal if consumed. Yet the worker does not share this information with anyone.

-A pastor discovers that one of his youth workers is sexually molesting children in his care, yet he does not tell the parents or the rest of the staff anything about this.

Now if you are at all a normal, caring and decent human being, I think I know exactly what you would think of such individuals, and what you would say to them. You would be outraged and you would roundly rebuke these miscreants for staying silent when it was their moral obligation to speak, to warn, and to alert others.

Yet I can think of many similar such situations in Christian circles that also require that we speak out, yet so often we do not. Let me offer a few of these scenarios, and let me know what you think of them:

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