American Christians: you must speak against evil. Condemning evil isn’t optional. Doesn’t matter if you originally supported the person doing wrong. Doesn’t matter if you partly agree with the positions that result in the evil. You must speak against that evil.
Scripture demands that you, Christian stand against evil.
- The Law commands that “You must not follow the masses in doing evil; nor turn aside in order to pervert justice—not even showing partiality to the poor” (Ex 23:2-3).
- Wisdom literature demands that you “open your mouth for the speechless—open your mouth and judge righteously!” (Prov 31:8-9)
- Christ unveils that when we take care of the hungry, the thirsty, the migrant, the prisoner, the naked we’re taking care of Him (Matthew 25:44-45 )
- The prophets cried that God has told us what is good—to “do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with God” (Micah 6:8)
- Paul’s tells us to “Abhor what is evil; cling to what is good.” (Rom 12:9)
- James agrees: “To one who knows the right thing to do and does not do it, to him it is sin.” (James 4:17)
You’re not standing against evil because it exists. If that were the case, you’d never have anything else to talk about BUT evil. You’re speaking against evil as it is publicly embraced, exalted, and shaping minds. Consider Paul’s example where he largely remained quiet against the evils of culture and government—but the idolatrous practices of Athens resulted in a clash of worlds. (Acts 17)
You stand and deliver against this type of evil because you are God’s child and love your neighbor. You start speaking against this evil in your own house AND you speak against it at large. We are not to love others only in word or in tongue but in action and reality (1 John 3:18). Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German Christian who was involved in the plot to kill Adolf Hitler, said it this way: “Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.”
Hitler and Pol Pot and Stalin: all great evils that had to be stood against as they shaped culture at large. But what of taking advantage of the poor, oppressing the weak because they look the part, exploitation of women and children, industrialization of vices, raping of resources from underprivileged countries, and mistreating the foreigner? Do we remain silent, or worse, join the joke when we see the stranger being taunted?
You may have heard the saying “you get more of what you reward”. And evil in our culture has its own rewards, indeed. But “Culture isn’t just what we encourage but what we allow to happen.” Allowing evil to publicly drive by is not loving God or our neighbors. It is allowing culture to irretrievably slide into hell.
So, speak, American Christians. Speak, when you see people applauding the call for a murder of an entire people, be they a governing body or the unborn. Speak when you see the executive office of the United States publicly posting video that makes mirth from the arrests of illegal immigrants. Speak when a society embraces the culture of death that it applauds the death of the infant and the aged. Speak when society is mentally trapped to shrug with a “so what did he do wrong” when a man gets assaulted by an enforcer of the law. Speak, when society smirks at the sexual exploitation of minors by the very leaders of our democracy.